I love the analogy to the dead king and his tyrannical successor. How long before any criticism of the senile imbecile who rules over us is criminalized? The author writes "The king’s open challenge to the free speech tradition was a pivotal moment of truth in Hypothetica. Would the guards and citizens stand up for that tradition or give in to the king?"
We already know the answer to that. The FBI is all in on censorship and oppression. Would our local cops join in or stand with us? If this trend continues it won't be long before the Second Amendment is put to the test. And yes, liberty is worth fighting and dying for.
The DOJ is corrupt and this has been as plain as day since Obama instructed it to investigate Mike Flynn for doing something which was clearly not criminal. But the protection of 2A is totally illusory. Anyone who takes up arms against a totalitarian government mandating a useless, unnecessary and somewhat harmful vaccine would be eliminated in a NYC minute. The only protection against a wretched government is an informed citizenry.
And if they also controlled elections? What if you knew an election was rigged? What would you do? An armed citizenry acting together is not impotent. Why do you think they are so maniacal to confiscate weapons? It's the one thing standing in their way of domination. Right or wrong they fear it more than anything else.
The 2020 Presidential election was clearly rigged. In addition to the fact that 95% of the media maliciously lied about one candidate and failed to tell the truth about the other candidate there were illegal changes to the election laws in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan and a deliberate breach of the election laws in Wisconsin.
These illegal changes facilitated enough fraud to change the result.
And after all legal remedies were denied there was a March on Washington which quickly ended when one protestor was killed by police.
Non-rigged elections require updated voter rolls, current voter photo ID cards, paper ballots and hand counting with all parties represented and participating.
The authorities have no reason to fear your guns. The military and the police will do what they are trained to do. They will follow orders.
I am not saying that people should not have guns for their personal protection, but the notion that you can use them against a corrupt, totalitarian government, which is what you have now, has been proven wrong.
..."but the notion that you can use them against a corrupt, totalitarian government, which is what you have now, has been proven wrong.'
Please provide one example. In fact, the opposite has been proved true. Hungarian freedom fighters armed only with Molotov cocktails routed the occupation army in 1956. Armed guerillas have proven very effective against armies of vastly superior firepower. And that assumes that our army and police would stand unilaterally against free citizens. More to the point, an oppressive military and/or police would have to worry constantly about their own families who would be at risk. Civil wars are decidedly uncivil. Ours was mostly not only because it was a regional war and not a civil war. Except in the border states, which saw episodes of startling brutality. Did you miss the fact that police forces in our cities were routed by rioters armed with rocks during the "summer of love?" This is precisely why corrupts totalitarian governments' first act is to disarm the people. I'm not saying it would be easy. And no sane American would want this to happen. But do not mistake the Left for have sane or decent motives.
I agree that the 2020 election was rigged but not illegally so in most cases. Our press is free to lie and cover up And be shills for a party that no decent American should contemplate voting for.
The king is dead, long live the king! To the freedom loving readers of the Free Press: I have posted an open letter to Substack leadership about defending free speech that is going viral. If it resonates with you, can you amplify? Here's the link to the Substack note that contains the post: https://substack.com/profile/64905469-yuri-bezmenov/note/c-14787883
Another example, Lori Lightfoot advocated for a defunded of the police yet surrounds herself with more police protection than any mayor in the history of Chicago. Why do those cops, who she clearly vilifies, continue to provide her security instead of simply walking away from her detail?!
That imbecile is nothing more than a ventriloquist dummy who only vocalizes what the hand up his back tells him to say. He has not had an original thought for the last 50 years! In this case he is one of the most dangerous people to hold office!
This is why we need to take it all a step further and use technology to our advantage, the same way the FBI uses it against us. We need to make - as Tim suggest - digital "idea labs" where we have social media platforms that use groups of people together to hold all of these corrupt systems accountable.
It is the way out of this mess. Imagine if we had "idea labs" like this:
Leave it to the arrogant, hypocrite to quote an Austin, TX news outlet. Austin used to be called Moscow on the Colorado (the river that runs through Austin.) and the Austin newspaper, Austin American-Statesman, Pravda. Austin is the most PC/Woke city in Texas.
Now to the real question:
Why are you engaging this moron? He's a one note poster.
You are correct. The only time I watch the news there is when I need a laugh. The newscasters are bauble-head parrots. But we call the paper the Austin Unamerican Statesman.
Lol. Yeah....what exactly was "blown up," Bruce?....is this that massive Twitter Files nonsense, that really amounted to nothing? Wasn't there gonna be some big reveal?
Of course you missed the interview with Musk on Carlson last night. He explained it all in a way even a second grader could comprehend. Still it might elude you. Twitter was a massive censorship and disinformation operation with close ties to the Democrat Party.
Bruce, here is an example of the moron's Dem Party. You know the party that champions the rights of black people.
This is from an Amazon book review:
"By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, The Record. But across the state—and the South—white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny.
In 1898, in response to a speech calling for white men to rise to the defense of Southern womanhood against the supposed threat of black predators, Alexander Manly, the outspoken young Record editor, wrote that some relationships between black men and white women were consensual. His editorial ignited outrage across the South, with calls to lynch Manly.
But North Carolina’s white supremacist Democrats had a different strategy. They were plotting to take back the state legislature in November “by the ballot or bullet or both,” and then use the Manly editorial to trigger a “race riot” to overthrow Wilmington’s multi-racial government. Led by prominent citizens including Josephus Daniels, publisher of the state’s largest newspaper, and former Confederate Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, white supremacists rolled out a carefully orchestrated campaign that included raucous rallies, race-baiting editorials and newspaper cartoons, and sensational, fabricated news stories.
With intimidation and violence, the Democrats suppressed the black vote and stuffed ballot boxes (or threw them out), to win control of the state legislature on November eighth. Two days later, more than 2,000 heavily armed Red Shirts swarmed through Wilmington, torching the Record office, terrorizing women and children, and shooting at least sixty black men dead in the streets. The rioters forced city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with mob leaders. Prominent blacks—and sympathetic whites—were banished. Hundreds of terrified black families took refuge in surrounding swamps and forests.
This brutal insurrection is a rare instance of a violent overthrow of an elected government in the U.S. It halted gains made by blacks and restored racism as official government policy, cementing white rule for another half century. It was not a “race riot,” as the events of November 1898 came to be known, but rather a racially motivated rebellion launched by white supremacists.
In Wilmington’s Lie, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history."
How come the Woke movement never, while tearing down statutes, mentions the roots of the party of slavery and tried to dismantle the party of slavery?
I hope you read Taibbi's report on Jacob Siegel's TABLET piece about the "soft coup" now underway. The DNC is the poster child for self-interested venality.
It was revealed that your beloved 'government' heroes have - since about 2012 - had control and have censored every bit of online social media; if you have a 'free account' you are being watched.
It is not interested in engaging in any type of thought process. It never has an independent thought or even POV on any article, rather it exists only to comment on the thoughts or POV of others. It is either a paid troll, as others have surmised, or an experimental AI bot. Let it starve.
No he is not. Nobody lost a singe right under Trump. You might find him odious and obnoxious. Many do. But the claim that he was a dictator, or worse, a Nazi, has zero basis in reality.
Do me a favor and try a thought experiment. Imagine what would happen in Berlin, circa 1935, if a bunch of actresses had mused about blowing up the Reich Chancellory or paraded around with a caricatured severed head of the dictator. Now tell me what did happen to the Hollywood harpies who did the same to Trump.
From within the circle of the current GOP I see your point. Eventually they will lose enough elections to turn it around. The ballot box will be the final arbiter.
From outside that circle in the broader world the Mustache King is something larger than just one person. Institutions responsible for disseminating information - like legacy media as well as tech giants like Twitter and Facebook, and publishing houses - actively suppress some ideas (Covid lab leak! Hunter’s laptop! Sanitizing “offensive” language in old books, dropping “controversial” authors). This has a much more powerful effect over public discourse that exemplifies having a Mustache King, even if it’s not one individual. So you missed the point of the article if all you can think is Trump.
Our government is corrupt. Our populace is stupid and intellectually lazy, in general. There is a cabal with essentially unlimited money which seemingly controls and has controlled our government for a very long time. These are enormous problems, with no obvious solutions.
So my own solution for a very long time has been to speak what I think I know as clearly as I can, and more often than I can rationally justify. And my reasoning is simple: if everyone is silenced by fear, then speaking up, and hopefully saying either what people were thinking silently, or saying something new they find they agree with, is always potentially a positive and useful thing.
I'm not going to type the stories out this morning, but I have seen GroupThink in action many times. People become idiots in groups, when everyone is looking to someone else to speak up, make a decision, and/or do something. Be the one who acts. Be the one who decides. No one is going to save you if you are not willing to save yourself.
Circumscribe (tribalize affinity groups), isolate (get them to believe that "the man" is against them), and then control by promising "redress of grievances".
I think the author does a fantastic job of laying out the case for exactly why censorship is so harmful, not only for the individual that is censored but for all other individuals, even if their inner selves perfectly align with their outer selves (for the time being).
An argument has been made that most Americans instinctively know that free speech, both politically and culturally enforced, is a Good Thing™, but because we've gotten used to that being so well centered within the Overton window for so long that, ironically, free speech itself has allowed the fringes to drag the free speech Overton window along. People /know/ free speech is a Good Thing™, but are unable to defend it in the marketplace of ideas. Why? What possible argument could be "winning" against free speech?
The author mentions but doesn't expand on what I think is the crux of the issue (I'm referring to just what is in this post, the full book may, which I've just purchased and hope it does), which are the "carve outs" in speech. Listed here: plagiarism, blackmail, libel, slander, incitement, perjury, true threats, false advertising, etc. The average person, if truly pressed, could probably muster a reasonable defense of free speech, but could they muster a reasonable defense of why say, libel, shouldn't be protected but hate speech should be? After all, they're both "harmful". As mentioned, the relevant part of the First Amendment is ten words, none of them mentioning exclusions for safety. These exclusions exist mostly as judicial opinions, often far lengthier, nuanced, and narrow than their headline names would suggest. It would be hard, almost impossible, for the average lay person to make the case that "false advertising" shouldn't be protected but "misinformation" should be. Isn't "false advertising" just corporate "misinformation"?
The trick would be King Mustaches are doing is, of course, to expand those "safety" exclusions as much as possible so that as much speech as possible falls into the restricted bucket. What we need more of then aren't robust arguments in favor of free speech, but robust arguments against safety exclusions, built on a principled easily articulable framework that can be applied generally rather than narrow carve outs (libel, slander, perjury, etc.). Such a framework may even need to reconsider some of the existing carve outs and if they're truly necessary (a dash of the fringe ideology on the opposite end of the spectrum to help drag the Overton window back over).
All of the things excluded are subject to laws. Laws must be subject to clear meaning otherwise they will not function properly and will be overturned on appeal. "Misinformation" and "hate speech", I submit, cannot be succinctly defined. As we saw with covid much actual, valid, factual I formation was labeled misinformation. As information concerning the vaccine and boosters still is. In essence, IMO, misinformation and hate speech is speech the person making the allegation against the speech disagree with. It is censorship.
Exactly what I was thinking... libel is a legal construct, not a moral one. Its legal definition is quite specific, and anyone who wishes to prosecute an alleged libel has a high bar to clear. As opposed to "hate speech", which has no legal definition and can be practically anything.
🎯 🎯 🎯 You nailed it. The ‘new’ words being over-used. Mis and Dis-Information. False Advertising we can mostly recognize, but misinformation seems to be anything that goes against the political party’s narrative. It doesn’t agree therefor it is wrong.
Bud Light is not beer. It is fetid water in drag. This is about science. Progressives went from being “about the Science” to science deniers in short order.
I just read a joke that was about a doctor and his patient. The doctor addressed the patient as a man and the patient said, "I'm a woman." "Well," said the doctor, "MS Jones, you have prostate cancer."
There's a difference between sex and gender. While that's true about sex. It isnt true about gender.
Maybe they should have made up new terminology to not confuse the two. But I find it quite silly when conservatives simply refuse to accept gender fluidity.
I find it quite silly that the left is shoving "gender fluidity" down our throats, such as destroying our language with improper pronouns and men competing in women's sports, just to name two silliness.
Yes. By speaking out against it, civilly and succinctly, you push back against the boundary of mainstream thought being established with that statement. Even if it ultimately moves that way you create drag. If enough folks agree with you the boundary moves your way.
Men can marry men is a subjective opinion. Men can become women has crossed over into actual science, and if we do still have a national religion, it is Science.
Ha! Science! That has been made a mockery too. Authorities have fallen. Everywhere. We have reached a point where our access to information has made it possible for us to challenge and discredit everything and everyone we once thought we could trust. Very scary moment in history. Because threatened authorities strike back. And that’s what’s happening now.
Actual science remains a useful thing. It was very easy to criticize Anthony Fauci as a corrupt murderer and authoritarian by pointing to the many patent contradictions between his policies and what the data actually said. Those critiques were of course censored and those making them punished, but they were not subjective, and thus not really amenable to changes in social mores the way say gay marriage was. The change in social mores has more to do with obedience to bad science, and those proclaiming it than the science itself.
It was a remains astonishing to me how fully the smartest people I know fell for the bullshit that Fauci and others pushed on us. I was on a college campus the other day and saw a professorial looking woman wearing a mask outside on a windy day. How is that possible? What was the POINT of an education if that astonishing level of credulity and even cowardice is possible in a supposedly Liberal society?
The rednecks figured it out instantly. It wasn't hard. All you had to do is trust common sense rather than the TV. Many of them died because you can't be healthy on a diet of biscuits, Mountain Dew and cigarettes, but it wasn't not wearing masks that killed them, and it sure as hell was not choosing not to participate in the global medical experiment.
The demeaning redneck commentary weakens your point considerably. As it does my impression of you. It is nothing more than kicking those you perceive as dogs. Perhaps the rednecks figured it out so fast because they are not only intelligent but also well-grounded.
I have not and I stand corrected. I have had that ham.thing in Louisville and Lexington though. As for this article though rednecks, in my experience either speak their minds or do not speak at all.
If what you say is true, then how come the GW fanatics say, "The science on GW is settled."?
Scientific finding are never settled. The beauty of the scientific method is science is, in search of the truth, constantly challenged. Yet the left is trying to stifle the search for the truth.
Yeah, it's terrible science. The only reliable reference is, IMO, the UAH data that uses satellites to measure the temperature of the entire troposphere. It does show that some warming happened between 1980 (which is as far back as the data goes), and about 2000, but the trend has flattened since then. If it were me, I'd recommend a strategy of prudent avoidance: take measures to reduce carbon emissions when it's practical to do so, but don't tear society down trying to eliminate them. A lot of reduction has happened since 1980 anyway, simply due to advancements in technology. Cars, for instance, are far more efficient now than they were in 1980.
The thing about GW advocates is that they're basically trying to revert to a pre-industrial society. They are opposed practical measures that might actually achieve their stated goals, without lowering standards of living. For instance, they're opposed to nuclear power, and they refuse to allow rare-earth metals mining or smelting in the U.S..
I agree. I just read an article about the inconsistency between ground data and satellite data. I also think the GW folks are pawns for folks making only off the "transition". At the risk of exposing not only my nerdiness but also my age, my very favorite Star Trek episode was the one where the crew of the Enterprise attempted to violate the Prime Directive to save the inhabitants of a planet facing an unavoidable catastrophic event. It was a very advanced society. So advanced that it had recognized the fallibility of technology and eschewed it. To the extent that the Enterprise help was refused. The Luddite in me likes that.
Not as long as enough people call out this kind of BS. But if we fail to do that, then Taleb's Minority Rule kicks in and the wishes of a minority become the status quo.
And now add AI as the new king mustache. Elan Musk is one powerful spark fighting for free speech with a dramatic change by purchasing twitter and now forming Truth AI.
Ish. He is only willing to go so far. He's still a billionaire government contractor who is beholden to these plutocrats in a lot of ways. The twitter files were a limited hangout and now they are over.
Perhaps I am overly optimistic but I begin to suspect that the plutocrats are dependent on him. Not just SpaceX but Starlink. It made the Ukraine war efforts much more successful and now it is being rolled out to prepare for the Taiwan crisis. Think what you will about him, his outputs are impressive.
I like him better than not, I guess, but he does do some censoring on twitter and it seems capricious and potentially politically motivated. Also, I wish he'd moved forward with the Covid twitter files.
Brilliant! One need not read the commentary to understand his message. And what a powerful message it is. He shows how the opinion distribution moves with time for social issues. But only in one direction. I wonder if there are examples where it moves first one way and then another.
Maybe global warming will be such an example. It was counter-intuitive in the 70's as the temperatures had declined slighlty for 30 years, but became mainstream in the late 80's, and we are now seeing people come to their senses as all the apocalyptic predictions are failing.
You can’t have a “Green New Deal” without exploiting child labor and raping Congo for cobalt! Guess progressives are okay with child labor and strip mining as long as it’s not in their plain view and is a means to their dystopian end. 🤡🥸
Barbara Demerick has a book about North Korea 'Nothing to Envy'. There is woman who was a doctor in North Korea who escaped and she relates that when Kim Jong 2 died she remembers being surprised because she didn't think he could die (something along those lines). Intelligent enough to be a doctor but mentally captured enough to disregard what is probably common sense. Just a real life example of what Urban was displaying. Good book too.
Well put, Tim. Now add another cartoon that says out loud that the woke mob is completely against free speech, and that cancel culture silences debate.
Wow...this article hit me right in the feels. Tim explicates so many reasons that I write under a pseudonym. It is not the government I am (primarily) concerned with; It is the melted minds at work and, sadly, close relatives.
Feel bad for me? Great. Then give me a pity subscribe, and you can read about the new racist thing- Dungeons & Dragons.
Right there with you and your ex-plant. I speak my mind at home and with close friends, but even here on Substack I am speaking as a fluffy blue feline. I won't repeat the canards and my uncomfortable silence probably broadcasts dissent, but I do not actually say what I think. At some point I think the rubber will meet the road, but it's a cost/benefit analysis, and so far the impact I am likely to have by speaking up hasn't been worth the risk.
Great piece. "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" Read the book or watch talks with the author. Ordinary, middle class policeman transformed into killers simply because they didn't want to be different.
We are never that far from tyranny. If you let it happen.
Pulitzer has been captured by ideologues. Someone (opportunity alert) will develop a new media prize that is truly meritocratic. Maybe it will be Substack, or perhaps Real Clear.
The first part of this piece reminded me of Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless.” A repressive regime’s position is actually quite tenuous and relies on self censorship to survive.
As more people speak out, the power of the regime lessens because people see that it is OK to speak the truth. You know you are living under such a regime when it is scary to speak your mind.
It is up to a brave few to be first and to be willing to say “No, I will not place your sign in my window.” If enough did it all at once, the power of the self censorship regime would evaporate.
Ambient political conditioning is the water we swim in.
The liberal speaks to us in angry tones of compassion. They are frustrated that reality is doggedly, refusing to conform to their predictions and prescriptions.
Our liberal educational system is to the nation as the wooden horse was to the Trojans.
Something very strange has happened to the liberal .
Well this was incredible. As a visual person this was super helpful! 🙏🏼 I feel like this should be mandatory teaching material to be shown to every kid in every highschool and college across America.
Berenson V Biden reveals the thought police in action. King Moustache is in the White House and the NY Times, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, FBI, CIA, NSA, Facebook and others like it that way. They brand anything outside their warped and twisted thought bubble as morally reprehensible.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Women have penises. Joe Biden knows How many grand children he has.
I love the analogy to the dead king and his tyrannical successor. How long before any criticism of the senile imbecile who rules over us is criminalized? The author writes "The king’s open challenge to the free speech tradition was a pivotal moment of truth in Hypothetica. Would the guards and citizens stand up for that tradition or give in to the king?"
We already know the answer to that. The FBI is all in on censorship and oppression. Would our local cops join in or stand with us? If this trend continues it won't be long before the Second Amendment is put to the test. And yes, liberty is worth fighting and dying for.
The DOJ is corrupt and this has been as plain as day since Obama instructed it to investigate Mike Flynn for doing something which was clearly not criminal. But the protection of 2A is totally illusory. Anyone who takes up arms against a totalitarian government mandating a useless, unnecessary and somewhat harmful vaccine would be eliminated in a NYC minute. The only protection against a wretched government is an informed citizenry.
And if they also controlled elections? What if you knew an election was rigged? What would you do? An armed citizenry acting together is not impotent. Why do you think they are so maniacal to confiscate weapons? It's the one thing standing in their way of domination. Right or wrong they fear it more than anything else.
Bruce
The 2020 Presidential election was clearly rigged. In addition to the fact that 95% of the media maliciously lied about one candidate and failed to tell the truth about the other candidate there were illegal changes to the election laws in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan and a deliberate breach of the election laws in Wisconsin.
These illegal changes facilitated enough fraud to change the result.
And after all legal remedies were denied there was a March on Washington which quickly ended when one protestor was killed by police.
Non-rigged elections require updated voter rolls, current voter photo ID cards, paper ballots and hand counting with all parties represented and participating.
The authorities have no reason to fear your guns. The military and the police will do what they are trained to do. They will follow orders.
I am not saying that people should not have guns for their personal protection, but the notion that you can use them against a corrupt, totalitarian government, which is what you have now, has been proven wrong.
..."but the notion that you can use them against a corrupt, totalitarian government, which is what you have now, has been proven wrong.'
Please provide one example. In fact, the opposite has been proved true. Hungarian freedom fighters armed only with Molotov cocktails routed the occupation army in 1956. Armed guerillas have proven very effective against armies of vastly superior firepower. And that assumes that our army and police would stand unilaterally against free citizens. More to the point, an oppressive military and/or police would have to worry constantly about their own families who would be at risk. Civil wars are decidedly uncivil. Ours was mostly not only because it was a regional war and not a civil war. Except in the border states, which saw episodes of startling brutality. Did you miss the fact that police forces in our cities were routed by rioters armed with rocks during the "summer of love?" This is precisely why corrupts totalitarian governments' first act is to disarm the people. I'm not saying it would be easy. And no sane American would want this to happen. But do not mistake the Left for have sane or decent motives.
I agree that the 2020 election was rigged but not illegally so in most cases. Our press is free to lie and cover up And be shills for a party that no decent American should contemplate voting for.
The king is dead, long live the king! To the freedom loving readers of the Free Press: I have posted an open letter to Substack leadership about defending free speech that is going viral. If it resonates with you, can you amplify? Here's the link to the Substack note that contains the post: https://substack.com/profile/64905469-yuri-bezmenov/note/c-14787883
Another example, Lori Lightfoot advocated for a defunded of the police yet surrounds herself with more police protection than any mayor in the history of Chicago. Why do those cops, who she clearly vilifies, continue to provide her security instead of simply walking away from her detail?!
Why don't they walk off?
Job
Paycheck
Pension
They can walk away though. Every department in Texas is recruiting and hiring. I would not recommend Austin though.
I lived in Austin 30 years ago. It was the only blue spot in Texas back then. I cannot imagine it has gotten better.
Spreading like cancer to Hays and Williamson counties, with Bastrop and Caldwell next.
Understood, but following the example set forth in this article, it seems that if enough officers take this position, the "thought pile" will shift.
That imbecile is nothing more than a ventriloquist dummy who only vocalizes what the hand up his back tells him to say. He has not had an original thought for the last 50 years! In this case he is one of the most dangerous people to hold office!
This is why we need to take it all a step further and use technology to our advantage, the same way the FBI uses it against us. We need to make - as Tim suggest - digital "idea labs" where we have social media platforms that use groups of people together to hold all of these corrupt systems accountable.
It is the way out of this mess. Imagine if we had "idea labs" like this:
https://joshketry.substack.com/p/why-doesnt-this-exist-building-a
Can’t like this comment enough.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/do-facebook-and-twitter-silence-conservatives-data-shows-they-actually-dominate/amp/
Well, Elon bought twitter - and blew the cover off that canard.
Leave it to the arrogant, hypocrite to quote an Austin, TX news outlet. Austin used to be called Moscow on the Colorado (the river that runs through Austin.) and the Austin newspaper, Austin American-Statesman, Pravda. Austin is the most PC/Woke city in Texas.
Now to the real question:
Why are you engaging this moron? He's a one note poster.
You are correct. The only time I watch the news there is when I need a laugh. The newscasters are bauble-head parrots. But we call the paper the Austin Unamerican Statesman.
Bruce, you know better than to engage with Comprof. 😉
Lol. Yeah....what exactly was "blown up," Bruce?....is this that massive Twitter Files nonsense, that really amounted to nothing? Wasn't there gonna be some big reveal?
https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-move-on-twitter-files
Of course you missed the interview with Musk on Carlson last night. He explained it all in a way even a second grader could comprehend. Still it might elude you. Twitter was a massive censorship and disinformation operation with close ties to the Democrat Party.
Bruce, here is an example of the moron's Dem Party. You know the party that champions the rights of black people.
This is from an Amazon book review:
"By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, The Record. But across the state—and the South—white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny.
In 1898, in response to a speech calling for white men to rise to the defense of Southern womanhood against the supposed threat of black predators, Alexander Manly, the outspoken young Record editor, wrote that some relationships between black men and white women were consensual. His editorial ignited outrage across the South, with calls to lynch Manly.
But North Carolina’s white supremacist Democrats had a different strategy. They were plotting to take back the state legislature in November “by the ballot or bullet or both,” and then use the Manly editorial to trigger a “race riot” to overthrow Wilmington’s multi-racial government. Led by prominent citizens including Josephus Daniels, publisher of the state’s largest newspaper, and former Confederate Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, white supremacists rolled out a carefully orchestrated campaign that included raucous rallies, race-baiting editorials and newspaper cartoons, and sensational, fabricated news stories.
With intimidation and violence, the Democrats suppressed the black vote and stuffed ballot boxes (or threw them out), to win control of the state legislature on November eighth. Two days later, more than 2,000 heavily armed Red Shirts swarmed through Wilmington, torching the Record office, terrorizing women and children, and shooting at least sixty black men dead in the streets. The rioters forced city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with mob leaders. Prominent blacks—and sympathetic whites—were banished. Hundreds of terrified black families took refuge in surrounding swamps and forests.
This brutal insurrection is a rare instance of a violent overthrow of an elected government in the U.S. It halted gains made by blacks and restored racism as official government policy, cementing white rule for another half century. It was not a “race riot,” as the events of November 1898 came to be known, but rather a racially motivated rebellion launched by white supremacists.
In Wilmington’s Lie, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history."
How come the Woke movement never, while tearing down statutes, mentions the roots of the party of slavery and tried to dismantle the party of slavery?
I hope you read Taibbi's report on Jacob Siegel's TABLET piece about the "soft coup" now underway. The DNC is the poster child for self-interested venality.
Yeah, Elon "says" a lot of stuff. So does Carlson about stolen elections, etc.
So....what exactly was exposed, Bruce?
It was revealed that your beloved 'government' heroes have - since about 2012 - had control and have censored every bit of online social media; if you have a 'free account' you are being watched.
It is not interested in engaging in any type of thought process. It never has an independent thought or even POV on any article, rather it exists only to comment on the thoughts or POV of others. It is either a paid troll, as others have surmised, or an experimental AI bot. Let it starve.
Lol. Actually, that's not the "Democratic Party," Bruce.
Intel agencies could see DMs.
Yes, Elon certainly wouldn't want "free accounts" would he? ;)
Try again.
You do understand that 95% of Washington D.C. - all of your beloved federal employees monitoring you - votes democrat, right?
No he is not. Nobody lost a singe right under Trump. You might find him odious and obnoxious. Many do. But the claim that he was a dictator, or worse, a Nazi, has zero basis in reality.
Do me a favor and try a thought experiment. Imagine what would happen in Berlin, circa 1935, if a bunch of actresses had mused about blowing up the Reich Chancellory or paraded around with a caricatured severed head of the dictator. Now tell me what did happen to the Hollywood harpies who did the same to Trump.
Some dictator. Some head.
Seeing how much Trump was openly criticized and hated publicly at all swaths of society means that the Mustache King is not Trump.
From within the circle of the current GOP I see your point. Eventually they will lose enough elections to turn it around. The ballot box will be the final arbiter.
From outside that circle in the broader world the Mustache King is something larger than just one person. Institutions responsible for disseminating information - like legacy media as well as tech giants like Twitter and Facebook, and publishing houses - actively suppress some ideas (Covid lab leak! Hunter’s laptop! Sanitizing “offensive” language in old books, dropping “controversial” authors). This has a much more powerful effect over public discourse that exemplifies having a Mustache King, even if it’s not one individual. So you missed the point of the article if all you can think is Trump.
Horse manure. Go away.
Our government is corrupt. Our populace is stupid and intellectually lazy, in general. There is a cabal with essentially unlimited money which seemingly controls and has controlled our government for a very long time. These are enormous problems, with no obvious solutions.
So my own solution for a very long time has been to speak what I think I know as clearly as I can, and more often than I can rationally justify. And my reasoning is simple: if everyone is silenced by fear, then speaking up, and hopefully saying either what people were thinking silently, or saying something new they find they agree with, is always potentially a positive and useful thing.
I'm not going to type the stories out this morning, but I have seen GroupThink in action many times. People become idiots in groups, when everyone is looking to someone else to speak up, make a decision, and/or do something. Be the one who acts. Be the one who decides. No one is going to save you if you are not willing to save yourself.
I'm surprised at how conversation's with total stranger's these days agree with my own disgust at D.C. corruption and ineptitude.
It’s my opinion that people in groups in general sink to the lowest common denominator. It’s one of the reasons I avoid places like Disney.
Me too - couldn't stand the place...and funny my kids couldn't either...we had a very short visit and then they wanted to go home
Circumscribe (tribalize affinity groups), isolate (get them to believe that "the man" is against them), and then control by promising "redress of grievances".
Even worse when you have a group of non-thinkers seeking validation in said group. 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
I think the author does a fantastic job of laying out the case for exactly why censorship is so harmful, not only for the individual that is censored but for all other individuals, even if their inner selves perfectly align with their outer selves (for the time being).
An argument has been made that most Americans instinctively know that free speech, both politically and culturally enforced, is a Good Thing™, but because we've gotten used to that being so well centered within the Overton window for so long that, ironically, free speech itself has allowed the fringes to drag the free speech Overton window along. People /know/ free speech is a Good Thing™, but are unable to defend it in the marketplace of ideas. Why? What possible argument could be "winning" against free speech?
The author mentions but doesn't expand on what I think is the crux of the issue (I'm referring to just what is in this post, the full book may, which I've just purchased and hope it does), which are the "carve outs" in speech. Listed here: plagiarism, blackmail, libel, slander, incitement, perjury, true threats, false advertising, etc. The average person, if truly pressed, could probably muster a reasonable defense of free speech, but could they muster a reasonable defense of why say, libel, shouldn't be protected but hate speech should be? After all, they're both "harmful". As mentioned, the relevant part of the First Amendment is ten words, none of them mentioning exclusions for safety. These exclusions exist mostly as judicial opinions, often far lengthier, nuanced, and narrow than their headline names would suggest. It would be hard, almost impossible, for the average lay person to make the case that "false advertising" shouldn't be protected but "misinformation" should be. Isn't "false advertising" just corporate "misinformation"?
The trick would be King Mustaches are doing is, of course, to expand those "safety" exclusions as much as possible so that as much speech as possible falls into the restricted bucket. What we need more of then aren't robust arguments in favor of free speech, but robust arguments against safety exclusions, built on a principled easily articulable framework that can be applied generally rather than narrow carve outs (libel, slander, perjury, etc.). Such a framework may even need to reconsider some of the existing carve outs and if they're truly necessary (a dash of the fringe ideology on the opposite end of the spectrum to help drag the Overton window back over).
All of the things excluded are subject to laws. Laws must be subject to clear meaning otherwise they will not function properly and will be overturned on appeal. "Misinformation" and "hate speech", I submit, cannot be succinctly defined. As we saw with covid much actual, valid, factual I formation was labeled misinformation. As information concerning the vaccine and boosters still is. In essence, IMO, misinformation and hate speech is speech the person making the allegation against the speech disagree with. It is censorship.
Exactly what I was thinking... libel is a legal construct, not a moral one. Its legal definition is quite specific, and anyone who wishes to prosecute an alleged libel has a high bar to clear. As opposed to "hate speech", which has no legal definition and can be practically anything.
Spot on. I think this is why so many things are framed in terms of "harm reduction," even when it is difficult to see what harm is being caused.
🎯 🎯 🎯 You nailed it. The ‘new’ words being over-used. Mis and Dis-Information. False Advertising we can mostly recognize, but misinformation seems to be anything that goes against the political party’s narrative. It doesn’t agree therefor it is wrong.
Will there be a shift toward, “People with penises are women”? Or does this otherwise brilliant description ever have a breaking point?
It seems that the Bud Lite fiasco is not just about boycotting beer, but another step to reverse the pendulum.
Bud Light is not beer. It is fetid water in drag. This is about science. Progressives went from being “about the Science” to science deniers in short order.
Agree. As long Anheuser-Busch and woke crowd think it is 😂
I just read a joke that was about a doctor and his patient. The doctor addressed the patient as a man and the patient said, "I'm a woman." "Well," said the doctor, "MS Jones, you have prostate cancer."
I don't get the joke...
Only MEN get prostrate cancer..😎
Only men have prostate glands.
There's a difference between sex and gender. While that's true about sex. It isnt true about gender.
Maybe they should have made up new terminology to not confuse the two. But I find it quite silly when conservatives simply refuse to accept gender fluidity.
I find it quite silly that the left is shoving "gender fluidity" down our throats, such as destroying our language with improper pronouns and men competing in women's sports, just to name two silliness.
Yes. By speaking out against it, civilly and succinctly, you push back against the boundary of mainstream thought being established with that statement. Even if it ultimately moves that way you create drag. If enough folks agree with you the boundary moves your way.
Right? King and Queen Mustache are working hard on getting that lie into the Blue middle.
Men can marry men is a subjective opinion. Men can become women has crossed over into actual science, and if we do still have a national religion, it is Science.
Ha! Science! That has been made a mockery too. Authorities have fallen. Everywhere. We have reached a point where our access to information has made it possible for us to challenge and discredit everything and everyone we once thought we could trust. Very scary moment in history. Because threatened authorities strike back. And that’s what’s happening now.
Actual science remains a useful thing. It was very easy to criticize Anthony Fauci as a corrupt murderer and authoritarian by pointing to the many patent contradictions between his policies and what the data actually said. Those critiques were of course censored and those making them punished, but they were not subjective, and thus not really amenable to changes in social mores the way say gay marriage was. The change in social mores has more to do with obedience to bad science, and those proclaiming it than the science itself.
It was a remains astonishing to me how fully the smartest people I know fell for the bullshit that Fauci and others pushed on us. I was on a college campus the other day and saw a professorial looking woman wearing a mask outside on a windy day. How is that possible? What was the POINT of an education if that astonishing level of credulity and even cowardice is possible in a supposedly Liberal society?
The rednecks figured it out instantly. It wasn't hard. All you had to do is trust common sense rather than the TV. Many of them died because you can't be healthy on a diet of biscuits, Mountain Dew and cigarettes, but it wasn't not wearing masks that killed them, and it sure as hell was not choosing not to participate in the global medical experiment.
The demeaning redneck commentary weakens your point considerably. As it does my impression of you. It is nothing more than kicking those you perceive as dogs. Perhaps the rednecks figured it out so fast because they are not only intelligent but also well-grounded.
I spend much of my time with rednecks. In general they are smarter than most college grads.
But I know whereof I speak. If you havent had a biscuit and gravy in Hazard Kentucky please dont judge me.
I have not and I stand corrected. I have had that ham.thing in Louisville and Lexington though. As for this article though rednecks, in my experience either speak their minds or do not speak at all.
I think that's what he meant -- it was an ironic reference.
Most “rednecks” enjoy the term. Who are you really defending?
I thought it was a dig.
Try singer John Rich’s new whisky:”Redneck Riviera”--excellent!!
I don't drink brown liquor but have spent a lot of happy times in my youth on the Redneck Riviera.
The trouble is that people think that science is 'settled'. It is not.
If what you say is true, then how come the GW fanatics say, "The science on GW is settled."?
Scientific finding are never settled. The beauty of the scientific method is science is, in search of the truth, constantly challenged. Yet the left is trying to stifle the search for the truth.
Where is the religion in that?
Same thing. Bad science.
Yeah, it's terrible science. The only reliable reference is, IMO, the UAH data that uses satellites to measure the temperature of the entire troposphere. It does show that some warming happened between 1980 (which is as far back as the data goes), and about 2000, but the trend has flattened since then. If it were me, I'd recommend a strategy of prudent avoidance: take measures to reduce carbon emissions when it's practical to do so, but don't tear society down trying to eliminate them. A lot of reduction has happened since 1980 anyway, simply due to advancements in technology. Cars, for instance, are far more efficient now than they were in 1980.
The thing about GW advocates is that they're basically trying to revert to a pre-industrial society. They are opposed practical measures that might actually achieve their stated goals, without lowering standards of living. For instance, they're opposed to nuclear power, and they refuse to allow rare-earth metals mining or smelting in the U.S..
I agree. I just read an article about the inconsistency between ground data and satellite data. I also think the GW folks are pawns for folks making only off the "transition". At the risk of exposing not only my nerdiness but also my age, my very favorite Star Trek episode was the one where the crew of the Enterprise attempted to violate the Prime Directive to save the inhabitants of a planet facing an unavoidable catastrophic event. It was a very advanced society. So advanced that it had recognized the fallibility of technology and eschewed it. To the extent that the Enterprise help was refused. The Luddite in me likes that.
I just re-read "State of Fear," by Michael Crichton and was amazed by how persuasive this book of fiction is.
How about "humans control the climate"?
We can't even control rampant crime much less the climate.
Not as long as enough people call out this kind of BS. But if we fail to do that, then Taleb's Minority Rule kicks in and the wishes of a minority become the status quo.
And now add AI as the new king mustache. Elan Musk is one powerful spark fighting for free speech with a dramatic change by purchasing twitter and now forming Truth AI.
Ish. He is only willing to go so far. He's still a billionaire government contractor who is beholden to these plutocrats in a lot of ways. The twitter files were a limited hangout and now they are over.
Perhaps I am overly optimistic but I begin to suspect that the plutocrats are dependent on him. Not just SpaceX but Starlink. It made the Ukraine war efforts much more successful and now it is being rolled out to prepare for the Taiwan crisis. Think what you will about him, his outputs are impressive.
I like him better than not, I guess, but he does do some censoring on twitter and it seems capricious and potentially politically motivated. Also, I wish he'd moved forward with the Covid twitter files.
Brilliant! One need not read the commentary to understand his message. And what a powerful message it is. He shows how the opinion distribution moves with time for social issues. But only in one direction. I wonder if there are examples where it moves first one way and then another.
Maybe global warming will be such an example. It was counter-intuitive in the 70's as the temperatures had declined slighlty for 30 years, but became mainstream in the late 80's, and we are now seeing people come to their senses as all the apocalyptic predictions are failing.
Global warming hasn’t even been debated. The Climate Alarmists are in charge and everyone is paying through their short noses.
I don’t see anyone under 40 “coming to their senses” around global warming and green energy realities .
You can’t have a “Green New Deal” without exploiting child labor and raping Congo for cobalt! Guess progressives are okay with child labor and strip mining as long as it’s not in their plain view and is a means to their dystopian end. 🤡🥸
Exactly. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Barbara Demerick has a book about North Korea 'Nothing to Envy'. There is woman who was a doctor in North Korea who escaped and she relates that when Kim Jong 2 died she remembers being surprised because she didn't think he could die (something along those lines). Intelligent enough to be a doctor but mentally captured enough to disregard what is probably common sense. Just a real life example of what Urban was displaying. Good book too.
That is a fantastic book! I read it while living in S Korea.
That's interesting, do you think South Koreans had an interest in the book? I mean generally.
Excellent book! And now, Yeonmi Park, who escaped from North Korea, speaks of similar connections as she has watched the US become more authoritarian.
Well put, Tim. Now add another cartoon that says out loud that the woke mob is completely against free speech, and that cancel culture silences debate.
Wow...this article hit me right in the feels. Tim explicates so many reasons that I write under a pseudonym. It is not the government I am (primarily) concerned with; It is the melted minds at work and, sadly, close relatives.
Feel bad for me? Great. Then give me a pity subscribe, and you can read about the new racist thing- Dungeons & Dragons.
https://www.sub-verses.com/p/the-new-racist-thing-dungeons-and
Right there with you and your ex-plant. I speak my mind at home and with close friends, but even here on Substack I am speaking as a fluffy blue feline. I won't repeat the canards and my uncomfortable silence probably broadcasts dissent, but I do not actually say what I think. At some point I think the rubber will meet the road, but it's a cost/benefit analysis, and so far the impact I am likely to have by speaking up hasn't been worth the risk.
How come you're no longer writing as Gordon Comstock's Plant?
Spring felt like a good time for a rebrand 😃
....or a "pruning," perhaps??? :)
Great piece. "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" Read the book or watch talks with the author. Ordinary, middle class policeman transformed into killers simply because they didn't want to be different.
We are never that far from tyranny. If you let it happen.
Can a Pulitzer be awarded for an entity’s collective work? The Free Press should be.
Pulitzer has been captured by ideologues. Someone (opportunity alert) will develop a new media prize that is truly meritocratic. Maybe it will be Substack, or perhaps Real Clear.
Lol!!!
Maybe for than amazing "Twitter Files" expose?
The first part of this piece reminded me of Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless.” A repressive regime’s position is actually quite tenuous and relies on self censorship to survive.
As more people speak out, the power of the regime lessens because people see that it is OK to speak the truth. You know you are living under such a regime when it is scary to speak your mind.
It is up to a brave few to be first and to be willing to say “No, I will not place your sign in my window.” If enough did it all at once, the power of the self censorship regime would evaporate.
Wow - this is incredible. I felt my brain smiling as I read and will now go share this with a million people. THANK YOU Tim, Bari, and co!
Ambient political conditioning is the water we swim in.
The liberal speaks to us in angry tones of compassion. They are frustrated that reality is doggedly, refusing to conform to their predictions and prescriptions.
Our liberal educational system is to the nation as the wooden horse was to the Trojans.
Something very strange has happened to the liberal .
Well this was incredible. As a visual person this was super helpful! 🙏🏼 I feel like this should be mandatory teaching material to be shown to every kid in every highschool and college across America.
Berenson V Biden reveals the thought police in action. King Moustache is in the White House and the NY Times, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, FBI, CIA, NSA, Facebook and others like it that way. They brand anything outside their warped and twisted thought bubble as morally reprehensible.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Women have penises. Joe Biden knows How many grand children he has.
Covid vaccines are safe.
Humans control the climate.