Let me begin by saying, one of the most conspicuous proofs of the duplicity and unreliability of the mainstream media, is the manner in which it exaggerates and romanticizes the role it plays (and has played) in our society, and revises and omits its own history to that end. The student of history would immediately recognize that what we're witnessing today, with a mainstream media that presents the primary facts but distorts all of the ancillary details, is something that even the Founders of our nation lamented and denounced.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. [....] The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." - Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, June 14, 1807.
For example, the mainstream media reported the "great fact" that a protest took place at the Capitol on January 6th. But essentially all of the details regarding such are false (Trump's culpability, insurrection, terrorism, white supremacy, et cetera). As illustrated in a previous post, the media has a long history of subverting liberty, and outright facilitating and sustaining tyranny. Walter Duranty's dishonest coverage, or absence thereof, of the Holodomor is a prime example which I've cited for many years. For those of you unfamiliar here's the gist.
"The origins of the famine lay in the decision by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to collectivize agriculture in 1929. Teams of Communist Party agitators forced peasants to relinquish their land, personal property, and sometimes housing to collective farms, and they deported so-called kulaks—wealthier peasants—as well as any peasants who resisted collectivization altogether. Collectivization led to a drop in production, the disorganization of the rural economy, and food shortages. It also sparked a series of peasant rebellions, including armed uprisings, in some parts of Ukraine. The rebellions worried Stalin because they were unfolding in provinces which had, a decade earlier, fought against the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. That autumn the Soviet Politburo, the elite leadership of the Soviet Communist Party, took a series of decisions that widened and deepened the famine in the Ukrainian countryside. Farms, villages, and whole towns in Ukraine were placed on blacklists and prevented from receiving food. Peasants were forbidden to leave the Ukrainian republic in search of food. Despite growing starvation, food requisitions were increased and aid was not provided in sufficient quantities. The crisis reached its peak in the winter of 1932–33, when organized groups of police and communist apparatchiks ransacked the homes of peasants and took everything edible, from crops to personal food supplies to pets. Hunger and fear drove these actions, but they were reinforced by more than a decade of hateful and conspiratorial rhetoric emanating from the highest levels of the Kremlin." - Encyclopedia Britannica.
Basically, the implementation of Socialism did what it always does. The confiscation of private property to be managed by a centralized bureaucracy decimated productivity, and in this instance, directly caused the deaths of millions in Ukraine. Duranty, an employee of the New York Times (shocker), in an effort to preserve the reputation and perception of Stalin and Marxism, both diminished the scope of and misrepresented the causes of the famine. Duranty even attacked other journalists, who'd personally seen the starving victims, as liars and propagandists. Writing in a NYT article in 1933, for example, "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
I've been saying for many years at this point what you're seeing in our media is no different than what was done by Duranty. Or even what's seen today in the CCP. I've even referred to mainstream media "journalists" as Duranties; an expression that typically passes without recognition from anyone. The "journalists" in our mainstream media do precisely what Duranty did. They shill for aspiring socialist despots, distort, deceive, and conceal the truth, to preserve the reputation and perception of their leaders, their party, and the Marxist ideology. This has progressed to a point now, and become so pervasive and ostentatious in its intent, that I can't even watch anything produced by a mainstream outlet any longer. It is truly all garbage. The "great facts" may be true," but the "details are all false."
To hear journalists tell it they're the vanguard against tyranny, and the linchpin which keeps our "democracy" (we're not a democracy) from disintegrating. When in reality they've consistently been early adopters of nascent tyrannical movements, and unscrupulous sycophants that keep despots in power. "Social media" is no better. Worse, even. And people need to understand what social media is, and actually represents in our society, as opposed to what it purports to be.
Sandi would be right of course, if social media companies weren't blatant extensions of the Socialist state, being used to circumvent the protections of the Constitution by proxy. But they are blatant extensions of the Socialist state being used to circumvent the protections of the Constitution by proxy. It should be obvious to any thinking person by now, that the left is using "private" social media platforms, to do what they cannot through the state. The First Amendment prevents the government from regulating speech. But as Sandi correctly observes it does not apply to private companies. So if you supplant the public forum with virtual ones owned by "private" companies (all run by Marxist Democrat partisans), and get everyone to communicate through said platforms, the public forum would effectively be privatized and therefore governed by completely subjective and arbitrarily enforced standards. This is what's happened in the U.S. People no longer congregate at public forums to express their views as they once did. Indeed, they can't now due to lockdowns and restrictions, the implications of which should be obvious.
If I haven't been clear enough, "lockdowns" increase people's reliance on social media to express themselves, and therefore increases the aggregate expression subject to the "community standards" of free speech exempt "private" companies. To believe this is a coincidence, particularly during one of the most contentious elections in American history, requires an astounding degree of credulity. One need merely recollect the conspicuous increase in censorship and what was being censored. Posts about Hunter Biden and election fraud were heavily censored, and those expressing such views were banned or even de-platformed (myself included). Before that doctors who deviated from the leftist platform, by recommending hydroxychloroquine for prophylaxis or the treatment of COVID-19, were censored and even fired from their jobs.
You'd have to be a vegetable to believe this all wasn't by design, specifically to affect the outcome of the election, on a platform run buy a Marxist with a Chinese wife who spent half a billion dollars buying the election for Joe Biden. The lockdowns aren't saving lives, but what they are doing, and did do, is augment the amount of communication subject to censorship by Marxist Democrat agents, in what the left considered the most pivotal election year in generations (if not ever).
Be honest. How often do you message someone you know on Facebook now instead of calling them? Particularly those people that fall into what might be called the secondary or tertiary category of friends or acquaintances; i.e., those people you know but not so well you see them in person or call them on the phone regularly. The vast majority of people in our society now communicate through "private" platforms, which are merely veiled extensions of the Marxist state, that engage (now openly and unapologetically) in the systematic suppression of communication in disparity with the party platform and state, and allow for hitherto unseen levels of social isolation. Failure to conform can, and will, result in drastic restrictions upon your ability to communicate with all but your closest associates. Something which, as stated in my previous contribution on the topic, social media platforms are using to psychologically condition their users. And this is being used as a weapon not only against individual users, but entire platforms like Parler, which are being purged for failing to make their "community standards" duplicative of those implemented by other radical leftist run entities (i.e., punished for disparity with the Marxist platform). If you want to use an Amazon server for example, you can't just use the server, you have to adopt Amazon's ideology too. Imagine the leftist reaction if a Christian organization required condemning sodomy to use their online services. As I've stated before, and will continue to reiterate, leftists have no qualms about imposing their values, or excluding or punishing dissidents. Only stupid Republicans operate under the delusion of "equity" for all beliefs. Any time you hear a "Conservative" espouse such nonsense, you should understand it's tantamount to stating, "We should just accept our own destruction."
What I've been describing is why I said to a "Libertarian" in February, 2019.
"FB should be nationalized. Only time you'll ever hear me say that. [...] It's a direct threat to freedom of speech."
He of course failed to discern the nuance and disagreed. And such a statement from me, purporting to be a "Conservative," might seem contrary to my professed ideals. But I have no interest in the government taking control of private companies. I'm not a Marxist. What I do have a problem with is private businesses clandestinely colluding with the state to destroy my liberties. It was not my intention to advance Socialism, but merely to expose Facebook for what it is. People would not give to the state so blithely, what they give to this "private" company (that has already admitted to giving third parties access to your information without telling you), if they understood that "private" company was basically a state proxy. (Or at least I would like to believe they wouldn't.) I don't want Facebook nationalized because I want Socialism, but because it would eliminate the argument that the First Amendment doesn't apply to speech on Facebook.
I've said for some time that social media companies, and leftist run companies in general here, are increasingly operating in a manner indistinguishable from their counterparts in Communist China. Dissidents are being subjected to widescale censorship and de-platforming online, fired from their jobs, blacklisted for employment, being dropped by their banks and insurance providers, in what is blatantly the nascent stages of what will culminate in China's Social Credit System. A system in which people who've evoked the ire of the Socialist Party, e.g., Xu Xiaodong, are censored, de-platformed, rendered unemployable, cannot own homes or use public transportation, etc.
I've either explicitly illustrated, or alluded to all of these things, in previous posts. (Like how "Libertarians" who want to abolish our borders, like any Democrat, for example.) So I won't do so again here. But it should be emphasized, as I have said for many years, "Libertarianism" is not Conservatism. It's a hostile, invasive ideology, competing with and seeking to subvert and ultimately supplant Conservatism (and already has to a significant degree). "Libertarianism" has directly facilitated the ascension of Socialism in the U.S., by eroding traditional values (just like the left) and providing Marxists with propaganda fodder. I have long said capitalism without the Judeo-Christian ethic is merely predatory opportunism. Which is precisely what "Libertarianism" is.
A "Libertarian" is what you get when you de-Christianize a Conservative, and Judeo-Christian morality is supplanted with economic expediency. Price gouging for example, which "Libertarians" routinely support (even in its most egregious forms), facilitates the portrayal of capitalism as immoral. Which, under a "Libertarian" worldview in which profit for profit's sake, or profit at any cost, divested of any concern for one's fellow man or the consequences, it is. The "Libertarians" will of course imply I'm a Socialist. I'm not. I'm a Christian. I'm not arguing against the profit motive or that it shouldn't exist. I'm not arguing in favor of confiscation or redistribution no matter how great the personal wealth. No Christian could. ("Thou shalt not covet.") I'm not arguing for centralized or heavy regulation of the market. As any true Conservative would know it's adhering to Christian morality that prevents the necessity of government intervention. What I am arguing, is that creating an artificial scarcity of water so you can sell it to people dying of thirst at a huge markup, isn't capitalism. It's maleficent exploitation. And while such a thing may be ethical under the "Libertarian" worldview, it's indisputably unethical under the Christian worldview, illustrating the glaring disparity between the two and the cognitive dissonance on display with "Libertarians" claiming to be Christians. "Libertarians," through their abandonment of traditional morality, consistently provide Socialists with very powerful rhetorical ammunition. They make construing Socialism as the more ethical alternative to capitalism, easy, and indeed the only conclusion any person of conscience could reach.
"I'm a Libertarian" has become the chic thing to say in recent years, among ignoramuses that have adopted most of the left's platform (but stopped just shy of full commie), that want to sound more politically deft than they are. People who selectively combine, often, completely antithetical aspects of right and left ideology like infants mashing together two different colors of Play-Doh, and think it a testament to their enlightenment or genius. But enough of that digression.
I'll be the first to admit Trump has said a lot of dumb things. But I also try to give credit where credit is due, and therefore acknowledge the astounding prescience of this observation.
I would be hard pressed to find another example of a man so accurately predicting his own future. And I must also acknowledge and laud his choice of terminology. He did not, as so many obtuse RINOs do, use the subverted and specious language of the left. He didn't call them "liberals" or "progressives." He called them what they actually are, fascists. Not what they call themselves (which is consistently the opposite of truth). You'd think it would be obvious, that the appellations used by people who refer to men as women and women as men, are not reliable. But somehow most people have not yet had this epiphany.
What social media platforms have done to Donald Trump should both concern and enrage all lovers of liberty. If a billionaire and duly elected president of the most powerful nation on Earth, can effectively be silenced and targeted in this manner, what hope does the average citizen have? And it should equally convey the abject stupidity, and evil, of the Marxist Democrat left.
So, why don't the people of North Korea just vote Kim Jong Un out in the next election, if that's how it works? Obviously, if "dictators" can be removed by mere referendum, then they wouldn't be "dictators," nor, arguably, would there have ever been one. (If "dictators" can be removed by a simple vote, then they wouldn't last very long by engendering pervasive odium among the electorate, would they?) And if Donald Trump was a "dictator," then what are the members of the legislature which have even more power (Constitutionally) than the executive, which they've wielded with consistently lower approval ratings than the president?
If you ever needed yet more proof leftists are abject morons, merely reflect upon Amy's comment, which is the complete opposite of the philosophy that Founded this country.
"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! [...] Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?" - Patrick Henry.
According to Amy Siskind the Democrat electorate has done what has never been done before in history (at least at the time of the Founding); they removed a "tyrant" through assembly of the people (at the voting booth). A people with "no power at all," for the first time ever, punished a "tyrant." Except, obviously, what occurred evinces the converse to be true. Twas the people that had the power here, and the alleged "tyrant" that was powerless, otherwise (were the circumstances reversed) they could not have removed him. And what "tyrant" voluntarily relinquishes his station? Again, obviously (I feel I need to use that word a lot), if Donald Trump was a "dictator," he would have been the one censoring and de-platforming people for opposing him, rather than being the one censored and de-platformed. So, as usual, the leftist assessment is the complete opposite of reality and truth.
There's no point mincing words. Leftists are the most insufferably stupid, solipsistic, and malevolent creatures in existence. They are the consummation of every evil described and rebuked in the Bible, and the breakers of every law given by God. Whether it be the proscriptions on covetousness, cross dressing, lying, or murder, they either do or support all of it to varying degrees. If you ever need proof the Bible is true, simply look at the Democrat Party, in which we find manifest every form of pagan depravity that pervaded the ancient pre-Christian world. There's nothing like being told the Bible is "fake" by people engaging in or promoting every vice broached within its pages.
In closing, I've wanted to post about this for some time. But unfortunately I have a job and a life. Expedience is a major factor with this sort of content because, given the amnesiac disposition of the populace and the rapidity of the MSM's distractive propaganda model (a new controversy every day), its relevance has an extremely short lifespan. Basically, if you don't address it immediately no one cares. They've already moved on, often within days, to the next topic of contention. It affects me too. Things I intended to say at the time, get lost under the deluge of the newly controversial, and the contribution sometimes suffers for it. I feel like I've only said half of what I originally intended to say. But I don't get paid to do this, and thus I can't drop everything to do it. It is what it is.
