I have grown tired of the references to 1984, but when your government is acting Orwellian, then it remains applicable. Recent testimony from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed that the department has created a “Disinformation Governance Board.”
What?! May I just say, this is America. We have a constitution that explicitly guarantees the right to free speech. This right that we have as Americans is absolutely unique, and maybe the words have been forgotten so:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
You may be saying “well you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater.” Yeah you can, that wasn’t ever a court case. The case which that references was actually ruled as a violation of the Espionage Act due to just some guy passing out information objecting to the war recruiting efforts, and the courts determined that it presented “a clear and present danger.” This ruling was eventually overturned, yet this misconception on the limits of free speech continues.
But now in the age of social media, our government is walking a weird and inconsistent thin line. Do we consider twitter, Facebook etc the town square? A public place to share ideas? Or is it a private company and they can do what they want? I find it absolutely hilarious that Facebook makes commercials asking Congress to make clear rules about what is and isn’t allowed on their platforms. If you can’t read between the lines, they want the green light to censor people with ideas that might be considered “misinformation or disinformation.” And who gets to make that determination? The faceless bureaucrats at DHS? It would appear that way.
If you haven’t seen this phony bologna commercials here is one CONTENT MODERATION (eye roll)
Don’t forget DHS is the same agency that put out this about domestic and violent extremism, “who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.” The assessment pointed to newer “sociopolitical developments such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence” that “will almost 4 certainly spur some [domestic violent extremists] [sic] to try to engage in violence this year.”
I read this as “don’t believe your lying eyes, only believe your lying officials.”
But my lying eyes have shown me a lot of false or incorrect information over…lets say the last 2 years. The Covid 19 debacle has really highlighted our government being the greatest perpetrator of false or misleading information. Early 2020 for instance we were told: 1. The WHO said covid 19 was not transmissible human to human 2. face masks do not work in an outbreak 3. then we all need face masks (even cloth just anything over the face) 4. droplets are a the primary source of transmission (weird I thought it wasn’t transmissible?) 5. you need to disinfect your packages 6. two weeks to slow the spread 7. social distancing (stupid) 8. with covid and from covid should not be questioned. Early 2021: 1. the vaccines stop transmission and infection 2. vaccinated people do not carry the virus 3. oh the CDC admits that cloth masks don’t work but keep wearing them 4. we still need masks on transport but not literally anywhere else at all, even a junky neighborhood bar, but that well circulated plane is bad news 5. there was not widespread fraud in the election 6. January 6 was an insurrection planned by Donald Trump, but at the same time it was totally a unplanned and spurred by the phrase “fight like hell”.” 2022: 1. the Florida don’t say gay bill, like y’all just read it. The media is absolutely complicit in these constant untruths. So I guess they’re first on the censorship chopping block since we are just crapping on the 1st amendment.
See how absurdly inconsistent all of this is? I do. So who is being put in charge of such an utterly unnecessary role of determining what is or is not disinformation? Is it some politically biased individual? Thats exactly who it is, Nina Jankowicz. She wrote a book about misinformation so she must be an expert right?
In an interview from 2020, “FADEL: You compare the U.S.’s approach to tackling disinformation to playing a game of Whac-a-Mole. Can you explain what you mean?
JANKOWICZ: Yeah. So, so far, because we have left the response mostly to our social media platforms, we’ve really made this a political issue – any sort of talk of content regulation or content moderation or how they deal with disinformation on campaign ads and things. That has become a political issue. And as a result, the social media platforms have had to deal with this themselves. It’s not an easy issue. Despite being multi-billion-dollar corporations, it’s difficult even for them.
But also, there’s a lack of political will. And so what they’ve tended to do is just remove the fake content or the problematic content. It’s easy to do when it’s coming from a foreign source. And, of course, you know, our foreign adversaries are all too happy to create more of that content. The return on investment is huge for them to do that. And so it just keeps popping up.”
But here is something these people do not understand. I have the right to lie, I mean if they can I can. I have the right to express a crazy thought or theory, and you have the right to be able to discern its value to you. These people do not have the right to stop me or you, or funny guys making milmeme pages. If you really explore what she is saying and what the Facebook ads are saying, they want to control what you can say and what you can even learn from others based on what they DETERMINE IS THE TRUTH. We know that if the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop had NOT been suppressed by Twitter and other social media, that 16% of those that voted for Biden would not have. That is a huge number, that would have changed the outcome of the election. But because some faceless person in an office determined that story was not true, despite the evidence, they essentially changed the course of history. To me, that is more dangerous than letting people determine their own thoughts and feelings. Allowing them to do their own research and come to a conclusion.
So by the way, that story is true. And this gets to the premise of my last story. Just because you do not know the facts, does not mean something is not true. Your ignorance is not bliss to me.
So before we slowly or not so slowly have our right to free speech trampled all over maybe we need to fight like hell. Come at me bro.