Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Freedom to express any lie you want



     We’re at a point in America’s slide toward the bottom where everything has become a code, often signaling the exact opposite of what is being claimed.
     Those who talk about “right to life” of course are really referring to their own imagined right to impose their fundamentalist religion and moral strictures, through law, on people who don’t share them. The true goal being to somehow drag our country back toward the Eden they fancy existed in the 1950s, when women who had sex for reasons other than procreation could be branded as sluts who must bear the fruit of their folly, or risk their lives with back alley butchers and end up in the sepsis ward of Cook County Hospital. We’re well on our way.
     Or when Donald Trump talks about “voter fraud” he is trying to facilitate a fraud of his own, pushing to undercut fair elections while promoting unfair contests skewed in his favor, since those who might vote against him are limited by a variety of disingenuous roadblocks and barriers.
     “Free speech” is now the equivalent of being free from the consequences of your malicious, deceptive, and toxic ramblings, the First Amendment a shield to hide behind. Thus Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, on Monday reached a deal to buy Twitter, the dynamic social media platform, with the express intention of removing the guardrails that led to the ejection of those who, for instance, traffic in anti-vaccine fantasy, or engage in the kind of bullying and harassment Musk relishes.
     It’s like the worst nuisance on the beach buying a private swim club so he can freely kick sand in weaklings’ faces.

To continue reading, click here.

1 comment:

Comments are moderated, and posted at the discretion of the proprietor.