it is all about controlling the public square

I wrote this on Facebook this morning.


Somebody shared my post about big tech censorship yesterday and in his comments some other guy was barking about how “you don’t get off that easy” and that I can’t just recognize problems but I also have to supply solutions. Then the poster who shared it tagged me to answer. (I get shared thousands of times so please don’t do that) but my response got me thinking, and it’s not just related to our current topic either. If you still think this is all about Trump, you are a fool.

##

Nope. Don’t tag me. I get an endless time suck random moron parade on my own page as it is.

Anyways, it doesn’t matter because that line of thought is a dishonest derailment trap, where if someone notes a problem, the first step is always to speak about the topic. Except to the disingenuous that is insufficient, and talking about the existence of a problem is invalid unless you also provide a solution to said problem. It is just designed to shame/silence opposition, because nobody has all the solutions fully formed when they first note complex issues. It’s the very act of discussion which they are trying to shut down that usually postulates solutions.

Which is another example of why the left only wants the right to be able to discuss issues in spaces they can control or manipulate.

##

That last sentence is key.

For all of history when people have a problem they have been able to talk about it and hash it out. Solutions to complex problems don’t spring fully formed into existence the instant you note the problem. You get ideas from others. Their perspectives help you better articulate the issue and recognize consequences you didn’t expect.

Lawyers know law, engineers know engineering, artists know art, so on. So when there is a big problem that spreads across multiple fields, of course you need to talk it over with people who know those areas, because they know things you don’t. Being smart in one area doesn’t automatically make you an expert in others. We all need help. Big problems require discussion and brainstorming. Even if it isn’t effective, it’s still useful for the clever people who can make solutions to be able to listen to what the regular populace thinks and feels so that they can get the scope and understand how the problem hurts the public.

In the old days these conversations happened at churches, taverns, colleges, that kind of thing. All the famous places where big solutions to big problems were hashed out have a historical marker on them today. For us, those things are now illegal or stifled and we get the internet.

So of course the people who don’t see the problems as problems—or sometimes they are the problem—are trying to stop the rest of us from discussing the problems or they are trying to control where and how the conversations happen. Since they benefit from the problem, they will squash or sabotage people talking about solutions. It is in their best interests to do so, and when you give a bully a stick, they will beat you with it.

The topic of the current problem isn’t the important thing. This is our public square now whether we like it or not. We have foolishly abdicated the public square and now we are paying the price. Of course they can’t just let people they don’t like converse. That’s dangerous to their positions.

So when information they don’t like appears, they hide it. If they can’t hide it, they “fact check” it, and often that’s just a headline screaming false followed by an article full of straw grasping excuses they know most people won’t read. The goal is to shut you up or discredit you.

In the old days, at your pub or church, your drinking buddies or co-religionists probably shared your concerns and faced the same problems. So at least you were working toward a common goal. But now, big tech doesn’t want that. They don’t like groups or forums that don’t share their orthodoxy. They want/need to keep you here, and they need strangers to constantly kick in the doors and blunder in to tell you that you are stupid or crazy, that way we waste time arguing with them. It used to be a village had one idiot. When we talk now we get to deal with a thousand villages worth of idiot.

Of the many things booted or banned this week, one that I found interesting was the email newsletter of a group of former Democrats who have left that party. As far as I am aware not a single member was involved in the event at the Capitol and every member of their leadership condemned it. Yet their private email correspondence was shut down.

Why? I’m sure some bullshit justification will be offered, but really it is because they don’t want you talking somewhere you can’t be browbeaten and shamed back into compliance. Go somewhere else? Make your own thing? So that they can shut that down too?

Most of us who stay here do it because this is where we built an audience/community before the bait and switch. We feel stuck, and thus, we are part of the problem. I personally, am part of the problem. I stay here making content they profit off of, because this is where I’ve got the audience. I’ve been trying to move my audience elsewhere… only to discover that the company that runs my blog server and the company that processes my mailing list are willing to engage in the exact same behavior.

The arguments that this foolishness is to stop the incitement of violence is asinine, when we have literally thousands of examples of worse on these pages that aren’t being removed from app stores. The employees of this page routinely suffer from PTSD from the sick shit they see. The TOS is unevenly applied, so that the left gets a pass on actively coordinating looting and arson while guys like me routinely catch bans for asinine and silly reasons. Twitter bans Republicans, but is okay with literal foreign terrorist organizations and communist propaganda about how the genocide they are currently committing is really a nice thing.

Rules selectively applied are not rules at all. They are a shield for their cronies and a club against their enemies.

But that is where we are.

What do we do now? I don’t know. Try to figure it out… as long as they’ll let us.

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178 thoughts on “it is all about controlling the public square”

  1. Maybe join a more independent, less fragile service like SocialGalactic. Sure it’s smaller, but it’ll be there when your FB account is nuked.

    1. But what do you do then when the BigTech oligarchs shut down Socialgalactic? Like they did Parler. Like they have done to websites like AR15.com.

      Because, no matter what, Socialgalactic is going down. Hard. Because it doesn’t fit the Globalists needs.

      1. SocialGalactic is outside their influence.

        Do you think Vox Day did not see this coming? He has only been saying for years to stop using the services of people who hate you. Why do you think he made SocialGalactic and UnauthorizedTV in the first place?

        If you can’ be bothered to use SG, get on Gab, they have already been though this unpersoning process, and now are on their own hardware, using a domain registrar that cannot be brow beaten.

        1. Indeed. SG is also under the protection of a corps of lawyers with a long list of victories against companies trying to deplatform voices on the right as well as options for legal action under European law; you know, the folks levying multi-billion dollar fines on Big Tech corporations instead of taking campaign contributions like their American counterparts.

        2. Theodore Beale is a bright and articulate guy, but the most charitable possible interpretation is that he’s operating under the demonstrably false premise that there are still rules. In Current Year, if you think any law in the US is still worth the paper it’s written on, then, as Mr. Beale is himself very fond of saying, you are not tall enough for this ride. Otherwise, he’s just another grifter, selling false hope and SG subscriptions and shouting encouragement from Italy.

        3. How is SG and Gab outside their influence?

          If they can intimidate hosting compnies to not host them, ISPs to not sell them bandwidth, DNS providers to not provide pointers to them, Banks refuse to allow them to have accounts, Credit Card companies refusing to process payments to them, etc they can shut them down.

          We even have the atrocity of Mozilla claiming that the Internet needs to silence dissenting opinions on a page where they ask for donations ‘to keep the Internet Free’

          If Browsers start blocking sites (like they block ads/malware), how are SG/Gab and others going to stay live?

          If the culture decides that Free Speech is not a value of America any longer, then there is no way for such platforms to stay live in America. We will have to see them hosted outside the country, and will probably see attempts to block them as sedition.

          Now, I’m not saying that these attempts will work. The Soviet Union and China have tried to silence all opposition, and it doesn’t work over the long run.

          But anyone thinking that SG/Gab are ‘outside the influence’ of these attacks doesn’t understand reality.

          1. All of those problems, and more, are being worked on. Gab has been under continuous attack and been shut down and bounced around but they keep fighting their way back up. SG has contingencies. Parler had an extremely foolish weak point. They learned nothing from Gab’s struggles. Brave browser is not leftist.

            Worse comes to worse, people will be mailing out MicroSD cards containing apps for accessing certain servers via dialup, like AOL days.

          2. Gab may already be under attack, my firefox has refused to load gab for a couple of days now. As I type, Gab is “checking my browser” until it times out. I haven’t been able to access my several years old account for days now.

          3. @Old Surfer: Mozilla Corporation (the entity that created and maintains Firefox) came out saying — in the context of Trump and the Capitol Hill protest (I will NOT call it a riot OR an insurrection, not after a year of antifa) and in no uncertain terms — that people and sites that incite violence and allow violent rhetoric should be deplatformed and taken down.

            It’s absolutely within their ability to block Gab or any other site they deem “too dangerous”. Firefox may be “open-source”, but that doesn’t mean it’s not maintained by evil people or that any Joe Schmoe can fix the problems they build in.

            On a computer: If you tolerate Microsoft, the Edge browser isn’t too bad (and AFAIK, Microsoft has thus far stayed out of the political fray). If you don’t like Microsoft, try the Opera browser.

            On a mobile phone: Opera makes an Android version, and I hear good things about the Brave browser (new to me so the jury’s out, but I’m giving it a go). I’m afraid I have almost no familiarity with iOS devices and couldn’t tell you what’s good there, but you can see if Opera or Brave are available.

          4. Microsoft appears to be staying out of this at a corporate level. I hope they continue that policy. Many of their employees have been cheering this on, but perhaps that is just their giddiness at having slain the Great White Orange Man.

        4. SocialGalactic is too small to be noticed. But if the Eye of Sauron turns on it, it will be crushed.

          Don’t pin your hopes on Vox Day. He really isn’t that smart.

      2. Arfcom is back up.

        Anyone who keeps proper backups can get back up fast.

        Just colocate in jurisdiction that doesn’t give a rat’s ass what the loony left thinks.

        SG is not going away. Vox is not using a “free” US
        Hosting service

        1. That’s the funny thing about censorship. I’ve never been to that site. Never had a desire to go. I have firearms, but I’m not really a gun enthusiast.

          I’m there now and I’m absolutely delighted at the size and scope of their forums. It looks like there’s a lot of really useful information beyond firearms. I think I might make it a regular stop.

          I would never have known about it if they hadn’t tried to shut them down. You learn that on day 1 of Why Censorship Is Stupid 101.

          Thanks tech oligarchs!

          1. Kind of like that WKRP episode where the picketing moral guardians were encourgaed by the station staff, to spread the word that WKRP was playing Rock Music!

      3. You sound like the standard defeatist Cuckservative,..

        Stop giving up and giving in to fear(you should propably stop your excessive pron and “happy-pill” consumption as well) and start to support those that have a solution or you can pontificate and wait for the Holodomr 2.0, your choice.

        1. When the first line of your reply consists of calling the other person a stupid name, it becomes much more difficult to take the rest of what you say seriously.

          The sort of person who says ‘cuckservative’ without irony as an insult is no more worth paying attention to than the sort who says ‘woke’ without irony as a term of praise. The only proper response in either case is, ‘You are a doubleplusgood duckspeaker. Now let me talk to someone whose higher brain centres are actually engaged in the conversation.’

      4. Could not find the website. First got discouraged (this site is not safe!) and then when I clicked through, was taken to a page that says ‘this site was purchased’, but no actual site.

        What’s up with that?

      5. I’ve been working in the industry for 20 years, and it has gotten easier to host your own servers (though it’s much cheaper to use a hosting service like AWS — either way it’s easier and less expensive than it was when I started).

        If the folks writing Parler were competent, they’d be able to do so.

        But if you believe in free enterprise rather than government regulation, shouldn’t AWS have the right to refuse to sell their services?

        1. AWS violated the contract they had by ignoring the termination notice policy. If contracts can now be voided so easily, commerce is going to come to a halt.

          1. Don’t worry. Big Tech only does that to right-wing badthinkers. You’re not some kind of crazy Nazi, are you? This is for your own good.

    2. FB blocked 3 of my reposted videos and that was enough for me. I downloaded all of my content, and deleted my account. I’m on MeWe now, for however long they can hold out.

      1. I tried to download all of my pictures and it ended up in all HTML something or other that was useless.

        Any tips for those of us without a clue how to save our content?

    3. great article
      (Lawyers know law, engineers know engineering, artists know art, so on. So when there is a big problem that spreads across multiple fields, of course you need to talk it over with people who know those areas, because they know things you don’t. Being smart in one area doesn’t automatically make you an expert in others. We all need help. Big problems require discussion and brainstorming. Even if it isn’t effective, it’s still useful for the clever people who can make solutions to be able to listen to what the regular populace thinks and feels so that they can get the scope and understand how the problem hurts the public.)

  2. The Leftist Fascists have the bit between their teeth now and have gone ban happy.
    The good news is that they are pushing too far and too fast. They are being too blatant in their hypocrisy and extremism. They are showing everyone who and what they are and exposing exactly who is and who is not an enemy of freedom. It’s a clarifying moment if nothing else and we needed clarity. We now know who to trust and who not to trust, what we can and can’t rely on, who to support and who to vote out.
    I don’t think we would have gotten that clarity if they had slow rolled this over years instead of in just a couple days.

    1. One of my pet peeves is the term “Leftist Fascists”. People on the extreme left are Anarchists. People on the extreme right are Fascists. There is no such thing as a “Leftist Fascist”, or a “Rightist Anarchist”. Both are like saying “Virgin Hookers”.

      1. Well, your moniker is 180 degrees out if you think those are the correct definitions. Fascism is by definition leftist, since it’s Marxist, and assumes socialism.

        In actuality all actual fascists (not “those mean people who laugh at our Masters in Puppetry”) are leftist. If you leave out the socialism (corporatist, instead of government ownership of the means of production), they aren’t fascists, just totalitarians.

        Neither Hitler nor Mussolini were right-wing in any meaningful sense of the word. They were simply slightly to the right of the actual communists, with whom they competed for absolute power.

        1. FYI, this is why I hate the “right-left” dichotomy of our politics. Pressing politics into a two-dimensional array means you’ll end up with a lot of bad definitions.

        2. This definition of fascism is in every dictionary, with reference given as Mussolini. Carl Marx found Marxism, a form of Communism, which is VERY different. 3 definitions below are given as reference. The actual meaning of a word is not always what you think it is. In addition to definitions, here is a link that explains the differences between Fascism and Communism:

          https://www.diffen.com/difference/Communism_vs_Fascism

          NOTE: To some communism looks appealing on paper, but hides the fact that it’s a total failure on anything above the scale of a small village or tribe.

          As far as my moniker goes, I picked it because I research every subject before discussing, even ones where I’m “sure”, because sometimes what I “knew” was wrong.

          Dictionary.com – governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

          Merriam Webster – a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual

          Wikipedia.com – Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe

          It’s likely pointless to explain all this to you. You clearly made up a conclusion, then twisted the world to fit your opinion because you believe you know dictionary definitions better than dictionaries. Your life will be much happier once you look at the evidence around you first, then make conclusions based on that. Also, accepting you got things wrong is not a bad thing.

          1. No offense, but saying that you research before you post, but then citing Wikipedia…

            It’s a contradiction. Wikipedia is user-maintained and thus often politically biased and/or simply wrong, and if you cite it in an academic setting for any topic other than “criticism of Wikipedia”, your paper will be rejected.

          2. Definitions change overtime. When the Nazi party was starting out and in power they were defined as a nationalistic styling of socialism, and very left. Sure there was lots of violence and in fighting there was with Stalinism vs Trotskyism too.

            As time passed and the horrors of the Nazi party were revealed and they were completely defeated, political actors on every side took every opportunity to rebrand their opponents as similar to Nazi’s. The left was successful with tying nationalism to conservatives and somehow go ahah that’s the problem nationalism. For a bonus they can also point towards imperialism as another way nationalism has gone bad. Meanwhile, completely ignoring everything that the nazi’s did that would agree more strongly with the left than the right.

            Let me go after left/right too. the left/right paradigm is constantly changing, and constantly being redefined to make the side the definer is on to constantly be good and the other side evil, or perhaps just to make things simple and clear, when politics just don’t work like that. It’s not on a 1-axis scale or even a 2-axis or 3 or 4. It’s an insanely connected web of ideas that are taken and adapted from one another in a complicated web of influence.

            Nazism came out of Marxism that was influenced by Darwinism, German culture, German History, Imperialism, Treaty of Versailles, a large variety of other factors, it’s very complicated and to bury it down to far right because of it’s heavy nationalism is just??? Like here is a question how many Nazi thinkers have you read? Have you even read the communist thinkers of the day around then either? Ohh wait, no I forgot, plebian opinions on the topic don’t matter because political hacks with fancy degrees have already decided what I need to know, and I need to stay in my lane.

          3. Fascism is right-wing if you consider Stalin to be a moderate. Calibrate your sources accordingly.

            If you think “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” is something the American Right would approve then you’re too ignorant to have a useful opinion.

          4. Of course, definitions change over the years. So, what do you call the thing where the State and large corporations pretty much intermingle and grow together? Where the State grants large corporations contracts, tax breaks, exemptions from regulation, and other perks from the public purse- and the large corporations give the leaders of the State campaign contributions, money for ‘charitable foundations’, sinecures for relatives, favorable press, and other perks? Or when the State makes regulations that favor the existing large corporations while squeezing out the independents and small operators?

            Now, someone a bit on the Left side would probably call this ‘Fascism’, but I’m describing the Democratic party’s standard operating procedure.

      2. No, Fascism is considered “right-wing” due to a series of lies by Marxists that boils down to Hitler backstabbing Stalin before Stalin could backstab Hitler.

        A series of lies that are easily swallowed by exceedingly gullible idiots, alas.

      3. A hooker that only gives oral is a virgin hooker.
        In the US the extreme left does not only include anarchists and the extreme right does not only include fascists.
        You are conflating traditional leftism and traditional rightism with the current mishmash political schema in the US.
        Fascism according to Dictionary.com:
        A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
        The philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
        A political movement that employs the principles and methods of fascism, especially the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.
        The modern leftist movement in the US, in the form of the DNC and Democrat politicians, employ all of the methods of fascism, from government regimentation of all industry and commerce to vast racist policies to aggressive tribalism. They may not use the term nation, but they are specifically dividing this country along the lines of race, with BLM and Antifa as their brown shirts and political terror elements. They forcibly suppress opposition and criticism.
        There is documented evidence that specific Democrat Senators threatened Facebook and Twitter into silencing people that were speaking about things the American DNC did not want publicly brought to light.
        Obama wiretapped reporters and news agencies and spied on their personal communications to bring them to heel. The FBI used a lie to specifically target people around Trump for harassment and spying. At the behest of Democrat politicians. The list of fascist methodologies employed by the American Democrat Party grows by the minute.

      4. Quick, someone tell Ho Chi Minh, Mao T’se-Tung, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Josef Stalin, and Bela Kun that they were doing it wrong.

        Oh, and rightist anarchists are called libertarians.

        Here’s another insight: cultural right/left positions have nothing to do with whether a movement or government is authoritarian or totalitarian in nature. Hitler and Mussolini were totalitarian centrists with a “Third Way” position that stood in opposition to both Communism and Weimar style plutocracy. Franco was an authoritarian rightist.

        In Germany or Italy in the 1930s a rightist was a monarchist, not a Nazi. Franco WAS a monarchist, and not a totalitarian, yet his movement and party are described as identical to those of the other two by the people who tell us what we are and aren’t allowed to say and think, who like to redefine words in order to help them make dishonest arguments. Leftists, in other words.

      5. People on the extreme left are “communist anarchists” which is an extremely interesting thing to be. It’s something like this…if only we can totally and absolutely and thoroughly control every single aspect of society a Big Magical Switch will be thrown and human nature as we know it will become glorified and from that moment forward require no government and no enforcement.

        So “left anarchists” are maximum government control types with a magical “anarchy” that happens once they get it perfectly right.

        True anarchists also exist but they generally figure that everyone should be allowed to live in an anarchist situation without the glorification of human nature happening first. Just do it. It will be messy but we don’t care.

        I wouldn’t even put them on the same “control” or “freedom” axis, really. Because the left anarchist’s anarchy is illusionary, even in the best scenario, since they can’t allow anyone to disagree with them. Because really, how does collectivist anarchy work?

        The left and most of the Right these days are pushing for control by the State. The left being more collectivist in outlook and the right sometimes being more individualist in outlook.

        And then over in this other direction there are some people who want the smallest possible government. NONE of them are on the left. They just are not.

        And if you’ve got street enforcers attacking book stores, you’re the fascists. Full stop.

      6. Meh. Antifa and BLM aren’t “anarchists” in the true sense of the word; they’re statists in revolutionary clothing. They believe that the state should have complete power over its citizens just like the Fascists do; they just want to get rid of this state for one of their own making, where THEY make the rules. Just like Fascists. The names are interchangeable because the desired results are the same.

          1. Nihilists suck up the darkness in the hole in the O of Max NOthingness. In other words, the Enemy.

      7. Fascism is a form of socialist totalitarianism as is Communism. The original “left-right” distinction was between the republicans of France and the monarchists, with the monarchists on the right.

        The Communists interpret this spectrum to mean that whoever opposes history is on the right and whoever favors it on the left.

        Their version of the spectrum lists their twin brothers, the Nazis, national socialists, as being against history, for the same reason they list monarchists and republicans, namely, as reactionary opponents of the inevitable socialist utopia.

        In reality, the Right in America represents those who favor the Constitution, the free market, and the rule of law. These are the same as those who opposed the English monarchy during the Revolutionary War, the Nazi Fuhrer, the Fascist Il Duci, and the divine Emperor of Japan, during Second World War, the Communist dictators during the Cold War, and who oppose the anarchist plutocrats of the Great Reset now.

        To lump any National Socialist or racist or anarchist on the same Right side of the spectrum with those who oppose them, while separating them from their twin brothers among the other flavor of socialists or racists or anarchists on the Left, is misleading at best, propaganda at worst.

        Do not adopt enemy language. Do not grant enemy axioms. Do not be gulled.

        1. I suspect we pay far too much attention to ideologies, and not enough to personalities. Just as a scoundrel will say anything to seduce a fair maiden, many of the power hungry are not truly beholden to any philosophy other than personal power.
          Which leads to another problem- personalities that can turn down power are few and precious. Napoleons are far more common than Washingtons. Which is why the wise men of many ages have advocated for the concept of Separation of Powers. The less power concentrated into a single hand, and the more power distributed among the people, the better for everybody.
          Sadly, it’s popular for those who would consider themselves part of the Left to call for a concentration of power, preferably into the hands of the ‘correct’ person with the correct views. This will never end well.

          1. Napoleons are pretty rare too. He had the will and the audacity to pick up the discarded crown of France from the gutter and the charisma to gain public support for his coup to overthrow the Jacobins and stop the bloodletting. He was a skilled general, and he rewrote French law well enough that the Code Napoleon is still in use. He also invented fascism, but to anyone who lived through the French Revolution, Napoleon looked pretty damned good compared to Robespierre and Saint-Just.

            We won’t see the like of another Washington or Jefferson or Madison in our lifetimes. These were once-in-a-century minds that, against all odds, ended up all in the same place, at the same time, on the same side, and won and got to implement their ideas instead of ending their days on a British gallows. We should be so fortunate as to get a Napoleon. I’d even settle for a Pinochet or a Franco. Greedy inept thieves and thugs like Hugo Chavez or Idi Amin are far, far more common around the world, and the really unlucky countries get a Pol Pot or a Mugabe–and they’re still vastly more common than Washingtons.

      8. In truth both commies and fascists are left wing. All communalists are. Individualists will NEVER form a totalitarian government. All totalitarian governments are leftist.

      9. Are you now aware that you’ve blundered into a forum where most of the commenters’ knowledge of political theory extends beyond that of basic reference materials?

      10. No, people on the extreme left are not anarchists. Anarchy is defined as: a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority or other controlling systems. People on the Left definitely do not want absence of authority. They are authoritarians. They want total power.

        No, people on the right are not Fascists. That is a myth dreamed up by people on the Left to balance the fact that they are socialists. Fascism is a form of authoritarianism similar to communism. The Nazis are known as Fascists. But Fascism is defined as National Socialism. Hitler and the Nazis were socialists. Nazi is short for National Socialist German Worker’s Party.

  3. You want to know what to do? Sue both political parties, Democrat and Republican for violation of the Anti-trust Act. Have them both broken down into component parts so that you don’t have either political party in control of all three branches of government. Then, all this money that is going into advertising for political issues will dry up and people will calm down and start acting more reasonable. They won’t have demagogue A or B being paid millions to talk them into whatever political ideation. We might actually solve a few problems instead of just kicking the ball down the field so we can keep using the issue for political capital. Both political parties are guilty of turning this country into the nightmare it currently is because they make too much off the conflict. They don’t care about fixing it. Believing they actually want to fix issues is moronic. If you actually ascribe to that, just ask yourself, in 2017 when the Republicans had the presidency, house, senate, and Supreme court… Why didn’t they overturn Roe V. Wade? They could have easily done it. Hell, they could have rewritten the entire constitution at that point because they had complete control of the entire government. They didn’t because they don’t care about fixing issues. They care about votes, so they do all this crap to piss you off so you keep voting for them. When they fix problems, fewer people vote. Just look at 2000. Fewer people voted in that election than the previous 75 years. Why? Because there weren’t any major issues. NO, I am not going to go conspiracy theory about the towers and pentagon. I will say that the longer we allow the two political parties to remain in existence, the worse it will get until we have a new civil war.

  4. Yep, they WILL nuke your account. They did mine and I was/am nowhere near as vocal as you and had only about 300 friends. Really kind of a bummer cuz I had some SERIOUSLY cool fb friends/aquaintences that I cannot now reach. Personally look forward to these blogs as I bigtime respect your thought process. On an aside, SoBS fuckin ROCKS!! (Any friends that read this blog and want to reconnect hit me up.)

  5. Problem is I just don’t see the left caring, everyone I know that votes D is in pure denial that there is bias. If they do believe their is bias from big tech, the bias is actually against them and pro right wing, and will cite things like Facebooks shifting some of their policies around to not ban as many right wing groups as possible, for spreading fake news. More will even go on about how Fox news is republican news and needs to be banned because it’s propaganda and fake news, and that’s the more moderate position, I’ve heard others saying they need to be charged as terrorists for inciting insurrection.

    There is also this weird push that everything needs to be ruled by science and not democracy I see too. Then they always cite nonsense where a problem has been found and not solved immediately because of course tradeoffs and cost-benefit analysis is fake and we just need to do it regardless of the cost because that’s just imaginary just tax the rich more or print money who cares.

    1. Exactly so. I live in an Uber blue area, and you have captured the zeitgeist perfectly.
      I find it maddening, and don’t have the temperament to engage.

      My grandfather tells of what is was like to wake up after WW2, and realize that his entire world had been built on lies. He wondered how he could ever reliably discern truth. For him the answer was to turn to the classics.
      I hope my neighbors and friends who labor under the constant barrage of propaganda live long enough to have their own such epiphanies.

      PS and I hope and pray that I see with clear eyes too. After all, I’ve been wrong about things before.

    2. “Problem is I just don’t see the left caring, everyone I know that votes D is in pure denial that there is bias.”

      Well, what I have seen is two distinct groups (of those that support the D’s) out there right now. One is part is the group described in your quote. The other (far more numerous in my acquaintance) are the LIVs with their close relations the people who cannot believe its really all that bad.

      The more the Progressives run roughshod over laws and norms, flaunts its hypocrisy and does its best imitation of a jack booted fascist, the more those LIVs and happy deniers will see and no longer be able to deny.

      The first group will be happy with the actions of the Progs in power right up to the point they are put under the boot, then wonder how it got so bad.

  6. It’s no coincidence that you can’t go out to eat and drink if it involves meeting people.

    But if they can cancel the First Amendment rights, bank account, and employability of the President… what won’t they do to you? Being on a no-fly list is terrible, but only the start of your worries.

    And the real question is, who are “they?”

    1. Start with the Intelligence Agencies, both civ and mil. Add DHS, top level of the military, the entire SES, and then the appointees, followed by any Congresscritter with more than one term under their belts.

  7. Being nuked by these idiots is an honor. Try your best to get nuked.

    Smart competitors will simply avoid supposedly free services offered by US tech goliaths.

  8. One thing the left doesn’t understand is that OPEN discussions keep the pot from boiling over. When you push discussions underground, you get echo chambers and lone wolves… The Unibomber, the DC snipers, and others come to mind. Ot, in their twisted way, is that what they want? If that happens, they will come after guns in a heartbeat and with force to ‘protect’ us.

    1. Didn’t a Leftist intellectual icon named Noam Chomsky tell us that intent can be inferred from predictable outcomes?

      They want this. They want it BAD. They want it in the worst way. And historically speaking, I speculate that that just may be how they get it.

      1. And the sad part is, they won’t stop with gun confiscation.

        They will round up millions and send them to death camps.

        When you dehumanize the other long enough, killing THEM becomes easy.

        And to any of you who will be lucky enough to survive death after the horrors have been experienced and exposed, when the Good Germans you meet on the street beg your forgiveness tell them “hell no, we warned you, and we begged you not to do it, saying you didn’t know it would happen is bullshit, we knew and we told you, you pulled the fucking levers anyway. Get on your knees and beg Jesus to forgive you, but I’m not going to. ” I’ll ask forgiveness for that sin later.

      2. Because they feel certain they will win the resulting struggle. Perhaps because they think the rebels will somehow still magically adhere to Marquess of Queensbury Rules. If so they have an ugly surprise coming.

    2. If they choose to come after “us” and our guns, they’ll need to be very careful how they do it. They’ve tried the incremental approach and it has reached its limits, apparently, as recent attempt to increase gun restrictions have been shot down, even in the Obama Administration.

      If they decide to take overt action: “We’re coming for your guns . . . ” or attempt to invoke onerous taxes in a backdoor attempt to make firearms too expensive for the average citizen, they’re going to meet organized resistance at some point. They may hold power in the big cities, but the majority of the people aren’t in the big cities.

      1. If they’re smart they’ll go after your finances and employment. “Mr. Morgan, we have reason to believe that you are in possession of materiel that is hazardous to public health. I’m afraid we cannot allow you to go to your place of employment or visit public venues where you might put others at risk for your insistence on retaining said materials, or allow you access to your bank accounts for fear you might use the funds to purchase more problematical goods and supplies until such time as these hazardous items have been turned over to the proper authorities’. How many people would be able to stand up to that for long?

        1. Given the past couple of weeks, I’d say this is probably the most prescient view of exactly how they plan to do it. In fact, yours is the most alarming comment I’ve seen in a month of hair-on-fire level stuff.

          Best now to figure out a way to counter this exact scenario.

  9. “random moron parade on my own page ”

    Hey, I resemble that remark!

    In all seriousness, controlling flow of information is Totalitarianism 101. Finding a good cassus belli is the key, though, and if they can convince enough people it will be accepted.

    But the danger they are facing is those who are center right may accept it, but many will be pushed radical right. And the switch will be flipped. If that happens I weep for my nation.

          1. What’s happening in South Africa is extraordinarily unlikely to happen in the US, if for no other reason than the racial and economic demographics are entirely different.

          2. US demographics look more like South Africa’s with every week that passes. As for the economy, globalization and “free trade” have already made the US just another consumer/debtor nation that can’t even manufacture boots for its own army and has to buy them from China, like everything else.

            Give the people who planned this and brought it about another ten or twenty years. Look at South Africa, and see the future they’re planning for you and your children, and your grandchildren.

  10. > …only to discover that the company that runs my blog server and the company that processes my mailing list are willing to engage in the exact same behavior.

    Epik.com. They host Gab amongst others. They’ve proven their mettle.

    If they don’t offer an email service I’m sure they would let you run your own and opensource maillist software is readily available.

  11. What I want to tell every Dem voter happy about this – are you that stupid? Do you think anyone ever steals an election to do good?
    Anyway, expect more false flag “riots” staged by antifa-in-maga-drag as an excuse for more deprivations of rights and liberties.

    1. That’s what Alex Jones has been warning about over on InfoWars. Especially the state capital inauguration rallys/protests.

  12. Here is the key question: how much are freedom lovers willing to pay for free speech?

    Ad supported platforms need to worry about boycotts. Any big corporation that does business with the federal government is burdened with all sorts of restrictions. Any whiff of Hostile Work Environment or other violations of PCness gets a swift response.

    A true free speech zone has to be either freeware with users buying their own platforms with some kind of blockchain thingy. Or users need to PAY for their own social networking space.

    I’d like to know some numbers. How much per month would you all be willing to pay? 10,000 users paying a dollar a month can buy ca. ONE senior programmer, assuming very minimal overhead. Factor in the costs of advertising and/or an affiliate program, I think $2/month is what’s really required unless a deep pocketed conservatarian were to come up with real capital.

    Another advantage of a user paid social network is that it provides a whiner filter. Those who think everything should be free cannot comment.

    What say ye? I’ m doing some market research.

    1. Maybe, free to read, pay to post? With a limit. More than X posts per day costs more, per increment of X. Spam welcome, we can use the money!

      It’s how E-mail should have been implemented from the beginning. Make those that place burdens on the system pay the cost.
      ———————————
      Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

      1. Yes, free to read, pay to post — or comment.

        On the Internet, information wants to be free.

        People will pay for attention.

        (And for publishers/celebrities, a paid service means less bots, Indian SEO outfits, etc. And with a paid service, it’s possible to ID all users so you can ban trolls from your blog/feed.)

    2. I currently pay $10 a month for a private twitter/instagram substitute with limited features but no
      swearing, fedposting, ads, or fact checkers. So there you go.

    3. Another advantage of a user paid social network is that it provides a whiner filter.

      Sounds like Dave Rubin’s locals [dot] com. His claim is that even $0.50/month keeps the trolls away.

  13. Self host, with a domain and a couple variants
    (I have vsta.org and vsta.is, for instance).
    Use Mastodon on the Fediverse to do the heavy
    lifting. Pull nightly backups to your home
    storage. And yes, keep running your own blog
    host. I don’t offer this lightly: contact me
    if you need help.

    1. THIS is the answer, in my opinion. I am eternally grateful to the creators of HTTP, email, and podcasting that they designed their technologies to be decentralized. I have watched, with not a little distress, the degree to which new Internet applications are completely centralized and under corporate control and displacing old open protocols. Reddit replaced Usenet. Slack/Discord/WhatsApp replaced IRC. DIAL never stood a chance after Google Cast and Apple Air Play got pushed.

      Andy, if you are willing to give general advice, I did have some questions about getting into the Fediverse. I have a cPanel host w/ Softaculus. I don’t see Mastodon as an option in their installer. However, I do see Hubzilla as an option and Hubzilla supports the same protocol as Mastodon? Any thoughts on going that direction? I’m also at a bit of a loss as far as how to get started once setup. Are there good any good directories of Mastodon servers to federate with? How do you discover people to follow? Is that even the right way to think about it?

  14. I think there is a solution to Bit Tech, but it’s not going to happen during the next couple of years

    First, recognize the origional purpose, or rewrite section 230

    Force companies to decide if they are a platform or a publisher.

    If they are a publisher, they have 100% control over what they publish, but are liable for anything they publish.

    If they are a platform, they are required to document their moderation policies and can be sued for uneven application of said policies. Note that the policies do not have be be neutral. If a gay rights forum wants a policy that forbids the question of if being gay is genetic, or a church group wants to forbid endorsement of homosexuality or abortion advocacy, both groups should be allowed to do so. But it needs to be explicit in their policies.

    If they use 3rd party ‘fact checkers’, they need to be optional (and the third parties liable for false statements)

    Second, there needs to be an update to Public Accommodations law (including anti-Discrimination law) to clarify the difference between routine commercial transactions where a company is required to do business with anyone who is willing to pay and commissions to create custom work, which nobody should be required to accept.

    You cannot be compelled to speak in a particular way, and it’s long been ruled that invoking creativity is speech.

    A couple of examples

    The Colorado Baker was willing to sell the Gay couple anything in his shop, they were long-term customers, but he was not willing to accept a commission to create a custom cake to celebrate their wedding (creativity as speech)

    A Black owned Pizza parlor would be required to sell pizzas to the KKK, and even deliver them to the location of a rally (if it’s in the normal delivery area), but would not be required to cater the event and serve the people there or in any way have their name be part of the event (the presence of the organization to be viewed as endorsement and therefor speech)

    Amazon AWS would be required to sell hosting services to anyone with a Credit Card. Their Terms of Service would need to be explicitly spelled out at the time the contract starts and could not be modified at whim later. It may eventually require that political viewpoint be added to the anti-discrimination laws

    Now, there does need to be a little wiggle room here to be able to ban someone from a store who has demonstrated bad behavior in the past, or to impose minimum, neutral standards (no shirt, no service types of things)

    Third, companies need to be shielded from lawsuits against them due to the way that people use their products. The shield of gun manufacturers from lawsuits not related to defective products is good example. Once you cannot sue a company for selling it’s product to someone there is no longer a business justification for them to try and not sell it to some group. (so suing ‘big sugar’ for obesity, no suing ‘big oil’ for auto pollution, etc)

    I think the change above and the non-government lawsuits that would result could result in an environment that would be reasonably self-policing based on private lawsuits from different watchdog organizations without giving the Government control over content

    If you agree with these ideas, spread them. Get them into the minds of the politicians, and if there is a big backlash in 2022 (beyond the margin of fraud), hopefully something can get implemented.

    1. You mentioned the “margin of fraud”, I don’t think any election from this point on is beyond the fraud margin. “They” have found out that no election irregularities will ever be investigated and any media reports will be censored, it is depressing and I don’t see any peaceful resolution.

      1. Hillary won NH in 2016 over Trump by 2000 votes. Approximately 6000 provisional votes were cast, most for Hillary. Over 50% of those provisional voter failed to follow up with the required residency documentation. i.e over 3000 votes for Hillary were fraudulently cast. But by that time the votes were certified, and the state awarded to Hillary, completely fraudulently. That’s one area I’ll be fighting for the next two years here, to overturn.

    2. Most of what you advocate is good. But it relies on one thing – that classic John Adams quote: The Constitution is only workable for a moral and religious (he meant Christianity) people.

      The above things can only work if there is some measure of self-government going on. Destruction of morality enables destruction of the republic.

      So, in every case, the only way to fix the bigger problem is to educate, indoctrinate, evangelize the electorate back into a moral worldview and a proper, zealous appreciation of the principles in the DoI and Constitution.

    3. I’m not sure if it even needs to go that far. The Supreme Court ruled on this in 1946.

      Marsh v. State of Alabama

      From that ruling: “The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it. Cf. Republic Aviation Corp. v. N.L.R.B., 324 U.S. 793, 65 S.Ct. 982, 985, 987, note 8, 157 A.L.R. 1081. Thus, the owners of privately held bridges, ferries, turnpikes and railroads may not operate them as freely as a farmer does his farm. Since these facilities are built and operated primarily to benefit the public and since their operation is essentially a public function, it is subject to state regulation.3 And, though the issue is not directly analogous to the on before us we do want to point out by way of illustration that such regulation may not result in an operation of these facilities, even by privately owned companies, which unconstitutionally interferes with and discriminates against interstate commerce.

      […]

      Whether a corporation or a municipality owns or possesses the town the public in either case has an identical interest in the functioning of the community in such manner that the channels of communication remain free. As we have heretofore stated, the town of Chickasaw does not function differently from any other town. The ‘business block’ serves as the community shopping center and is freely accessible and open to the people in the area and those passing through. The managers appointed by the corporation cannot curtail the liberty of press and religion of these people consistently with the purposes of the Constitutional guarantees, and a state statute, as the one here involved, which enforces such action by criminally punishing those who attempt to distribute religious literature clearly violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.”

      Yes, this is directly opposite what I said in the last thread. I hadn’t read this ruling yet, and I was apparently wrong.

  15. 6 EZ Steps to Take Back our Country:

    1) Lawfare on every issue

    2) Constitutional Sanctuaries

    3) Strengthen election law

    4) Educational freedom

    5) Reform or abolish 230

    6) Primary the bastards

    1. Doesn’t work if they control the elections, the judges, the police, the media, the military, the banks, the corporations, the schools and most of the communications.

    2. None of that will work without step (1) being this:
      Repent, Confess, Return to Christ.

      With this step, the others will be successful, but no one of them will be absolutely necessary.

      1. You can’t force people to Christ. And God won’t take them until they’re ready. It’s that pesky free will thing He gave us.

  16. Response to Larry –

    As someone whose job was to correct problems in big tech (yes you should pity me), I can tell you it’s less complicated than you think.

    Left and Right has nothing to do with their decisions. Here’s what does: Personal Gain.
    The decision makers in these companies do not care about ANYTHING else. Moreover, there are MANY different decision makers, often making contradictory decisions within same company for individual self-gain. Sometimes individual decisions kind of align, but more often than not it’s a chaotic train wreck.

    In short, they don’t give a crap how their decisions impact other peoples’ freedoms or rights one way or the other.

    If it helps, picture tech companies being run by Chaos demons.

    1. Personal Gain.
      The decision makers in these companies do not care about ANYTHING else.

      Definitely not true. They are acting in accord with their religion: Progressivism. The approval of their priestly class and their gods is most important.

      1. Your choice. You can make decisions based on never having met any of these people and making up things just to support your own personal belief system.

        Or, you can take input from someone who was paid to listen to these self-important douche bags spout off on how great they are, and how much more great their decisions will make them. Then have the truly joyous experience of explaining to them their idea is exactly why they are $400 million over budget, the last audit showed thousands of violations, layoffs are looming and the project is about to be canceled.

        Also, I’m pretty sure your name isn’t Larry

        1. It is quite easy to find out where these people went to school, and what was taught there. A great many of them are true believers in the current iteration of Left ideology.

          If all they cared about was money, as you suggest, they wouldn’t have been so stupid as to go $400 million over budget in the service of a bad (but ideologically required) idea.

          1. He said “personal gain”, not just money. Social approval in their circles is a motive; exercise of raw power works as “personal gain”.

      2. Eh… not so much. It is a wealth loop. Social media supports politicians who generate clicks and send wealth so they continue to support politicians who generate clicks and send wealth so they return some of the wealth and politicians pocket some and generate more clicks and send more wealth.

        They’re all in a massive wealth loop that never ends. Why do you think the Cuomos are working for MSM? Why was Hunter taking cash from… well, apparently everyone? How did the Clintons, Bernie, Pelosi, all of them become multimillionaires (Pelosi may be closing in on billionaire) while working “public service” jobs?

        Now do you understand why they had to cut off Trump? He wasn’t paying his dues. He was breaking the wealth loops and showing the world that it was being pillaged. He had to go. Bigly.

    2. Personal Gain is not only about money. They want to gain influence, standing, regard and admiration from the ‘right people’ which to their minds is the Politically Correct Left. The same ones that mangle communism and fascism together, and call it ‘socialism’.

      Those former geeks and outcasts are so thrilled to get approval from the popular crowd, they will do anything to keep it. Even though it’s the ‘approval’ of a bunch of grifters for an easy mark.
      ———————————
      As long as sex and money exist, they will be exchanged.

    3. The fact that Twitter and FB just set $52B on fire in the past few days tends to rubbish your claim that personal gain is a motivator.

        1. I’m more than certain they did. 52 billion is noticeable to tech companies, but it’s not anywhere near enough to cause them to reverse course. Given the overtly “progressive” cant of a disturbing number of major and minor corporations, shareholder value isn’t always the primary consideration. There are virtues to be signaled.

          I’m certain all these companies that routinely torch their company’s value by doing stupid shit like this have already factored it in. It’s why you get internal focus-group-tested excuses that studiously avoid mentioning anything like advertising campaigns that tell their customer base they’re abusive monsters. Hell, now COVID relieves most of them of their creative burdens in staving off shareholder lawsuits.

          I’m still waiting for news of any scalps to have been claimed by “Get woke, go broke”. As best it looks right now it’s “Get woke, Lose 10-15% value on your shares, make it back up in 6 months.”

  17. that don’t share their orthodoxy
    Yes. They are a religion.

    What do we do now?
    I think most of us knows what’s required now. But we won’t say it out of fear of getting the host shut down.

    If things were sane, we would have options under anti-trust and by distinguishing between a platform and a publisher.
    But we’re no longer there.

  18. I imagine most of us here have sufficiently robust backgrounds to have studied (at least passingly) the Scientific Method.

    But if anyone needs a refresher, here’s the rough overview (note that the exact steps vary by author; this is just a quick rehash):
    1. Make an observation / Identify problem
    2. Ask a question
    3. Gather information – research, interview, collaborate, etc.
    4. Form a hypothesis (testable explanation)
    5. Test your hypothesis – make a prediction based on your hypothesis and run experiments to see if the results match your prediction
    6. Analyze data and draw conclusions – do your results match your prediction? if yes, move to next step; if no, go back to step #3, adjust hypothesis, and retest (or conclude the hypothesis is wrong and start over)
    7. Communicate results

    This system of organized thought, research, and experimentation has been in use since around the 1600s, and is how modern science has produced everything from medicines to technology.

    What’s interesting is how hard the so-called “Party of Science” is ridiculing us for asking a question or identifying a problem (step #2) without also providing a viable solution (step #7) while simultaneously working to stymie us on Step #3 by cutting off our ability to research and collaborate.

    Even if you make it all the way through to step #7, your conclusion will never survive peer review if it doesn’t align with Leftist orthodoxy.

    But remember, even though it’s the so-called “Party of Science” that’s actively killing real science, YOU are the “Science Denier”.

    What’s the solution? Hell if I know; I’m just another guy stuck here on step #3.

  19. The first axiom of politics:

    “It is not the action taken by the person that causes the offense. It is the political affiliation of the person taking action that causes the offense.”

    The first axiom is always in full effect.

  20. I agree with some of the points you made about censorship in this post. However, you’re trying to portray yourself as someone who’s concerned about the fate of the nation as a whole, but you’ve made it pretty plain that as long as it didn’t affect you or your book sales, everything outside your bubble could go to hell and you wouldn’t give a shit.

    You are 100% right that responses that treat the peaceful majority the same as the law breaking minority should be called out because they give people who are trying to air legitimate grievances additional reasons to distrust the system. However, we saw literal months of far more dramatic examples of this during the protests this year, when police were using the violent actions of a few to justify brutality against the many, but you didn’t seem to find it so outrageous then.

    If you look at your post history, it’s plain you only care about things that might affect you or people close to you, Larry. You (rightfully) condemn arson and violence by rioters because those could potentially affect you. However, even though the police brutality against peaceful protestors is the actual embodiment of oppression and government overreach that would make any true libertarian’s hair stand on end, you ignore it because you don’t go to protests so the police can beat and pepper spray people to their heart’s content and it won’t affect you. But if you see someone ask why gun rights advocates aren’t more outraged, when they’ve portrayed themselves as being a bulwark against violent government oppression, then you will go on a tirade about how the violence is largely happening in democrat controlled cities and some leftists online were mean to you and called you a gun nut so everyone being affected deserves what’s happening and there’s no reason for you to care about it.

    Even the invasion of our nations capitol building, the attack on the legislature by extremists with clubs and zip ties, and the murder of a police officer received only half-hearted condemnation from you. But god help any companies that might interfere with your ability to post things online, they will feel the full force of your mighty wrath.

    You say you don’t know what we should do now to fix things? Try caring about people outside of your little bubble.

    (P.S. There’s an absurd amount of irony of your post’s title, “It’s all about controlling the public square”, when the president you backed to the hilt tear gassed protesters in a public square and a priest on the steps of her own church to clear the square for a photo op in front of said church but that government overreach wasn’t worth any comment from you)

    1. Caring about the people outside your bubble??

      You mean the ones blaming me for all those problems purely because of my skin color and sex, like the old school sexists and racists?!!?

      The left LITERALLY says we don’t deserve jobs, access to our money in backs, to walk around freely, or to even EXIST.

      And your response to us not accepting the lefts FRAME of us is “care about people outside our bubble”.

      Go shove that crap where the sun don’t shine.

      I didn’t start HATING the left until they started saying I deserved to be in a Death Camp for the petty crime of disagreeing with them.

      1. I hated them for their fecklessness, cowardice, and opportunism back when they pretended they were just passive-aggressive and smarmy. Now that the mask has come off, I hate them even more.

    2. Sam Axe said: “However, you’re trying to portray yourself as someone who’s concerned about the fate of the nation as a whole, but you’ve made it pretty plain that…” blah blah blah.

      So it’s okay that the DemocRats stole and election, and they’re running us all off the interwebs, because Larry is a meanie?

      Nice try, dickweed.

    3. “Hey conservatives! I know that we never hide our contempt for you, and don’t make any secret of the fact that we regard you as subhuman stupid rubes, but now we want you to help us. We’re trying to burn your society to the ground and overthrow the government you legitimately and legally elected, and the cops are stopping us! And you guys have guns and know-how, right? How come you aren’t helping us, so that we can reward you by putting you in gulags when we win? How come you aren’t willing to kill cops for us? Let’s you and him fight!”

      A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I’ve been hearing this one for a year now and it gets funnier every time.

  21. We’ve lost the soap box.

    We’ve lost the ballot box.

    They’re trying to take the jury box.

    There aren’t many boxes left, and I do not like where they will take us.

    1. The big problem is, should the switch be flipped and the guns go hot, we will never see a return of what we had. No matter who wins, we lose- our freedoms, our properties, our lives, and our sacred honor.
      After all, does it matter if your face is getting stomped by a boot on the left foot, or the right one?

        1. One has to do what one has to do to survive.
          But, we shouldn’t kid ourselves that it’s going to be a Constitutional Reset, or that this will Make Everything Better. Our orignal Revolution was very rare indeed, and Washingtons are even rarer.
          After all, the usual first act of a successful revolutionary government is shooting the revolutionaries. One may fight, suffer, and sacrifice, gain victory, and then still die on their knees.
          We’ll let the Che cosplayers pretend that Violent Revolution Makes All Things Bright and New.

          1. There comes a point when taking the bastards with us is worth it.

            And they’re stupid enough to keep pushing until they pass it.
            ———————————
            Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

          2. Ponder having to defend yourself with a firearm in an American urban center. It’s very unlikely that the local DEA will congratulate you on ‘taking out the trash’ while offering tips on better shot groupings.
            Instead, you’re probably going to get the full extent of expensive suck ala Zimmerman. Including lots of legal fees, 2 minute hates, doxxing, more expensive legal fees, and so on. It’s very very very unlikely that your life would go back to normal.
            But, you do what you have to do to survive, and to make sure your family survives.
            Just something to keep in mind if things go really bad.

        2. Number one, don’t plan on dying.
          Number two, if someone has to die, make the other bastard die for his beliefs. (Paraphrased from Patton.)
          Number three, the only way I’m taking a knee is to get under the other bastard’s guard.

        1. I don’t speak for him, but democracy is fragile, as is civilization. Current events bear this out. Entropy increases.

          In the last century and a half we saw an awful lot of nominal democracies, with constitutions in many cases based closely on our own, governed by dedicated, patriotic idealists, regress to jackboot states distinguished by snappy parades with lots of goose-stepping and soccer stadiums converted into execution centers for enemies of the state.

          We would be luckier than we deserve to get someone who rules with a hand as light as Franco’s or Pinochet’s, who kept the executions to a relative minimum and were merciful enough to permit domestic enemies to choose exile, instead of implementing Sippenhaft and wiping out entire extended families. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington aren’t in the running this time, nor is Napoleon. The alternative to a Franco isn’t James Madison. It’s to put on the Dead Kennedys, ’cause Tuol Sleng here we come.

          1. Pretty much what Nomen said. If you study revolutions, you find that the winning government tends to be based more on the personality of the successful leader, and not so much his ideology. And sadly, Washingtons are rare- very few people given a taste of power can pull a Cincinnatus, and hand it back. Power corrupts, and those leaders tend to turn into Maximum Leaders.
            As such, Maximum Leaders tend to not look well on potential threats to their power, so freedoms are quashed and revolutionaries shot lest they do it again.

  22. Regarding “Rules selectively applied are not rules at all. They are a shield for their cronies and a club against their enemies” there’s an interesting article on Stream that suggests the point of disparate enforcement is to emphasise the power differential – we rule, you suck.

    Some will be happy to embrace dhimmitude, grateful for whatever small mercies their woke overlord permit them. Still others will surrender their identity and join those in power – Islam’s assimilation of what was Christian North Africa and Middle East being the classic example.

    For those interested see: https://stream.org/for-our-leftist-elites-the-double-standards-meant-to-be-blatant-thats-the-point/

  23. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!”

    I never thought, even imagined in my worst nightmare, that I would be living in the American Inquisition.

    1. They won’t wear snappy red uniforms. 😛

      Speed and stealth aren’t likely, either. Persecution of the innocent, though, they’ve already got that down.

      “Nobody expects— Oh, bugger!”

  24. I’m sooo relieved to find that there are others who are awake to what is really happening. It’s pretty terrifying to realize we’ve been cut off from congregating in both the physical world and the virtual for all intents and purposes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

  25. our civilization just can’t handle the internet. it was all a big mistake! we could barely handle cars and freeways.

  26. Going along with heavy handed attempts to control the public squyare

    https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/dave-bautista-20g-offer-trump-manatee

    I’m not surprised that Bautista used this as an excuse to demonize conservatives. “If there’s not already a reward for the arrest and conviction of the low life scummy MAGATs that did this I’ll throw in $20,000.”

    Thing that never occurs to this Bautista is that the person who defaced that poor manatee was probably a leftist comparing Trump to being a slow, stupid, fat, grass-eating, water animal. It certainly wasn’t a conservative Trump supporter advertising for the President.

    1. No one here would do that. We know the last thing we’d hear would be a very miffed: “Hoooooooooooooooon….” 😮

  27. There is a technical solution on the horizon. The problem right now is that these bottlenecks companies have the technological means to control speech in the public square because of the way the internet and communications are set up. However, there is movement to make this more decentralized (IPFS, for instance). In the next few years, this will all come tumbling down for these people, just as it did for IBM, DEC, SGI, etc.

    The thing about these totalitarians is that in order to maintain control, they have to stop scientific and technologic advances that might hinder them. The USSR collapsed because they were afraid of allowing technology into the society. In 1990, roadmaps were still considered secret information, and using a mimeograph machine (which were already obsolete in the west) required the equivalent of a federal license, and every copy made had to be documented and reviewed by party officials.

    Of course that doesn’t help *now.* Conservatives need to establish a stronger subculture on the onion network to act as a safe(r) base of operations, and a place to retreat to as needed.

  28. Hey, anyone who reads this, and has a platform and a following – I have a thought. Since white men are the cause of all the world’s problems, why don’t we just walk away? Like John Galt asked – what would happen if Atlas just shrugged? Let’s just all put our tools down and walk away. If we truly add no value, as the left and media would have all believe, then the world will be a better place without us, right? Let’s do that.

  29. Larry said: “…“you don’t get off that easy” and that I can’t just recognize problems but I also have to supply solutions.”

    Well, speaking as a Canadian dealing with pretty much the same things y’all are dealing with in the USA (generally speaking anyway) today we have ANOTHER march, today, by certainly hundreds and probably a couple thousand people in Toronto protesting the Covid-19 lockdown. (Currently the Province of Ontario is under a house-arrest order, where we are all arrested at home, never to leave except for food or other activities deemed “essential.” So if you show up on the street, you gonna feel the heat.)

    Unlike the #BLM and #Antifa happy horseshit that we have seen all year long, where they cheerfully loot and mug people and the cops do nothing, the cops are very actively and violently blocking the people walking around downtown and arresting them.

    So, just to make it clear. BLM/Antifa/Indians: no arrests, no attacking the crowd etc. despite extensive arson and vandalism. Anti-lockdown demonstration: arrests.

    Antifa/BLM riots, lots of media coverage. Anti-lockdown marches? Zero coverage. Total media blackout. I’m hearing about it on blogs.

    Here’s a datum I’m not even hearing about on blogs, this is private back-channel chatter: The various police services in Ontario are suing the government over the enforcement orders they’ve been getting. The orders are ILLEGAL, and the cops don’t want to follow them.

    Not least because those same police services and individual officers are going to get sued for enforcing illegal and unconstitutional orders. (Yes, Canada does have one, no it isn’t much good, but even so they’ve managed to breach it.) When they finally get to court they are going to lose. Which will be -expensive-. So they’re suing the government first, to either make them back off or make it so the police services don’t get stuck holding the bag.

    Problem, clearly, is the Canadian government at the federal AND provincial level is both crooked and wildly out of control.

    Solution? Not too many good ones, are there?

    1. How many can they arrest before the jail fills up? 😀

      Just make sure they arrest the folks who can afford to occupy their jails from the inside for a couple of weeks. If they issue tickets, smile, and tear them up on the spot.
      ———————————
      “The Science Is Settled!!” we are told, again and again — but then ‘The Science!’ changes every week, and somehow it’s always exactly what the politicians need it to be.

      1. The object isn’t to put people in jail.
        The object is to put people into a category in which they have no rights, and the government can then reward or punish with impunity.
        You know,
        Slavery.

        1. That’s not THEIR objective, but if they are seen filling the jails with people whose only ‘crime’ was walking on a public street, everybody will see what they are. Once the jails are full, what will they do? How will they arrest people when they have no place to put them?

          And they have to provide jail uniforms, food and health care for all those political prisoners they hold. Cops working in the jail can’t be out on the street harassing people. Think like a professional, and overload their logistics.

          March all day, march all night. Keep them on overtime, awake and stressed. Push the system until it starts to break down.
          ———————————
          Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

          1. “And they have to provide jail uniforms, food and health care for all those political prisoners they hold. ”

            No they don’t. They’ll chain up the doors of the Skydome, push thousands of people inside and throw hot dogs in once in a while.

            And call it a “public health measure” to prevent the spread of Coronoa.

            Welcome to Canada, comrade. You left your human rights at the border.

    2. it is possible there is too much media, and people get upset when they are not covered by it. if we go back to local and regional newspapers, a few dozen national level magazines, maybe five tv stations on the rabbit ears tv, these american humans might become more civilized.

  30. ‘Rules selectively applied are not rules at all. They are a shield for their cronies and a club against their enemies.’

    Selective law enforcement is worse than having no law at all. Because it constrains the law-abiding and emboldens the lawless.

    ‘The object isn’t to put people in jail.’

    The object is to cow people into submission.

    ‘There comes a point when taking the bastards with us is worth it.’

    Because it may provide an object lesson for the tyrants. ‘ooh, Johnny and Abe and Steve bought it raiding that house for contraband arms. Maybe we should stop doing that.’ When you have nothing to lose, you might have everything to gain.

    ‘I didn’t start HATING the left until they started saying I deserved to be in a Death Camp for the petty crime of disagreeing with them.’

    It ain’t petty to them if they’re willing to send you to a Death Camp over it. Remember the apocryphal answer of a Jewish Concentration Camp survivor to an interviewer’s question; ‘when somebody tells you they mean to kill you, believe them.’

    Once the Supreme Court is packed IMO all bets are off., because gun confiscation is next on their list, ‘in the interest of public safety.’ (if they can successfully curtail ammo sales, it almost amounts to the same thing). The MSM is already pushing vast right-wing Neo-Nazi White Supremacist conspiracies to overthrow ‘our democracy’ to justify such actions along with censorship and surveillance.

    1. They seem hell bent on seeking out a pyrrhic victory, don’t they? You’d think they just secured a super majority in each chamber and record upsets in state legislatures and governorships.

      Already enough of their luminaries are speaking the language of revenge instead of reconciliation to make me think this is going to spiral out of control really quick.

      The incoming ruling class is shitting their pants over getting attacked by some morons from the cast of Animal House for an afternoon? I’m glad they got a taste of fear from all the violence they enabled and cheered for for the past year. They’ve locked everyone down and destroyed lives and demanded compliance to rules they’ve refused to follow. People who saw their local economies literally burn probably aren’t feeling a lot of pity for our perfumed political class.

      The amount of restraint being exercised right now should be a relief to them, but they’re completely unaware of what’s out there, and it ain’t the “White Supremacist” bogeyman.

      1. It’s easy to think that this is all according to some sinister plan, by a consortium of Psychohistorians and other evil wise men.

        Sad truth is, it’s the bumbling of a bunch of fools with a mix of intentions who are making it up as they go along. They have an idea of how things work, but half is irrelevant and the other half is just plain wrong. It’s the political equivalent of someone poking around the innards of an old tube type tv (that’s plugged in) with their finger trying to find where the problem is. A lot will be shocked when they find it.

        1. Noam Chomsky, whom Leftists revere, has said, “intent can be inferred from predictable outcomes.”

          They’re evil and insane, not stupid.

          1. No, there’s plenty of stupid within their ranks- just ask one to talk in detail about energy production, to use one small example. Or a certain Shiklegruber when it came to military strategy during WWII.
            People are complicated, and do odd things, as any DM can tell you when the players jump the oh so obvious rails.
            While they may have evil intentions and sinister plans, well, so did GROFAZ.

          2. “Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice. And vice versa.”
            True. One could even make the point that into the other, the one leads.
            After all, malice is an emotional response, and emotions can blind people. Who then do really stupid things.

      2. I refer to the events of January 6th as ‘the unguided tour of the Capitol building’.

        Now they’ve turned Washington into East Berlin. I suspect they’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, and are just using an instance of civil disobedience as an excuse.

        The minefields and guard towers go in NEXT month.

    2. Yes, well, they’re not calling them “death camps’, they’re referring to them as reeducation and deprogramming centers. Which sounds to me as if they’re following the Chinese model totally; and I suspect that includes their fabulous health care program and 5 star meal plan for inductees too.

      1. So? The Nazis called them ‘work camps’. Arbeit Macht Frei!

        And now, Germany is proposing to send ‘quarantine breakers’ to ‘refugee camps’. Gee, all they have to do is re-open Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald…
        ———————————
        Those who do not remember the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes. Those who do remember are doomed to watch everybody else repeat them.

        1. Did anyone else find it ironic that Mutti Merkel condemned the social media censorship of the President? Perhaps she had a brief moment of self-awareness.

          …and yes, the Left in the US loves Mao T’se-Tung one hell of a lot more than the Chinese people ever did, and yearns to emulate all the very worst things about Chinese totalitarianism. “Social Credit” is coming here, soon, if they have their way. You don’t believe me? Even Google is still (for the moment) serving up search results on the first page for “Social Credit System” “USA” where all manner of soyboys are just salivating over the idea, which they will use to punish badthinkers–that is, us.

          I don’t know where this all will end, but I’m already pretty sure we’re not going to vote our way out of this.

  31. Yeah I’m subscribed to get blog notifications and I hardly ever *actually* get notified. Even email is getting shadow banned.

  32. if i write an article or editorial for Time Magazine 30 years ago and they do not publish it, they are not violating my first amendment rights. Twitter and Facebook do not owe anyone an account. These companies are not public squares, and a civilization that considers them to be such is inferior and doomed. Before the election Trump had 4 to 5 times the number of twitter followers than Biden. (Granted, many of their twitter followers may not have been actual supporters.) This is because people who think of twitter as a public square are inferior.

    1. Ah yes, the perfect expression of zombie libertarianism, trudging into the gulag while smugly asserting virtue.
      “The boot stamping you in the face forever is okay, because it’s a PRIVATELY OWNED boot.”

    2. For someone whose thinking of the public square is still mired in the 20th century, your unearned sense of superiority reeks.

      This silly idea doesn’t belong in adult conversation. These companies control a monopoly share of internet ad revenue and communications hosting, while acting in concert with one another to squeeze out competition.

      And the kicker is that they donate to one party and also give in-kind support by throttling news that’s negative to that same party. This isn’t some case study of free markets at work, but a political party that’s happy to outsource the suppression of speech and information to private companies so that they can maintain their fig leaf of constitutional propriety.

      So yeah, it’s the public square, and you should probably update your argument if you want to be taken seriously.

  33. It’s weird that Antifa can keep posting and conservatives can not. If we believe in the free market the obvious answer is that conservatives are not as smart as Antifa. Pretending that everything is due to some conspiracy is just proof conservatives are weaker than the average liberal.

    1. ‘If we believe in the free market the obvious answer is that conservatives are not as smart as Antifa.’

      Yeah, a vicious dog guarding a manger with snarls and bites is smarter than the man who built the manger.

    2. plenty of conservatives can post stuff. antifa is not centrally organized and has no real leader, but perhaps some of their members have been suspended. i have friends and relatives that post the same stuff Trump has. sometimes even stupider or more severe than the stuff Trump posted. They do not get banned, because very few people care who they are and they have no real influence. Certainly not enough influence to cause several hundred dummies and crazies to storm the capitol building.

  34. Interesting but what if a small minority takes up permanent residence in that public space. For example the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the large green square in front of the former Federal Parliament House. Do they get to own that land after excluding others from using that public space?

    1. Interesting how the right of conquest is now restricted to POCs. It’s now perfectly PC for the Han Chinese to colonize other lands and nations and exterminate their native inhabitants. Ditto Muslims. But possession at the time of European colonization is forever, even if purchased under a fair treaty or other legal means.

      1. The right of self-determination, too. Wilson’s Fourteen Points don’t apply to us, just everyone else.

  35. As we move to an autocratic state, in which protest and dissent is criminalised, we’ve already seen the use of space to disrupt free speech – kettling. This, combined with pre-screening of citizens gathering to protest which removes water bottles, gas masks, signs, scarfs etc, constricts the time and space in which citizens can protest government action or inaction. With facial recognition software, pervasive surveillance, and the ability to shut down local wi-fi and phone access, the authorities, directed by the State, can constrict even cyber-space.

    In an era of mass surveillance designed to control and criminalise dissent, we can certainly expect our public spaces to increasingly reflect governments’ need to restrict and oppress citizens’ rights to protest.

  36. Ah yes, the perfect expression of zombie libertarianism, trudging into the gulag while smugly asserting virtue.

  37. Interesting but what if a small minority takes up permanent residence in that public space. For example the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the large green square in front of the former Federal Parliament House.

  38. Spam alert – the 8:58 and 8:59 PM comments try look like legitimate comments, but their intent is to post links to their sites to get SEO.

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