Now, by and large this is harmful. It creates problems where none exist. At the same time, of all of the things one figures out one can fear, some of them are real. As they said in the 60’s, just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
I read yesterday that Google–the most powerful, effective, successful search engine in the world by a large margin–was returning for the search result “Presidential candidates” (or something close to that), the names of Hillary, Bernie, and the Green candidate. Maybe even Gary Johnson. But it was not returning Trump’s name. They said this was a “technical glitch”. I won’t even attempt sarcasm: if you believe that, you are a fucking idiot.
Today I read that Twitter is flushing Trump’s fundraising Tweets down the Memory Hole. It is “disappearing” them the way people disappear in Fascist regimes of the leftist and rightist variety.
Many years ago I recall reading that a San Francisco newspaper was covertly hiding conservative commentators, but in such a way that the poster could see his or her own post, but nobody else could. They didn’t know they were being censored.
Many years ago, when many more people valued principle, honesty, and true civic engagement, debates might happen in the editorial pages of papers everyone read. They might happen on Public Access TV, as in Firing Line. Watch as much of this, for example, as you have time for:https://youtu.be/Y021WAdUlW8
They are trying to do it right, to ask hard questions, and trying to find answers.
Our public dialogue in the past 20 years has been channeled into digital form, and into ideological ghettos. It is quite possible to receive an education up to the Doctoral level and NEVER encounter in a pristine form true Conservatism, to never understand economics from a conservative perspective, to never really GET the point of the Constitution, and for that matter, to EVER truly understand the real problems besetting blacks in this country. You read about people who speak on their behalf, or claim to, and who in most cases benefit politically from so doing.
As far as the Left is concerned. every conservative website could drop of the face of the Earth tomorrow, and it would take them some time to notice, and then they would be HAPPY.
Here is the thing: bigotry is assuming the worst of people who are different than you. Our educational and media system have evolved to present a wall of noise demonizing conservatives without ever explaining them, without ever understanding them. Our educational system and media–virtually all of them–are HIGHLY bigoted, highly prejudiced, highly colored by hatred and mistrust of people do not think like them.
As a cultural form, Leftism removes people from their historical cultural context, one of whose features is a GENUINE Liberalism, of the sort seen on the Firing Line. Buckley grants a voice to dissent, in order to further understanding. When we engage in dialogue, we humanize one another.
Where we have arrived at–and this has been the entirety of the intent of the moral pessimism and more or less overt practical nihilism which I have called Cultural Sadeism–is that a large section of our country has been separated from its history, and been reintroduced into a de facto cult. They are told daily that they are moral ones, the honest ones, the good ones, and everyone else evil.
And we are seeing practically what this has made possible in recent days. The DNC Chair is forced to step down for gross ethical violations, and immediately put back on the payroll of the woman on whose behalf she was cheating, and the media accepts this. Many Democrats accept this. Indeed, they have accepted as their candidate a woman who is clearly corrupt.
Logically, then, if Hillary wins, why would she not break the law to get Drudge off the internet? Infowars, Breitbart, Front Page Magazine. We are already seeing private corporations using their power to silence people solely on the basis of their opinions. All that has to happen for mass censorship–the consequence of which will of course be an open path to tyranny and the final vitiation of our Constitution, and everything good about our noble experiment–is to label non-conforming sites “hateful”, and to make “hate speech” a crime.
I really believe that if Hillary wins, the last wall will fall. She will appoint activist left wing judges who will rubber stamp her tyranny, believing themselves principled and moral in the process, and that result will be immediately supported by all the information outlets who are presently doing so much to erode free speech on their own.
I do wonder how Google justifies such behavior. How Twitter does it. How all the complicit media do it.
Leftism is a mental illness which seeks in its early stages, rhetorically, the rectification of wrongs, but which in the process eradicates all capacity for true moral reasoning.
As they say on the Firing Line, Sowell’s research, published 35 years ago, was greeted with universal hostility by the Left, even though it should have been empowering. It said to blacks: you can fix this situation. It is in your control. That was not what their white handlers wanted to hear. That is not what racial demogogues like Jesse Jackson wanted to hear.
Whatever else Donald Trump is, he is not a part of this process. He is not someone who is going to shut down public debate. He is not someone who is going to impose tyranny on the American people. As a general rule, and this certainly applies here, you can easily see what the Left plans by what they accuse genuine Liberals of wanting.
We are on a precipice. Liberty, historically, is always abolished. There are always greedy, hateful, lying, power mongers who destroy it.
To vote for anyone but Trump in this election is, in my view, lunacy, even for those who think they will benefit in the short term from Hillary. Tyrants cannot be loyal to all. Heads always roll, usually for not thinking exactly like you are told to think, which most people cannot do.