Ro Khanna is a progressive congressman representing California's 17th District, the wealthiest Congressional district in the U.S. He's the Silicon Valley congressman, and his constituents are the coastal elites of the elites. But if you didn't know any of that, you might think Ro Khanna is a congressman from a place like Indiana. He wants to revitalize American industry, bring manufacturing back home, and really sound the alarm on who the digital revolution has left behind.
In fact, when you hear Ro Khanna make the case for the dignity of working people, the negative effects of globalization, and campaign with slogans like “make more stuff here,” and “buy American,” he kind of sounds like… Donald Trump.
That tells you everything you need to know about our current political moment and how the old rules about what is left and what is right, and which party represents the working class is totally up for grabs. And Khanna thinks that Democrats should be dominating on these issues.
On big tech, Khanna’s policies are not exactly the ones you'd imagine coming from the congressman whose neighbors are the creators of the next Googles and Facebooks. Not only does he think big tech needs to be broken up, but he also was one of the only Democrats to diverge from his party's censorious impulses, when he reached out directly to Twitter in 2020 to criticize its decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, as we reported in the Twitter Files story.
In an era where the Democratic Party and big tech often seem to be marching in lockstep, Khanna says, hold on. Maybe we should be skeptical of this kind of corporate power. And isn't that the core of what the Democratic Party is supposed to be about? And if not, when did that change and why?
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I strongly disagree with Bari drawing equivalence between the old woke censorial Twitter regime and Musk prohibiting accounts that broadcast the exact location of targeted individuals. The fact that Musk is asking her opinion on the issue is proof there is NO EQUIVALENCE. Im left to guess she is flexing for moral standing.
So firstly, here I am subscribing to yet another news source that is paywalled, this makes bout 60.00 per month I am spending to get a "balance" of the news from someone other than the MSM. The jury is still out as to whether it is worth it.
Having said that, Bari, I have much respect for your work over the past few years and feel that you are one of the few true journalists out there that at least let both sides speak. This podcast episode was both encouraging and frustrating to me. Bravo to Ro for being the sole elected official to call out Twitter on the consitutional free speech imperative. The frustration for me came when you asked him if he thought it was possible that the FBI had inproperly engaged in preventing the major platforms from allowing the Huter Biden story to be written. I find everyone sees this as so biased about the fact that Trump appointed the head of the FBI , which in this case has no bearing. No one every discusses the fact that by the last year of his presidency literally 75% of Trumps leadership, including the military, CIA, and the FBI had turned against him. So, with that fact in mind, if feels naive and lazy to give the FBI a pass on their telling the social networks what to do with the Hunter Biden Laptop as the majority of people in the administration at that time had nefarious intentions.
The other frustrating theme that is pervasive in literally every single reporting organization, including the neutral ones is the unveiling of the Twitter files is a conservative initiative. Ro said something to that extent in his discussing why the media doesn't speak about these findings, and the historic implications they have for many political elections. Why, when the truth is finally uncovered, in the actual screen shotted emails from the Twitter management, is it call Conservative propaganda. Can't the truth just be the truth? How is this climate ever going to normalize if when something is proven, factually to be the truth, the Twitter Files, the Covid Vaccine efficacy, Russia Gate, etc. that if it is not the progressive narrative it is just a right-wing talking point. Nothing will ever progress, and unity will never be achieved if everyone can't agree on the TRUTH. Hell, we can't even agree on what a woman is which leaves me hopeless for our future.
Lastly, just a comment on the idea that maybe AI could determine algorithmically how to decipher what is appropriate to publish on platforms such as Twitter. I am no expert, but machine learning has to learn it from somewhere. It still requires the system software to learn what is factual and what is not, and then it can make the decision. The phrase "garbage in garbage out" comes to mind. The perfect illustration of this is the criteria Twitter officials used to assign the word " US Patriot" in Trumps tweets to mean inciting violence. So those three people, who are completely biased politically, want to find something in his tweets to justify banning him so they create a new interpretation of the term "US Patriot". It comes down, in the end to the fact that the left has completely redefined and shaped the vocabulary to find chaos where there is none. And why is there a double standard. Antifa, The Squad, and many others on the left have literally called for violence in more blatant terms and yet their voices are elevated not censored.