Take it from someone whose family fled Communism: Freedom of speech, along with due process, is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. Twitter’s censorship is antithetical to the values that made America a superpower. I’m glad to see these files being put out. I'm glad that writers like me can freely express our opinions online on sites…
Take it from someone whose family fled Communism: Freedom of speech, along with due process, is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. Twitter’s censorship is antithetical to the values that made America a superpower. I’m glad to see these files being put out. I'm glad that writers like me can freely express our opinions online on sites like Substack. It reminds me and other immigrants to this great country that democracy is still worth fighting for.
Everyone talks around the horror driven reality of the monstrous IMF/WEF/CCP juggernaut responsible for thought crime and free speech arrests in Great Britain and the assault on farmers in the Netherlands. British councils are now attempting to impose travel permits limiting movement and restricting citizens to designated 'zones'. How long can we ignore reports on the distorted application of the newly expanded euthanasia laws in Canada? Social credit scores? Where exactly is the line of demarcation between the free man and the slow boiled toad in the worldwide corporate controlled bureaucratic surveillance state?
Their price gouging, supply chain manipulating, we'll reduce the world to a cinder if we don't get our way reality makes it clears that the thugs have compromised American elected political leadership. And, let me say this again: The avarice of sycophants like Gates, Schwab and the Clinton's has moved the political squarely into the pathological. Insane megalomaniacal narcissism is enslaving the world. It represents a soulless, anti-human sterility, attempting the reduction of human beings to cyber thingdom. It is the same feudal, cold in the head, heartless, totalitarian, life destroying, cheap labor, resource exploiting, no consequences for me grift that has been murdering us for centuries. This time it is masked as "we love you and the planet so much" environmentalism. The LIE is totally transparent and yet--there it is. How?
We have entered a new age and it is demanding a new Consciousness. The vision of a viable human future is no longer beyond, it is within each of us. And we are in an open war. The fight is and has always been on Consciousness. America is ill and so are Americans. Fentanyl, gutted industry,a looted economy, homelessness, political graft and the ten thousand other cuts slow bleeding our prosperity and future can only be stopped by us. If we use Orwell and Solzhenitsyn to pinch the American psyche in our fight against the ascending totalitarian numbness, it is also time to reconnect and feed ourselves, and each other, with Wang Wei, Sandberg and the deep nourishment of the human culture countless people across the world, and across our living history, gave their lives to create. We are the answer we seek. And, the cavalry ain't coming.
The American Constitution and the Bill of Rights it contains is the only engine of human survival.
Act while you still have one.
Marxist 'woke' is the lipstick on a pig named Totalitarian Finance.
Sorry to put a damper on things, Sheluyang. So I take it you're somewhat new here (or not). Okay. If you were to go back I'd say eighty to a hundred years ago right here in free speech lovin' USA, you would find publishers like William Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce (and there were many more..) who decided by fiat who to publish and who not to, what to report and what not to, what to conceal and what not to, who readily acceded to US Gov't requests to slant their political stories or to not publish stories at all. And Americans at that time all bought it, hook, line and sinker.
I do not condone that. I decry that.
But the point I'm attempting to make is that what we're seeing at Twitter/Facebook is nothing new, or surprising, nor (as so many here are saying, breathlessly), the end of free speech as we know it. It is not. We've seen this all before. And we survived it.
I would go as far to say that we are better off now than ever before because of the radical and disruptive nature of the Internet and social media itself. There's more free speech now than before in this country's history simply because there are far more (exponentially more) media platforms to peruse, use, read, and join. With little to no gatekeepers, unlike in the 20th century.
We had a three channel universe as recently as only forty years ago. There are thousands of channels now.
Feel free to express your opinions. Feel free to expect that you can in the future. We're doing it here right now. That's a positive, not a negative.
I recall in the early days of chat rooms, some of the big media outlets had discussion forums on their websites. The networks soon learned of a vociferous public body who was well aware of their slanted narratives. There were many posts directing criticism at the journalists themselves, inviting them to engage in the public forum to discuss certain, er, well "discrepencies" between events personally witnessed by participants, and the reports coming down from the media. An actual comment from a reporter was extremely rare. For the most part the comments were officially ignored.
Eventually, all of the networks shut down the public forums on their sites, often without any warning or notice to participants. One day a forum was there, the next it was gone. No comment or parting message. Whole groups of kindred spirits simply cast asunder like chaff. That was when I realized that the networks knew they were wrong, and that public forum would be the best means to expose Media Bias. I just never expected it would take this long. This was 20 or so years ago.
I politely would like to point out in 1850 New York City had 53 newspapers. By 1900 it still had 15 and that these spanned the political and social landscape.
Yes in the 1970s there were the 3 big networks and PBS for news so it was limited in choice.
What I think you fail to account for is that both newspapers in 1800s and 1900s came out once to at most twice a day and with that space limit there was a limit on how much yellow journalism was possible. Sure you had Hearst pushing war, but only once a day.
In the 1970s Walter Cronkite had 1-2 hours a day for news so even the most important stories got maybe 10 minutes a day. For the most part Cronkite tried to not comment on the news - not perfectly but much better than today.
Then came 24 hour news with CNN. And since you had 24 hours to fill, the stories got more and more air time and the anchors got more time to talk about them and present more than just the facts.
I do not think we are better off today because we have more and more outlets of news at our fingertips from all sides and are constantly barraged by mixed stories and opinions. I think it is making us into Roddy McDowall in a Clockwork Orange, creating emotional reactions in us that are outside our controls. We are being made tribal by what we choose to read or watch.
My hope is Free Press is a place I can come to for news and not feel like my eyelids are being held open with pins forcing me to listen to the left or the right.
I am not a fan of the biased aspects of social media (and mass media, as well), it is a large problem (and growing) - and miss often the gatekeeping of an earlier era.
I agree with this and believe it to be factually accurate. However, thew new tools and technology available today makes a biased thumb on the scale much more dangerous and impactful.
Lee Morris, but newspapers that long ago (thinking 100-150 y/a) were often of a similar model to UK papers. They were sponsored by political organizations with a clear bias. They pandered and propagandized. The movement toward straight news started around 80 years ago (that doesn't mean they were content neutral - clearly they were not). That newspapers aspired to objective truth in reporting as their business model is the exception not the rule. They still claim that model but routinely ignore it.
I agree that the media has always had a bias or a financial interest in what to publish or what to hold back, but readers and viewers were mostly in the dark and didn't question the integrity of the NY Times or CBS. Ignorance is bliss. However, now that we are inundated with the good, the bad, and the ugly 24/7 it's caused us to question all of it. The reality that maybe much of what we are reading or seeing is only half the truth or possibly even "fake" is waking us up to be more discerning.
I was born in Los Angeles in 1947, and lived all of my life in Calif but now own another home in a safer, more red state as a Plan B. LA is a dystopia which people are fleeing. Or like me have a Plan B home in a red state. I know this from talking to countless friends and others who have fled or are preparing to flee. And reading the understated mainstream stats. I have seen much too much including talks with very senior LA police officers. I have many friends who have fled totalitarian countries, and they all confirm America is heading swiftly into totalitarianism. Only these woke tyrants have enough control of the means of propaganda and tech to make someone as bright as you think all will be well.
My hero is my wife's father who insisted his very frightened young wife escape the Warsaw ghetto with him - just in time. Most Jews in Europe simply could not believe how serious the situation was. The control the woke have over America is overwhelming. If freedom returns to us, it will be after an awful struggle. But it is no longer very likely.
Those Old Boys who insisted that the new Constitution have a written Bill of Rights were well aware of its importance, and were it not for the First Amendment (backed by the Second), we would I believe already be beyond hope - another of Solzhenitsyn's gulags. My reading suggests that you are right on the money about the European Jews' innocence about the Nazi plan for them. Thanks to modern communication - Substack and this blog in particular - many of us now are not.
It is possible to wake up the masses. As I browse the Internets each day I see the ship slowly turning 'round. Will it be in time? Don't know.
All is not well, I concur . And the new mayor of LA has a huge mountain to climb. As do other mayors of large cities.
I look at it as a pendulum. It’s swinging left now, especially re crime, homelessness, immigration and drug abuse.
Make no mistake, millions of liberals feel the same as you. I do.
The pendulum has no choice but to slowly swing back right. And it will, because citizens no matter their political stripe will not accept anymore what’s happening on the ground.
I am not as pessimistic as you, but I respect where you’re coming from.
Lee-- I think you may be right. I, a former liberal Democrat, have become a moderate Democrat due to the failings of my liberal state government. I have also seen such sadness on the streets of LA and such horror in many of the schools where I work in Watts and Compton. So my pendulum has swung, like many of my friends.
I share a bit of the same feeling since I live in LA and am looking to move soon. When I was at CVS 6 weeks ago, it was robbed right in front of all of us and the young security guard. It was 4 PM. The manager told us that it happens "every day." But it's too dangerous for any of them to confront the thieves because they may have a gun. Typically, they lose $30,000 worth of merchandise a week. Then-- a couple of weeks ago, it happened again while I was waiting to pick up a prescription. A guy (looking like the kid from Breaking Bad) came in grabbed boxes of some meds. then stumbled and fell onto the floor and scrambled to pick the 30 or so boxes and stuff them into his pants and hoodie, while we all just watched not sure what to do. Myself and the others waiting in line commented that life is getting much worse if this is the norm.
My favorite Jewish Justice said it perfectly: “...sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman” ~~~ 1913 Harper’s Weekly article, entitled “What Publicity Can Do.”
It takes the clarity of vision from someone who was raised outside the U.S. to wake us up, or at least some of us, from our woke stupor. The mainstream media is panicking: what if people thought for themselves? What if their readers found more credible sources of information? What if the shepherds of thought began to lose their flock?
Yeah. It's sad to see America slide into authoritarianism after hundreds of years as a proud democracy. "Cancel culture" is just the beginning of America's own woke Cultural Revolution.
Take it from someone whose family fled Communism: Freedom of speech, along with due process, is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. Twitter’s censorship is antithetical to the values that made America a superpower. I’m glad to see these files being put out. I'm glad that writers like me can freely express our opinions online on sites like Substack. It reminds me and other immigrants to this great country that democracy is still worth fighting for.
Everyone talks around the horror driven reality of the monstrous IMF/WEF/CCP juggernaut responsible for thought crime and free speech arrests in Great Britain and the assault on farmers in the Netherlands. British councils are now attempting to impose travel permits limiting movement and restricting citizens to designated 'zones'. How long can we ignore reports on the distorted application of the newly expanded euthanasia laws in Canada? Social credit scores? Where exactly is the line of demarcation between the free man and the slow boiled toad in the worldwide corporate controlled bureaucratic surveillance state?
Their price gouging, supply chain manipulating, we'll reduce the world to a cinder if we don't get our way reality makes it clears that the thugs have compromised American elected political leadership. And, let me say this again: The avarice of sycophants like Gates, Schwab and the Clinton's has moved the political squarely into the pathological. Insane megalomaniacal narcissism is enslaving the world. It represents a soulless, anti-human sterility, attempting the reduction of human beings to cyber thingdom. It is the same feudal, cold in the head, heartless, totalitarian, life destroying, cheap labor, resource exploiting, no consequences for me grift that has been murdering us for centuries. This time it is masked as "we love you and the planet so much" environmentalism. The LIE is totally transparent and yet--there it is. How?
We have entered a new age and it is demanding a new Consciousness. The vision of a viable human future is no longer beyond, it is within each of us. And we are in an open war. The fight is and has always been on Consciousness. America is ill and so are Americans. Fentanyl, gutted industry,a looted economy, homelessness, political graft and the ten thousand other cuts slow bleeding our prosperity and future can only be stopped by us. If we use Orwell and Solzhenitsyn to pinch the American psyche in our fight against the ascending totalitarian numbness, it is also time to reconnect and feed ourselves, and each other, with Wang Wei, Sandberg and the deep nourishment of the human culture countless people across the world, and across our living history, gave their lives to create. We are the answer we seek. And, the cavalry ain't coming.
The American Constitution and the Bill of Rights it contains is the only engine of human survival.
Act while you still have one.
Marxist 'woke' is the lipstick on a pig named Totalitarian Finance.
Sorry to put a damper on things, Sheluyang. So I take it you're somewhat new here (or not). Okay. If you were to go back I'd say eighty to a hundred years ago right here in free speech lovin' USA, you would find publishers like William Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce (and there were many more..) who decided by fiat who to publish and who not to, what to report and what not to, what to conceal and what not to, who readily acceded to US Gov't requests to slant their political stories or to not publish stories at all. And Americans at that time all bought it, hook, line and sinker.
I do not condone that. I decry that.
But the point I'm attempting to make is that what we're seeing at Twitter/Facebook is nothing new, or surprising, nor (as so many here are saying, breathlessly), the end of free speech as we know it. It is not. We've seen this all before. And we survived it.
I would go as far to say that we are better off now than ever before because of the radical and disruptive nature of the Internet and social media itself. There's more free speech now than before in this country's history simply because there are far more (exponentially more) media platforms to peruse, use, read, and join. With little to no gatekeepers, unlike in the 20th century.
We had a three channel universe as recently as only forty years ago. There are thousands of channels now.
Feel free to express your opinions. Feel free to expect that you can in the future. We're doing it here right now. That's a positive, not a negative.
There are far too many of us.
I recall in the early days of chat rooms, some of the big media outlets had discussion forums on their websites. The networks soon learned of a vociferous public body who was well aware of their slanted narratives. There were many posts directing criticism at the journalists themselves, inviting them to engage in the public forum to discuss certain, er, well "discrepencies" between events personally witnessed by participants, and the reports coming down from the media. An actual comment from a reporter was extremely rare. For the most part the comments were officially ignored.
Eventually, all of the networks shut down the public forums on their sites, often without any warning or notice to participants. One day a forum was there, the next it was gone. No comment or parting message. Whole groups of kindred spirits simply cast asunder like chaff. That was when I realized that the networks knew they were wrong, and that public forum would be the best means to expose Media Bias. I just never expected it would take this long. This was 20 or so years ago.
I politely would like to point out in 1850 New York City had 53 newspapers. By 1900 it still had 15 and that these spanned the political and social landscape.
Yes in the 1970s there were the 3 big networks and PBS for news so it was limited in choice.
What I think you fail to account for is that both newspapers in 1800s and 1900s came out once to at most twice a day and with that space limit there was a limit on how much yellow journalism was possible. Sure you had Hearst pushing war, but only once a day.
In the 1970s Walter Cronkite had 1-2 hours a day for news so even the most important stories got maybe 10 minutes a day. For the most part Cronkite tried to not comment on the news - not perfectly but much better than today.
Then came 24 hour news with CNN. And since you had 24 hours to fill, the stories got more and more air time and the anchors got more time to talk about them and present more than just the facts.
I do not think we are better off today because we have more and more outlets of news at our fingertips from all sides and are constantly barraged by mixed stories and opinions. I think it is making us into Roddy McDowall in a Clockwork Orange, creating emotional reactions in us that are outside our controls. We are being made tribal by what we choose to read or watch.
My hope is Free Press is a place I can come to for news and not feel like my eyelids are being held open with pins forcing me to listen to the left or the right.
Good comment.
I am not a fan of the biased aspects of social media (and mass media, as well), it is a large problem (and growing) - and miss often the gatekeeping of an earlier era.
Point well made, Tom.
I agree with this and believe it to be factually accurate. However, thew new tools and technology available today makes a biased thumb on the scale much more dangerous and impactful.
Bias at scale is a whole, new situation.
But we could not have had this discussion on old Twitter, that's the point.
Lee Morris, but newspapers that long ago (thinking 100-150 y/a) were often of a similar model to UK papers. They were sponsored by political organizations with a clear bias. They pandered and propagandized. The movement toward straight news started around 80 years ago (that doesn't mean they were content neutral - clearly they were not). That newspapers aspired to objective truth in reporting as their business model is the exception not the rule. They still claim that model but routinely ignore it.
Agreed.
I agree that the media has always had a bias or a financial interest in what to publish or what to hold back, but readers and viewers were mostly in the dark and didn't question the integrity of the NY Times or CBS. Ignorance is bliss. However, now that we are inundated with the good, the bad, and the ugly 24/7 it's caused us to question all of it. The reality that maybe much of what we are reading or seeing is only half the truth or possibly even "fake" is waking us up to be more discerning.
You are spot on. It has always been like this. Where do you think the term yellow journalism came from?
But so much of the response to the Twitter Files is close to apocalyptic (at least here). I'm just saying we'll survive, freedoms intact.
I was born in Los Angeles in 1947, and lived all of my life in Calif but now own another home in a safer, more red state as a Plan B. LA is a dystopia which people are fleeing. Or like me have a Plan B home in a red state. I know this from talking to countless friends and others who have fled or are preparing to flee. And reading the understated mainstream stats. I have seen much too much including talks with very senior LA police officers. I have many friends who have fled totalitarian countries, and they all confirm America is heading swiftly into totalitarianism. Only these woke tyrants have enough control of the means of propaganda and tech to make someone as bright as you think all will be well.
My hero is my wife's father who insisted his very frightened young wife escape the Warsaw ghetto with him - just in time. Most Jews in Europe simply could not believe how serious the situation was. The control the woke have over America is overwhelming. If freedom returns to us, it will be after an awful struggle. But it is no longer very likely.
Those Old Boys who insisted that the new Constitution have a written Bill of Rights were well aware of its importance, and were it not for the First Amendment (backed by the Second), we would I believe already be beyond hope - another of Solzhenitsyn's gulags. My reading suggests that you are right on the money about the European Jews' innocence about the Nazi plan for them. Thanks to modern communication - Substack and this blog in particular - many of us now are not.
It is possible to wake up the masses. As I browse the Internets each day I see the ship slowly turning 'round. Will it be in time? Don't know.
Your post is heartfelt, Dennies.
All is not well, I concur . And the new mayor of LA has a huge mountain to climb. As do other mayors of large cities.
I look at it as a pendulum. It’s swinging left now, especially re crime, homelessness, immigration and drug abuse.
Make no mistake, millions of liberals feel the same as you. I do.
The pendulum has no choice but to slowly swing back right. And it will, because citizens no matter their political stripe will not accept anymore what’s happening on the ground.
I am not as pessimistic as you, but I respect where you’re coming from.
Lee-- I think you may be right. I, a former liberal Democrat, have become a moderate Democrat due to the failings of my liberal state government. I have also seen such sadness on the streets of LA and such horror in many of the schools where I work in Watts and Compton. So my pendulum has swung, like many of my friends.
I share a bit of the same feeling since I live in LA and am looking to move soon. When I was at CVS 6 weeks ago, it was robbed right in front of all of us and the young security guard. It was 4 PM. The manager told us that it happens "every day." But it's too dangerous for any of them to confront the thieves because they may have a gun. Typically, they lose $30,000 worth of merchandise a week. Then-- a couple of weeks ago, it happened again while I was waiting to pick up a prescription. A guy (looking like the kid from Breaking Bad) came in grabbed boxes of some meds. then stumbled and fell onto the floor and scrambled to pick the 30 or so boxes and stuff them into his pants and hoodie, while we all just watched not sure what to do. Myself and the others waiting in line commented that life is getting much worse if this is the norm.
LA is simply not sustainable in a civilized mode. Stay safe.
True.
My favorite Jewish Justice said it perfectly: “...sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman” ~~~ 1913 Harper’s Weekly article, entitled “What Publicity Can Do.”
It takes the clarity of vision from someone who was raised outside the U.S. to wake us up, or at least some of us, from our woke stupor. The mainstream media is panicking: what if people thought for themselves? What if their readers found more credible sources of information? What if the shepherds of thought began to lose their flock?
Well said.
Yeah. It's sad to see America slide into authoritarianism after hundreds of years as a proud democracy. "Cancel culture" is just the beginning of America's own woke Cultural Revolution.