Greetings from Tyler,
Heads spun around when we were told casually this week that agents of the administration were in close touch with social media companies to “flag disinformation.” If that startling admission turns out to be true, the courts have no choice but to weigh in. Assuming they’re just. Otherwise, the First Amendment ceases to exist. Freedom of speech will be an historical phenomenon. But the social media censors, now admitted as being in cahoots with government propagandists, don’t exactly have a perfect record.
You just might be a “dangerous extremist” if you’ve studied up on Dr. Fauci. According to our official lecturers, people that believe the last presidential election was not strictly on the up and up represent the greatest threat since the Civil War. Books and articles make the most sensational claims about Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump and whoever might believe a word of what they say. Now there are tell-all “insider” books that purport to “prove” that Rudy and Trump cooked up the “stolen election” lie. They call it the Big Lie (the term was used by an earlier fascist dictatorship), and if you should believe such blatantly obvious falsehoods, you might be a “dangerous extremist.” The addled impostor himself used that language this week. He surely doesn’t know of its history.
Given the new set of righteous “values” coming down the official pike, it is reasonable to wonder if everything you believe and know from life experience isn’t somehow “extreme” in the eyes of those who count. Much of the media propaganda is telling us what is proven scientifically and what we’d better “stand for,” lest we be accused of being extreme and therefore “dangerous.” Who wants that label? Nobody wants to be tagged with unsavory epithets. Therefore, there are certain things you must believe or condemn. Otherwise…
You notice that there is this flood of emergencies. Not issues you’d like to see resolved, but seemingly an urgent need to add to the problems thinking people are worried about. This is life and death! we’re told. The Mad magazine presidential candidate, who is ever so proud to be married to another man, says they can solve global warming when they requisition some three trillion nonexistent dollars. It’s human infrastructure. That’s a term we’re not familiar with, but that’s a big part of the profligate spending that’s about to be added to a debt that’s already so out of control nobody even wants to speculate as to how that will ever be resolved. Our grandkids will understand, surely.
But the reviled former President Trump is suddenly on the lips of every reporter. He’s even worse than they thought. Suddenly there’s a swarm of insider books and newspaper articles proving that all claims you may come across from time to time were cooked up by a drunken Rudy and unhinged Trump when they realized the election was going sideways. It’s perfect timing too. It just happens to hit as the Arizona election audits are to be aired. If you’re the least bit interested in any of this, you might be a danger to society.
Could we at least wait for the result of the Arizona audits before the name-calling commences? For some reason no court, including the Supreme Court, would hear a case. It didn’t matter if there was eyewitness testimony, it didn’t matter if there was evidence on security camera recordings. It seems none of the states that were concerned about the way the election was handled had “standing.” Sure enough, no court has seen evidence of election fraud. How could they, having refused to consider any case?
The attempt by the State of Texas to positively identify people who vote (according to public statements), is as despicable as Jim Crow laws and segregation. Someone who finds themselves on the wrong side of the government mandated opinions on any of these subjects is a suspicious and dangerous individual that needs official scrutiny. Even our best attempts to avoid the idiocy being presented with a condescending tone aren’t enough. The habit of being informed is nearly impossible to break given the reach of mainstream media to every conceivable device. There’s no escape this side of the wilderness.
Everything under the sun falls under the accusation of racism. If laws require voters to identify themselves, how racist is that? Not intentionally turning the mainstream argument, delivered with angry vitriol on its head, isn’t it insulting to suggest that there are groups of people unable to prove their identity?
The UN is being tasked with investigating racism in the United States. We can hardly wait! No doubt the various committees and commissions of the UN have the best interests of American citizens in mind. What are these global institutions doing in our business? They haven’t themselves proven to be corrupt to an absurd degree? You’d have to be completely blind not to see that the wrecking crew in D. C. intends to hook us up with international and global concerns. These things need to be universal after all.
Saving the planet, instituting communism, partnering with organizations dedicated to the downfall of the United States. Won’t it be great? Your guess is as good as mine as to why a majority seem to buy into the fear, the false numbers. And here they come again. There’s as much or more Corona-virus scaremongering as last year. Today’s paper (in Tyler) got with the program and reported hundreds of cases in every little berg in the area. This, mind you, is the much more contagious Delta variant, run for your lives. Put on your masks, whether they do any good or not. Show the world that you’ll do whatever they say, you’re that afraid.
But there is one new wrinkle in the current news. That is that even people who have been “fully vaccinated” are getting the virus. Is that misinformation too? Has this been reported before the masters of information had a say? Good luck getting the rest of the population to submit with this kind of information swirling around. Maybe we’ll find out that it’s not true after all. Maybe the social media companies don’t yet have their marching orders. The spokes-lady casually admits that the government is urging social media companies to “do more,” but it seems they’re already running roughshod over freedom of speech at the government’s behest. Maybe someone should sue! (Someone just did.) If the courts are not just, it won’t even matter.
For a year it was verboten to suspect the virus escaped the Wuhan Lab, and the social media companies invented algorithms to make sure nobody got away with making that claim. Now the censors have learned the virus may well have escaped the Wuhan lab. So maybe those who dared suspect the truth and were “banned” were right after all. But what does it matter where it came from, or even if Fauci was responsible for the whole thing. We’ve got this predicament regardless. Here it comes again. It’s looking like a permanent excuse to run everybody’s lives. Barely had the report been released about the rasper in chief mumbling “door to door” but squads are making their way through neighborhoods with arguments and needles at the ready. Resist them and you will get reported as a danger to society. You don’t suppose they’re overplaying their hand?
Mark Armstrong
