Our Newfound Love For Censorship

 Written a year ago today and sadly even more appropriate:

A bit of advice: If you pull out a weapon to beat your enemy with, a weapon you are unfamiliar with that feels awkward in your hands, don’t be surprised if your enemy takes if from you and beats your ass with it.

 

Another piece of advice: If you’re starting a fight with the people to the right of you, don’t start clubbing people on your left, too. It puts you in a very exposed position.

 

This is advice the Democratic Party would do well to heed. The weapon in this case is censorship, and they are using it to bash those both on their right and their left. They may think they have control over the weapon, but I can’t help feeling they have a surprise in store.

 

Of course, the Democrats aren’t actually wielding the weapon themselves, they’ve called upon thugs (AKA the intelligence agencies and NATO-related think tanks) to deliver the beatings, thugs already inclined to do what the Democrats are asking them to do. 

 

What the hell are the Democrats thinking? That’s like making a deal with the mafia in order to get rid of some local street punk (AKA Donald Trump). It’s like being a black man calling the police to settle an argument with his white neighbor. In the South. In the 50’s. Do they really think the people providing arms to ISIS and Al Qaeda are on their side? Do they think the United Arab Emirates, a million dollar donor to the Atlantic Council (the ones who get to decide who gets censored) cares about women’s rights? Do they think Burisma, the Ukranian energy company that hired Hunter Biden and another major contributor to the Atlantic Council, is interested in open and honest government? Do they think BP and Chevron (also major AC donors) are interested in protecting legitimate climate change science? Do they think the CIA is interested in protecting transgendered people from being bullied online? Democrats have unsheathed a weapon that is too heavy for them to control. And they just haven’t gotten it through their thick skulls yet.

 

But the time will come when their thick skulls will be bludgeoned by the same weapon they foolishly imagined would protect them. And though I and many others on the left will speak up in their defense when that day comes, we will by that time have no platform upon which we can voice our support for those who are being censored. On that day they will learn in earnest the lesson Martin Niemöller sought to teach the world not all that long ago.

 

But for the moment voices are daily being suppressed while many who once wore F*CK CENSORSHIP T-shirts embrace and excuse it. As long as they can still listen to NWA, they still feel like they’re standing for something. Because only censorship can save us from being corrupted by the sight of Bernie Sanders in a speedo. Only censorship can save us from a hillbilly uprising. Only censorship can save us from the anti-vaxxers and the anti-maskers. Only censorship can save us from bad-faith actors and those who just don’t know enough to not argue with the benevolent individuals who sit above us and whose goal it is to make life better for all of us. 

 

I remember a decade ago—how very long ago it does seem and how very different a world—when the most immediate concern for a Wisconsinite such as myself was our Republican Governor who was dismantling the political environment as we knew it. At one point, a certain section of the University of Wisconsin’s “The Wisconsin Idea” was omitted, the Walker administration would say accidentally. The words read “In all lines of academic investigation it is of the utmost importance that the investigator should be absolutely free to follow the indications of truth wherever they may lead. Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere we believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.” A decade ago I feared that idea’s greatest threat was from the right. 

 

Funny how we could tolerate nearly 60 years of JFK conspiracy theories and 20 years of 9/11 theories, only to come undone over some anti-vaxxers, some puppy pictures on Facebook, and some accusations of a rigged election. You’ll recall that JFK conspiracy theorists were not merely claiming that the election was rigged but that a president was murdered. And yet nobody attempted to silence them. What is different now? Perhaps it is that the lies have become too big and too many to be propped up in any other way than by shutting down open communication.

 

Or maybe censorship and unelected government agencies are just what our democracy needs.

Two Paths Leading Backwards

Let me suggest that it is impossible to have just one bad political party for any length of time. If you had a good party and a bad party, everyone would vote for the good party and the bad party would be forced to be competitive if it wanted to survive. The good party would push the dividing line further towards the bad party, forcing the weaker of the two to incorporate stances held by the winning party. At some point, the dividing line would land roughly halfway between the will of the people.

One political party can move the line left or right, but it takes both of them, one standing at either end, to raise or lower the bar. What you are witnessing now is a limbo contest of epic proportions.

I used to vote for Democrats, not because they were what I wanted but because they were at least moving forward. As someone who defined himself as progressive, that was the logical choice. Or at least the justifiable compromise. But with the advent of Bill Clinton, it was pretty obvious that they were no longer even standing still, they were going backwards. All right, it wasn’t so obvious to me, since I voted for the man, at least the first time around. But doing so made me feel cheap and used the morning after, an effect he had on a few others, I imagine. I don’t remember the particular incident, but I truly remember in the first week after him becoming president, the regret sinking in. Sure, presidents once they’ve transitioned from candidate to office always disappoint, but this one really made me realize I had to change my behavior.

When someone can no longer identify with the party they have voted for all their lives, they typically switch to the other, but that is not a viable option in this case. Though Democrats have ceased to be Democrats and moved way further to the right, Republicans are still in the lead and running as if the devil himself was trying to overtake them.

You see, it doesn’t matter which side of the line you are on so much as where the line is. And if someone keeps dragging the line to the right and you follow along but do not cross it, that doesn’t make you a progressive. The very fact that you follow every time the line is positioned further to the right indicates you are not an answer nor an opposition.

But enough of the x axis, it is the y axis I’m more interested in. And the bar has been falling. It is continuing to fall. It is in the negatives now, retreating with no signs of abatement. And while each party is going backwards in its own special way, they are both doing so in tandem.

Conservatives are attempting to go back to the way it (never was but they believe it) used to be, for white and white-identifying people. Cultural myths are comforting, because they are both idyllic and simplistic. They want to go back to Mayberry, they want the little town that is not influenced by the outside world that is so corrupting (and different). They want a world that is black and white. Mostly white.

There would be a few modifications to the Mayberry blueprint, however. For example, the first time Sheriff Andy Taylor tried to take the bullets away from Barney’s gun, they’d call in the NRA and have him driven out of town, to be replaced by David Clarke or Joe Arpaio.

Better yet, the new sheriff would be played by Charles Bronson, and each episode he’d be sure to pop a cap in someone’s ass. Tax payers supporting Otis’ life of addiction? A bullet’s cheaper than the cost of putting him up for the night (unless, of course, the jail was privatized, in which case Otis’ stay would be indefinite).

But it would be justice, only the bad guys would get hurt. Of course, the definition of bad guys would be very liberal, encompassing anyone who was not a conservative.

Conservatives want to venerate and preserve the past, no matter how crappy it might have been for many Americans. Japanese Americans, African Americans, migrants in general. It was pretty bad for poor whites ignorant of their history too, but that’s a stratum of society that seems to repeat the same mistakes over and over. At any rate, conservatives want to keep the memory of America’s glorious past alive, they just don’t want to think critically about it or discuss it. It is not history they wish to remember, it is myth. But one has to wonder how people who cannot face the complexity and unpleasant truth of the past see the present for what it is. If you cannot see the racism in the past, what makes anyone think you see it for what it is now?

Hard work is what built this nation, that’s the rallying cry of the conservatives, neglecting to mention whose sweat and labor that was. It was the labor of immigrants and slaves, of children as young as 8 working 60-hour weeks as breaker boys, sometimes losing their limbs and even their lives to the dangerous machinery they were more familiar with than their own beds.

Work hard and don’t expect to be given anything. That’s the advice I would give to my child if I were a wealthy capitalist. Work hard and don’t expect to be given anything. That’s the advice I would give to my employees if I were a wealthy capitalist too, but for entirely different reasons.

Conservatives want to go back to the era of fewer restrictions for business, without ever looking back at that era and the misery created by it. The thinking of conservatives is that they are going to succeed because they are hard-working and things will work out for them. They figure since they were the one sperm out of a million that fertilized the egg that they are special, not realizing everyone alive was created that way.

If conservatives have regressed into a sort of tribalism, then liberals have regressed into infantilism. They don’t want to build mass movements to take power into their own hands, they want Daddy Deep State to make the Big Bad Trump-Monster go away. They want Mommy Media to hold them in her arms and tell them she’ll keep them safe from the Russian hackers under their bed.

Never in my life have I experienced a doe-eyed child whole-heartedly swallow a story an authority figure has told them the way liberals have the Russian hacking story. And I’ve been around to witness the Benghazi conspiracy theories.

The liberals believe because they want to believe. No, they believe because they need to believe. They need to believe that our nation has not come to this, even though it has quite clearly come to this. They need to believe that Donald Trump was not at the end of the road we’ve been walking for a generation and more. DAMN IT ALL, ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS ELECT HILLARY AND EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE IT USED TO BE!!! And how it used to be was pretty good for those not losing their jobs, watching their paychecks get stretched further and further, or being incarcerated for minor drug offences. Or dying on foreign soil.

Liberals are looking for a quick fix to make life the way it was before. Not a hundred years ago, just last year. Somehow the idea that the present flowed logically from yesterday doesn’t seem to occur to them. There was no natural progression from the world they helped shape to the reality they now experience. Trump came out of nowhere, a deus ex machina to a cheaply written novel. It is a story involving one-dimensional villains wearing black but always white. If only there was a Condoleezza Rice or Collen Powell to stand up for truth, justice and the American way.

We needed a villain to blame, since we weren’t in the mood for looking in the mirror. Blaming terrorists was getting old, and more than a little awkward since Hillary was helping them overthrow nations. Besides, it’s politically incorrect to blame people of Middle East descent for all that has gone wrong, though oddly enough it seemed permissible to kill them and take their oil to fuel our SUVs. We needed to tie Donald Trump to the most reprehensible people imaginable, those forces that from our earliest memories were the symbols of all that is evil in the world. Let’s see, who could we get?

Putin! Yes, the leader of the Evil Empire.

Never mind that Russia is not the Soviet Union and Evil Empire was Ronald Reagan’s term, not one those on the left ever used. Ronald Reagan and Joseph McCarthy. The Republicans liberals used to hate are their friends now, at least those who are willing to dis on Trump. And while we’re dipping into the well of our deepest subconscious stereotypes, let’s add fascists to the list. Never mind the mixed metaphor, never mind the fact that there is nothing so abominable in the collective memory of Russians as fascism or Nazism. Never mind that the U.S. is supporting far-right regimes on Russia’s borders.

And so liberals simplified the narrative enough that they need not do anything beyond hate everyone that disagrees with them as they await further instructions from anonymous sources from intelligence agencies we’ve never heard of.

And where are the adults in all of this? At the margins, the far end of the right and the left who seem to have more in common with each other than they do with those closest to them. They sit on the margins not because they are that distant from what the majority of Americans want so much as they are there because the story they tell is not the one the mainstream media wants. At the edges sit those who 40 years ago would have been mainstream Democrats and Republicans, but have been kicked to the curb by a cancer that has grown in between them. It is a cancer that both margins see clearly, though each from its particular vantage point. The right sees a bloated government trampling on the rights of the individual, while the left sees bloated corporate power that needs to be reined in. But that bloated cancer in the middle is what is paying the big money to get those in the middle elected, those politicians willing to allow that festering bag of corruption into the hallowed halls of our government.

Thus there is no dividing line between the two parties anymore, not in any true sense. They have both been absorbed by that pulsating evil at the center of our society, the big money that controls the big government. To squabble about the minor differences as seen from the left perspective or the right perspective is foolish.

And thus we have two paths, both leading downward through their unrealistic desire to revert rather than advance. But even while there are differences in the two political approaches of the liberals and conservatives, there are many similarities. Both have chosen hatred, division and self-delusion as their responses to the problems we now face. The irony being that the most dangerous problems we now face are hatred, division and self-delusion.

Guns For Libs

When liberals lose an election, they look into moving to Canada. Well sometimes they whine and block traffic, too, but that’s beside the point. When conservatives lose elections, they buy guns. I’m not going to say what that makes you liberals look like, let’s just say that Trump would like to grab you.

Like Trump, most conservatives don’t have much respect for people without guns. Actually, Trump has no respect for anyone, but that’s a different matter. What matters is that it’s time for lefties to change their tactics.

Which is why it’s time Liberals should start buying guns. They should buy so many guns that they drive the price of those suckers up. They should buy so many guns that conservatives have to pay twice as much for guns. Hell, they should buy so many guns that the conservatives start thinking about selling the guns they have in order to profit off a buyer’s market. Liberals should buy so many guns that the military has to buy their guns from China.

Think of how many guns Barbara Streisand could buy if she put her mind to it. Liberals could have a big concert and give the proceeds to liberals who can’t afford to buy guns. They could give hand guns out to the gunless, the way they give out condoms in high school.

It's time to temporarily take all those books out of the little free library you liberals have in your front yard and stock them full of guns instead. This could be our little liberal secret, a place for liberals in need to access a gun should the occasion arise. And don't worry, neither conservatives nor criminals would ever think to look in one. Just make sure it's high enough off the ground that the kids can't get to it.

How about guns to the homeless? After all, give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, give him a gun and sufficient quantities of ammo, and he’s well on his way to self-sufficiency.

Think about this, as well: the more guns liberals buy, the less money the NRA is going to want spend to back the Republican Party exclusively. Democratic candidates could start out-gun-righting the right, so that all those NRA dollars will start pouring into the secret PACs that attack Republican candidates.

It wouldn’t be hard to do. There are already a ton of people who vote Democrat who own guns. Most of them just don’t fall for the line of the NRA that the Democrats want to take their guns. Hell, most libs aren’t really as scared of guns as they are the people who buy them. If you’ve owned a Samsung tablet a gun is no more of a danger.

The Democrats could use Trayvon Martin as their poster child: “He’d still be alive if he had been carrying a gun instead of Skittles.” Maybe they could do one of those gun trade-ins in the inner city, only in reverse, so instead of you turning in your gun and getting cash for it, maybe they could trade a bag of Skittles for a gun.

How many conservatives would be standing outside a black polling place to see if voters had proper ID if they knew everyone voting was packing more than just a driver’s license? How many voter’s rights would be denied if those doing the denying were aware of the suddenly lax gun laws?

It’s simple, you just have to out-crazy the crazies. That’s what the conservatives have been doing all along: no matter what the liberals were willing to go along with, just ask for more. The liberals just have to turn it into a game of chicken and refuse to lose no matter where the conservatives are willing to take it. Guns for 12 year olds? What’s wrong with 10 year olds? What’s wrong with guns for convicted felons, they’ve done their time, right? This is America, after all. Why have laws about guns at all? Isn’t the 2nd Amendment crystal clear on this? What is there to argue about “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed?”

The simple fact is the Right is never going to respect you until you have guns. Until you do they will think you are sissies unworthy of citizenship. They are sick and tired of having to protect you on a regular basis from all those things that need to be opposed with guns. It’s time to grow a pair, liberals. It’s time to start carrying your own weight and get yourself a gun, so that you can protect yourself rather than being a drain on society. And who knows, if you get good with guns, maybe you can start returning the favor. Maybe you can start protecting conservatives from danger the way they’ve been protecting liberals all this time. Instead of a George Zimmerman patrolling the streets and keeping them safe, maybe we could have an Antwayn and DeAndre packing a pistol and standing at the corner of your street. If that doesn’t make you feel safer I question your true commitment to gun rights.

I’ve noticed that conservatives tend to bond over their guns. They just tend to trust other gun owners, feeling that those who don’t own guns are a little bit strange and untrustworthy. Perhaps if universal gun ownership were to become a reality, the differences between races and religions might not seem so extreme. Maybe all we really need for peace to reign is to make sure every African American and Muslim is carrying his own gun, every tree-hugging vegan hippie packing heat. That way you wouldn’t have to brand the bad ones, you’d just recognize them by their suspicious lack of any firearm. I’d like to think that such a world would be one in which all could join hands as brothers, but of course such a show of solidarity might leave us all a little slow on the draw.