"What is it that is so frightening about other people getting to decide for themselves what is truth, good or bad advice, misinformation, and so on?"
The immaturity of this question takes my breath away. Truly, you are adrift in the philosophical doldrums.
As if there is anything "subjective" (spits) about truth. As if whether or not Haitians are grilling pets or Democrats are committing infanticide are matters of opinion.
Why do people need protection from "harmful opinions?" Because they aren't intelligent or educated enough to live safely without such protections. Because they are so easily manipulated by unscrupulous applicants of the new science of persuasion that they are incapable of staying atop even the most essential information they need to make rational decisions. Because they can be talked into voting themselves into slavery and into placing entertainment at the center of their monstrously empty lives. Because they would rather fill trash cans with single-use plastic bags than spend 20¢ on a cloth bag they can use hundreds of times.
"Responsible adults" are as rare as turtles with feathers, almost as rare as that fictional bullshit called "common sense." You aren't promoting intellectual independence, you're promoting conceit. For you, I have four words of advice: go to a mall. Look at the vacancy in so many eyes, pushing the next generation of pollutants in strollers and no idea what they came there for.
Substack doesn’t end notifications to me anymore…censorship.😊….so I’m late to reply….
The best I can make out from your screed is that you, the enlightened savior hero, and your ideological friends, will race to the rescue of us ignorant peoples, to save us from disinformation and lies and untruths and unpopular opinions…..a sort of modern, updated, “white man’s burden”. We only get freedom when our positions align with yours. We don’t quite deserve it yet. Out of the goodness of your heart, you are going to spend some of that precious “me” time to censor out inconvenient truths, unpopular options, outright lies, just because you care. For many years, I have harbored the opinion that the lowest form of life is a white liberal, and your commentary hardened that belief of mine into ancient concrete.
The insanity of what you seem to be proposing, though you don’t quite spit it out, is mind boggling. The censors have NEVER been on the right side of history. The purported motivation of censorship doesn’t matter…..whether it is Woodrow Wilson or Joe McCarthy or George Bush or Hillary…..every one of those, and legions of others used their power and influence to crush the unpopular ideas and positions of others.
Where have you been these last 50 years? Did you ever hear of the Gulf of Tonkin? Do you remember the “truth” of the VietNamese attack on the US naval ships? Do you remember the “truth” of the Kuwaiti babies being slaughtered by invading Iraqi soldiers? More recently, do you remember the “truth” about the efficacy of paper masks from Dr Fauci? First they were no good, then good, then very good, then not good enough (you need two or three to be up,to date on your virtue signaling), then finally, well they don’t really work very well? All of these mutually exclusive pronouncements were considered “truth” for a couple of news cycles, and people were yanked off of YouTube and FB and Twitter and many other platforms for opining on the insanity of government pronouncements.
Just a few days ago, we see, in close to real time, outright fabrication of a response in the Harris 60 minute interview to cover up for the fact that Harris is yet more vapid, stupid, and incoherent than Trump. This is your “truth”??? We are going to trust those guys to filter truth from lie? Really? Or the 50 “national security experts” who weighed in on the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation only to find out, long after it mattered, that the contents as reported by the NY Post and others were 100% true?
Without the 1st Amendment, we have no country. Without robust debate, more speech, not less speech, we will never be able to make rational, informed decisions. Each one of us is responsible for what we do with the information we consume. It is not now, nor never has been the responsibility of you, your friends, or the authoritarians in government to sift through all the conversations, media articles, posts on the internet to save us. We don’t want you. Go home and shout out your TV. We are big boys and girls here…
I don’t need to go to a mall to see vacuous faces and empty lives. I live in Detroit. I am surrounded by the legacy of “trust me, we care for you” every single day. Broken promises are inextricably entangled with broken dreams…..We are ground zero in America for “look what happens when you trust the experts”. I do my best to lead by example, to help those who both need and appreciate, and to gently suggest that maybe, next time, don’t swallow as much of the Kool-Aid, whether it is coming from the preacher man, the Mayor, or the medical professionals who have made career customers out of most of us…..
I don’t try to shut down the speech of those whose positions I abhor; I try to present a coherent alternative. That position didn’t use to be controversial in America. Commitment to freedom, tolerance, diversity of opinions, a healthy skepticism of Big Everything, and a fierce opposition to censorship used to be bedrock principles of the Democratic Party in America. Now the party, along with the neocon Republicans have turned into the mouthpiece for the worst elements of society, clamoring for a level of censorship and control that was unthinkable even 10 years ago…
"What is it that is so frightening about other people getting to decide for themselves what is truth, good or bad advice, misinformation, and so on?"
The immaturity of this question takes my breath away. Truly, you are adrift in the philosophical doldrums.
As if there is anything "subjective" (spits) about truth. As if whether or not Haitians are grilling pets or Democrats are committing infanticide are matters of opinion.
Why do people need protection from "harmful opinions?" Because they aren't intelligent or educated enough to live safely without such protections. Because they are so easily manipulated by unscrupulous applicants of the new science of persuasion that they are incapable of staying atop even the most essential information they need to make rational decisions. Because they can be talked into voting themselves into slavery and into placing entertainment at the center of their monstrously empty lives. Because they would rather fill trash cans with single-use plastic bags than spend 20¢ on a cloth bag they can use hundreds of times.
"Responsible adults" are as rare as turtles with feathers, almost as rare as that fictional bullshit called "common sense." You aren't promoting intellectual independence, you're promoting conceit. For you, I have four words of advice: go to a mall. Look at the vacancy in so many eyes, pushing the next generation of pollutants in strollers and no idea what they came there for.
Substack doesn’t end notifications to me anymore…censorship.😊….so I’m late to reply….
The best I can make out from your screed is that you, the enlightened savior hero, and your ideological friends, will race to the rescue of us ignorant peoples, to save us from disinformation and lies and untruths and unpopular opinions…..a sort of modern, updated, “white man’s burden”. We only get freedom when our positions align with yours. We don’t quite deserve it yet. Out of the goodness of your heart, you are going to spend some of that precious “me” time to censor out inconvenient truths, unpopular options, outright lies, just because you care. For many years, I have harbored the opinion that the lowest form of life is a white liberal, and your commentary hardened that belief of mine into ancient concrete.
The insanity of what you seem to be proposing, though you don’t quite spit it out, is mind boggling. The censors have NEVER been on the right side of history. The purported motivation of censorship doesn’t matter…..whether it is Woodrow Wilson or Joe McCarthy or George Bush or Hillary…..every one of those, and legions of others used their power and influence to crush the unpopular ideas and positions of others.
Where have you been these last 50 years? Did you ever hear of the Gulf of Tonkin? Do you remember the “truth” of the VietNamese attack on the US naval ships? Do you remember the “truth” of the Kuwaiti babies being slaughtered by invading Iraqi soldiers? More recently, do you remember the “truth” about the efficacy of paper masks from Dr Fauci? First they were no good, then good, then very good, then not good enough (you need two or three to be up,to date on your virtue signaling), then finally, well they don’t really work very well? All of these mutually exclusive pronouncements were considered “truth” for a couple of news cycles, and people were yanked off of YouTube and FB and Twitter and many other platforms for opining on the insanity of government pronouncements.
Just a few days ago, we see, in close to real time, outright fabrication of a response in the Harris 60 minute interview to cover up for the fact that Harris is yet more vapid, stupid, and incoherent than Trump. This is your “truth”??? We are going to trust those guys to filter truth from lie? Really? Or the 50 “national security experts” who weighed in on the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation only to find out, long after it mattered, that the contents as reported by the NY Post and others were 100% true?
Without the 1st Amendment, we have no country. Without robust debate, more speech, not less speech, we will never be able to make rational, informed decisions. Each one of us is responsible for what we do with the information we consume. It is not now, nor never has been the responsibility of you, your friends, or the authoritarians in government to sift through all the conversations, media articles, posts on the internet to save us. We don’t want you. Go home and shout out your TV. We are big boys and girls here…
I don’t need to go to a mall to see vacuous faces and empty lives. I live in Detroit. I am surrounded by the legacy of “trust me, we care for you” every single day. Broken promises are inextricably entangled with broken dreams…..We are ground zero in America for “look what happens when you trust the experts”. I do my best to lead by example, to help those who both need and appreciate, and to gently suggest that maybe, next time, don’t swallow as much of the Kool-Aid, whether it is coming from the preacher man, the Mayor, or the medical professionals who have made career customers out of most of us…..
I don’t try to shut down the speech of those whose positions I abhor; I try to present a coherent alternative. That position didn’t use to be controversial in America. Commitment to freedom, tolerance, diversity of opinions, a healthy skepticism of Big Everything, and a fierce opposition to censorship used to be bedrock principles of the Democratic Party in America. Now the party, along with the neocon Republicans have turned into the mouthpiece for the worst elements of society, clamoring for a level of censorship and control that was unthinkable even 10 years ago…