I have to be honest. I’m a thinker. And I like bringing people together. And, to me, one admirable trait about the Liberal Democrats is how they are always taking on the cause of the unfortunate, the generally underrepresented, the castaways, those who stand on empty shores and spit against the wind, and those who wait forever for ships that don’t come in……..oh, the last part were the remains of a country song, but seemed to fit. Just kind of melded them together. Thanks Joe Diffie. Anyway, like I was saying, if you need someone to take on the cause of the unfortunate, then the Liberal Democrats are your guy. I mean, they got this stuff down to a science.
So, it is in this vein that I ask you: Do you know of a group who is down and out, who could maybe use a leg up, or seem like they’re always getting the short end of the stick? I’ll tell ya who: Conservatives. That’s right. It seems like everywhere you turn Conservatives are being maligned, mischaracterized, shouted down, or just generally cancelled. They are treated like the High School nerd who gets shoved in the locker. Or, like the Jewish Rabbi at a Catholic wedding. There is just not a lot of respect to be had there. So, I was thinking, it seems like the Liberals will soon be running out of marginalized groups to represent. I feel like a matchmaker here. I’m so nervous. So, here you go Liberals. Allow me to introduce you to…..Conservatives.
<crickets>
Well, that went over like a lead balloon. I don’t get it. It seemed like such a perfect pairing. Oh, I know what’s wrong. I shouldn’t expect you Liberals to take on this project without first pleading the cause of this disaffected group. You need to know, or at least be aware of, the plight of your average Conservative in good old Anytown, USA.
Well….hmmm…..let’s see. Where to begin? Let’s start with the underrepresentation of a Conservative voice in our daily news operations. We can go back to my time of earliest recollection—the 1980s. Let’s say, for example, you’re a Conservative in the 1980s. Do you know who you could listen to as a political news source you felt you could trust? Uh…..no one. Yeah, at least for a national broadcast. But there was one voice waiting in the wings. Do you know who that voice was? It was Rush Limbaugh. He came on the scene in the early 90s. But that was it. The Liberal establishment pretty much owned everything else, i.e. newspapers, broadcast news, radio, TV, movies, etc. Before that, they did own everything. Now, go forward a few years to about 1996. This is when Fox News came on the scene. Imagine your average Conservative’s joy to have their own 24 hour news channel. Wow, this was a whole new world. You could also say that for mainstream print publications the Wall Street Journal and NY Post would be seen as Conservative voices. So, the Conservatives retained a couple sources within the mainstream. But even still, the liberal Left owned the rest of the landscape. So, what you have, really, are a total dominance by the Left with a few outliers on the Right. But then we lost Rush Limbaugh due to his passing in early 2021. Some could even make the case that conservatives lost Fox News, as well, with the firing of Tucker Carlson. Fox News had even taken on a more establishment feel since, and even in the years prior.
And, to be fair, it’s not that there are no Conservative news sources out there now. They just aren’t considered mainstream. There are a large number of smaller voices with smaller audiences who portray a more right-leaning perspective. But these are mere rogue operators who are trying their best to mount an offensive against the establishment media narrative. These are the Davids acting against the Goliath news machine. If you were a Conservative, you couldn’t help but notice the bias and oppression of any voice who fought against this tidal wave of Liberalism.
And don’t doubt it. The oppression was severe. Conservative voices were silenced, muted, tagged, shadow-banned, or just cancelled on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter. This was most prevalent during the pandemic and after the election when posters on social media were punished for questioning the use of masks, lockdowns, vaccines, climate change…..you name it….and especially the election results. The most famous of these was President Trump, himself. His account was permanently suspended on Twitter because it contained a comment which called into question the integrity of the 2020 election. Here are the two tweets which led to President Trump’s suspension:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Twitter responded that this Tweet “ is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an ‘orderly transition’”.
The next Tweet was this:
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the inauguration on January 20th.”
Twitter responded that this Tweet was “being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate”.
Now, let me ask you: Can anyone explain to me the leap of logic required to arrive at the conclusions presented by Twitter in response to these two Tweets? It baffles me how they could conclude this. When viewed with an objective lens, these messages appear rather innocuous. At no point do these Tweets condone violence, encourage violence, or state anything about election integrity. There appears to be nothing here which would justify suspending the President’s account. But these were a mere reflection of the President’s opinions at the time, which, it seems, the public should have the right to hear. Twitter is a public platform. Could you imagine if any President were in the middle of giving a Presidential address on broadcast TV and in the middle of his message all the major platforms—ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, PBS—just suspend the broadcast for merely making the above statements? That would be absurd. But because it’s Twitter it’s OK, I guess.
Marjorie Taylor Greene had her account permanently suspended in January 2022 for statements violating Twitter’s policies on Covid-19 “misinformation”. She actually endured multiple 7-day suspensions, until her account was permanently suspended after her fifth offense. Her account remained suspended until Elon Musk took over the platform and restored it in November 2022.
Mike Lindell had his Twitter account suspended as well in January 2021 due to multiple violations of their “misinformation” policy. His suspension was more related to calling into question the legitimacy of the 2020 election results. His account was restored—once again—by Elon Musk after he took over the platform. At least, someone with billionaire status still believes in free speech.
But Mike Lindell’s discrimination extended much further beyond a mere Twitter suspension. His company, MyPillow, endured removal of his products from major big box stores due to his questioning of the 2020 Presidential election results. These stores included Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl’s, H-E-B and Wayfair.
Now, this is an egregious affair. You’re no longer talking about a person’s free speech, as serious as that is. Now, you’re talking about a person’s ability to make a living. And not just that person’s ability to make a living, but hundreds of their employees. And all this over questioning election results? Wouldn’t you think that in a country with ‘free and fair’ elections you would be allowed to question whether an election actually was free and fair? Unless, by this response they’re implying that they’re not free and fair.
Still not convinced? Need more proof? OK, here goes.
How about Gina Carano. Gina was one of the stars on the well-received streaming series on Disney+, The Mandalorian. Gina Carano had made multiple Twitter posts online which didn’t appear to fall in line with the prevailing narrative. Things such as not acquiescing to calls for her to post support for Black Lives Matter, or not posting trans-friendly pronouns, or calling into question the election results, stating that Epstein didn’t kill himself, etc. But she had been posting things for months which caused users to call for her firing. The post which put her over the edge and caused them to pull the trigger on her firing seems to be the one she posted about Nazi Germany. In it she stated:
”Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…. Even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews.”
Now, while I have to say that any analogy you draw trying to invoke Nazis and Jews—in this day and age—isn’t likely to end well for you, I can’t see how this post on Twitter would cause such an uproar. I don’t really know where she said anything out of line, or where she stated something that would incite violence. On the contrary, she appears to be calling for people to maintain level heads and wanting to calm things down.
In reality, these are just some of the big names which were cancelled on social media sites. But scores of others, who didn’t have the advantage of celebrity, had their accounts suspended, banned, or cancelled. Not only were many on the left not empathetic to the plight of many conservatives, some wondered aloud why Conservatives don’t just go create their own platform. Well, you know what? They did. Some Conservatives got together and created their own Twitter equivalent. It was called Parler. Millions of users flocked to this new social media platform. Then what happened? Well, in January of 2021, in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot Parler got taken down by Amazon Web Services, where the site was being hosted. AWS sent a letter to Parler execs. In it, they stated they had reported:
“Posts that clearly encourage and incite violence.”
“We’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms”, AWS wrote. “It’s clear that Parler does not have the effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service.”
Also, to add insult to injury, Google and Apple removed Parler from their app stores. Now, this could all sound very convincing, except for the fact that these instances of inciting violence on Parler aren’t compared to any of the other platforms. The Justice Department had charged 223 people for their involvement in the events of January 6. The charging documents reveal Parler’s role in January 6 in comparison to that of Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram. If you want a specific rundown of the numbers, here’s how it all plays out: 73 posts on Facebook were referenced, 24 on YouTube, 20 on Instagram, and only 8 on Parler.
Now, unless I’m mistaken, I don’t remember any shutdowns for Facebook, or YouTube, or Instagram being called for in the wake of January 6. So, why would only one of these four—the one platform which was favored by Conservatives—be selected for shutdown? Could it be for that very reason? Because it was conservative? Oh, but you say, ‘They would never do that’. They can’t shut down a speech platform just because it leans more toward one political perspective. Oh, but they did. They did, and they keep shutting down the free speech of everyday Americans simply because they won’t say what the machine wants them to say.
The sad, and obvious, reality is that this was never about ‘extremists’ on one minor social media platform who were calling for violence. It was really about the millions of other Americans on there who were able to adequately expose the Democrat, Liberal—and even Marxist—agenda for what it really is. When the subverters of freedom and liberty can’t provide a clear answer to your penetrating questions they just shut off your mic. That’s how it really works. The truth isn’t afraid to speak. But the purveyors of falsehood are sure afraid to hear it.
How about the Twitter files? What were those about? Well, the Twitter Files, in their entirety, were a revelation of Twitter’s general handling of censorship on the platform instigated by back-channel communications between the FBI and the White House. These revelations were prompted by Elon Musk after he bought and then took over the platform. He then had those findings posted on Twitter, itself, by a handful of invited journalists.
The Twitter Files have a much broader scope than just one incident, but for the sake of time I’ll choose the item I feel has the highest importance. The item in question is the Hunter Biden laptop. On October 14, 2020 The New York Post published a story revealing the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden which revealed email communications between himself and a Ukrainian businessman. The potential conflict of interest elements and other salacious items found on the laptop made this a newsworthy story. However, after the New York Post published the story they also posted the story on Twitter.
As a result, Twitter took multiple actions to keep the story under wraps. They removed links to the story, posted warnings of it being unsafe, and blocked its transmission through direct message on the site. Then Twitter suspended the NY Post account for 2 weeks for posting the story. Others, like Kayleigh McEnany (White House Press Secretary) had their accounts suspended for posting the story.
Twitter labeled the link to the story as unsafe due to their hacked materials policy. But a hacked materials’ ruling normally requires an official finding of a hack. Without any evidence of such, Twitter decided to label this information as ‘hacked materials’.
Curiously, in the days following the NY Post story, there was a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials stating that the emails of Hunter Biden have ‘all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation’. And what are these ‘classic earmarks’? Do tell. Of course, they never say. Things are kept vague and nondescript. And as long as it comes from a bunch of people from a major government agency, the statement is given a seal of approval in the public’s mind.
But one of the most interesting aspects of this was an internal email sent by U. S. Congressman Ro Khanna to Vijaya Gaade, the head of legal, policy and trust at the time. In the email Ro Khanna writes the following to the Twitter exec:
“But this seems a violation of the 1st Amendment principles. If there is a hack of classified information or other information that could expose a serious war crime and the NYT was to publish it, I think the NYT should have that right. A journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack. So to restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a Presidential candidate, seems not in the keeping of the principles of NYT v Sullivan. I say this as a total Biden partisan and convinced he didn’t do anything wrong. But the story now has become more about censorship than relatively innocuous emails and it’s become a bigger deal than it would have been.”
When even Biden partisans are not in your favor, I think maybe you’ve lost the plot. Also, if you’re wondering about the political leanings of Twitter prior to the Elon Musk buyout, consider that about 99 percent of Twitter employee donations were to Democrats. So, to suggest that any bias within Twitter would not work toward Conservative’s benefit, I think, would be an understatement.
So, what do you say Liberals? Are you ready to be down for the cause? We can start making a few signs. We can organize demonstrations in some major U. S. Cities. Maybe do a little fundraising. I mean, if I still haven’t made my case, I could include a bevy of other examples. But for some reason, I feel like you’re giving me this general vibe of disinterest. Well, if you happen to change your mind, you know where to find me. I’ll just be sitting here listening to reruns of Rush Limbaugh and watching multiple rounds of the Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Just let me know. You can DM me on Twitter. At least…..I think you can.
Excellent recap. Unfortunately most liberals I know are unable and unwilling to engage in any civil discourse. They insist on controlling the Narrative by their persistence in controlling descent by shutting them down which in my opinion is the biggest threat to democracy.