Tag: censorship

I put up a fun meme on twitter and facebook. Well, fun in so far as it’s also horrifying, considering the google searches portrayed. It was this:

This ah…. bronzing up of the concept of censorship, btw, is part of the push of the industrial-idea-complex topped by the international oligarchs of the WEF. Their latest shitfest love in symposium was all about how the speech of the peasants and the information the peasants (everyone but them, of course are peasants) should be censored. The peasants should in effect be lied to so they would willingly go into the 15 minute cities, and eat the bugs and be controlled conception to grave.

That they said that out in the open, and then expect us to think there’s an organic movement FOR censorship is both hilarious and sad. It’s also part of how they have “grown” since most of them are about 10 years older than I.

This drive to silence the masses is actually a good sign. No, listen to me. When I was younger, the left always pretended it was against the second amendment but pro the first. In fact they wanted to put the first beyond the reach of private citizens wanting to, say, shield their kids (more on that later) in very limited and private circumstances. They were very determined you should be able to say anything, even the patently evil and stupid.

They were right in what they said, (except for usurping parental rights) but not in what they did. Because you see, what they proclaimed they did only because they had full control of the dissemination of information, from fiction to news to the discourse in universities. So complete that nothing they didn’t want said got any traction. It might be allowed, but only in a deformed/denounced shape.

It was safe for them to push for ever more free speech, because they had full control. They shaped what was allowed in the public sphere. And mostly what they were defending was their right to flood the zone with stuff few people wanted.

Now they are trying to fight the first amendment as hard as they fight the second, and it’s a good sign, because it means they lost control. They no longer can keep the information confined and under their aegis. And they’re revealed as the horrendous totalitarian weirdos they’ve always been. They don’t like that. They want the control back. So they’re openly advocating for censorship.

Which means the ideas are horrifying and — as in everything else — we’re going through a horrible time, but — believe it or not — it means things are getting better. This is kind of like when you’re so ill you can’t stand it, but it’s actually a sign your immune system is fighting the infection.

Anyway, I posted that meme on facebook, because I felt like that, but my first comment was…. weird. At first I misunderstood him, then I thought that he was arguing in good faith but touched in the head. At this point, after thinking about it for a day or so, I think he’s arguing in outright bad faith.

This person has been a commenter on my stuff forever, and one of my earlier facebook friends. It is entirely possible he is a leftist or has acquired some major dysfunction in the meantime. I don’t have the time — I’ve barely been online, as you guys know, as we’re trying to clean up/fix things in the aftermath of the flood main water pipe break. (Yes, that was the porch rebuild project. We had to redo it, because it had to be pulled apart to get at the pipes. And though the plumbers put it back so we could walk on it (ish) they were obviously not carpenters, so it had to be redone, properly.)

Anyway, he came in hot and heavy in the aftermath of my posting that to tell me that censorship was appropriate in some cases. After all, no one should be free to post libel or child porn.

I was so out of it (I’m really getting tired of friends dying suddenly and unexpectedly. Y’all stop it, okay?) that at first I understood him to say “giving the children porn.”

So, my answer at first was to tell him that he really should not bring up libel, which is de-facto legal in the US, in the sense that you can be libeled but you can’t do anything about it. (Wikipedia has a highly libelous post involving me. Yeah. You know exactly what it is. We had a car saleswoman ask us about it, after seeing my name and looking it up. That was fun.) I mean, there are rare wins, like the Covington kids, but the libel law in the US has no teeth. You can’t libel someone who is “famous” (“a public personality”) and in this day and age it’s easy to make someone famous BY libeling them.

But theoretically libel is a crime, because it’s not speech as such. It’s speech directed at destroying someone. It is a lie highly targeted to rob someone of their livelihood or life. So, in a way it’s like a widespread Swatting.

Should it be legal? As I said, it is de-facto legal. And it is a curious intersection of tech and reality. It wouldn’t be possible without some concentration of speech control in the hands of a like-minded faction aided and abetted by governmental and quasi-governmental institutions. (Credentialing factor– I mean universities. Which filter who has access to the public megaphone from the news to entertainment to government.) It is in the process of fixing itself, in a way. Because when bad speech can be countered with good speech just as quickly, it becomes irrelevant.

On the other hand, mind you, I’m temperamentally inclined to introducing dueling laws to allow us to duel the rat bastages. Because that would stop them for good.

Anyway, my answer to letting the children see porn was not as coherent — I was very tired, and as I said, I feel like someone hit me on the head with an anvil, just with the spate of bad news — but what I MEANT was essentially that parents’ rights supersede governmental rights and orders, and if the parents decide to keep porn out of kids’ hands, they should be able to. I didn’t mention, obviously, that the schools to the extent they exist and are available (I’m sure federal involvement in the schools is a bad, bad idea) should be under the control of the parents who are responsible for those kids. And in the home the parents should control what kids see and listen to as a matter of course, because children aren’t self-actuated in any meaningful way, being not aware of the perils in the world.

However, I sternly oppose any widespread censorship to “protect the children.” Because children should be protected by parents and guardians. And any laws put in “for the children” amount to trying to restrict the adults in the name of the children. In fact the shitweasels in our legislature are trying to do the bidding of the WEFfers by putting in a law to protect the children from “social media.” The fact that they started this with Facebook, the domain of grandmothers and old farts (like me) tells you it’s bullshit. The fact is they’re terrified of the free-er (but not fully free, mind you) playground that Twittex has become, and really really want us proles to start sharing “disinformation” which is of course not LIES, but a commie-coined word to mean “things we know are true but which our totalitarian bullshitters don’t want people to know.”

Anyway, right after I answered I realized he meant child porn. And was kind of stopped. Because — guys — child porn is evidence of a crime, and therefore the dissemination of it is being an accomplice to a crime. It is not in any way shape or form mere “speech.”

There was a kerfuffle in the oughts about whether we should allow child porn done with rendering programs, and I suppose that will come back again as deep-fake images and video become more sophisticated. And I can’t get into the absolute right of it, because the psychological waters get very deep and almost all research in the last oh, 50? years is more or less bullshit.

If child porn is created without injuring any children and further harming them by disseminating it, we have to consider the question of whether viewing child porn diffuses the urges of those likely to offend in that way, or if in fact it makes them more likely to harm children. I don’t know, can’t know, and it’s literally above my pay grade in more ways than I can count. On gut feeling, though, I’d consider such production/viewing as a very good reason to watch someone like a hawk, because for sane human beings every feeling revolts.

And while we are not in any way supposed to punish pre-crime and while urges aren’t crimes, and many people probably (I don’t know and neither do you) learn to re-orient and control themselves, I’d still say anyone who makes or consumes that vile stuff SHOULD be watched like a hawk.

At any rate, I think the debate subsided because it turned out the people thus inclined want the real thing, not the fakes. And the real thing is ALWAYS evidence of a crime. It’s a crime to produce, and consuming it is evidence of being an accomplice. In the same way it victimizes kids by being disseminated. (There’s a reason the faces of children, victimized by more normal crimes are fuzzed in the news, okay? Including children of criminals when the only photo available is a family photo.)

Anyway, child porn is not in the same realm as “free speech” or “censorship.” It’s in the realm of crime and psychological and physical violence against children.

The reason I decided the commenter isn’t speaking in good faith is his immediately reaching for “child porn” which is a way of saying “if you support free speech you’re a pedophile.” And that’s not arguing in good faith. In fact, it’s bullshit insanity of the type that says “we must stop “disinformation” and force the peasants to eat the bugs.” If his mind has simply been captured, may his chains rest easy on him, but he is not a free man.

His answer was the equivalent of “but there must be limits on the second amendment otherwise my neighbor will buy a nuke.” While there might be such a time, and I and a friend, when we were both younger and stupider seemed to fall into “designing vending machines for nukes” whenever we got a little alcoholized. But in the present day your neighbor isn’t going to buy a nuke, unless your neighbor is Kim Jong Whoa Fat. And frankly your neighbor would probably be safer than some of the totalitarians running with nukes, including the ones in Iran that the Bidentia seems to be sure they should give nukes to.

It is not arguing in good faith. It’s a comment designed to stop all argument or consideration.

I do realize that that we live in an imperfect world, and that our G-d given rights that a free government elected by the people (ah!) is supposed to safeguard and keep, won’t have perfect expression.

HOWEVER in the limits of reality and the world, the rights enshrined in the bill of rights are as absolute as is possible to make them.

Forget taking our guns from our cold dead fingers. We will be screaming our free speech in the fact of the WEFfers to the end of the world and beyond.

Because we’re Americans. And the cure for bad speech is good speech. Not censorship.