Just a girlpede's nightly musing, but I want to go backaways for a moment, to Plato, and point something out:
Plato said that when a work of art is made - this can be anything from a statue to a piece of journalistic writing - the author has a duty to his country, to follow three rules:
- The work should have capacity to give thought
- The work should be correct, with an emphasis on truth and verisimilitude
- The work should have good effects and usefulness
Aristotle goes even further than Plato, to say that the moral value of a work (in benefiting the society as a whole) should not be trespassed without going unpunished.
Journalistic standards today have fallen so fucking low compared to these criteria - which I consider pretty golden - that we've reached full blown censorship. They fail on all 3:
- You have twisted, manipulated headlines with carefully selected words taken out of context, meant to evoke feelings while suppressing thought
- Truth suffers in favour of censorship and emotional manipulation
- Benefits to society are in the negative: they cause riots, protests, violence, destruction. They incite people to radicalization, encouraging the left to believe Trump is a hellhound sent to destroy the world and his followers are inhuman (hence Antifa, etc.)
I'll say it again.
CENSORSHIP IS THE HALLMARK OF DICTATORSHIPS.
You will not find one time in history when it went well.
What we have now is Soft Totalitarianism.
Exactly, and it needs to bloody well go. Have you ever read The Little Prince? This soft totalitarianism is like a baobab tree:
"A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet... And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces
This censorship is creeping up higher and higher. First, Twitter would push up what they want you to see and push down anything pro-Trump in his comments.
Then, you couldn't post the NY Post article without getting banned.
Then the DISPOOOOTED disclaimers started appearing.
Then Twitter said "Are you sure you want to like this post? It contains false information"
Then the officials who fought for us - fucking OFFICIALS not random people - started getting suspended or banned after presenting information live, publicly.
Then you could no longer retweet or repost without warnings that it would be contained, as it's spreading misinformation.
Then Facebook followed, and Instagram did the same.
Then Youtube said anything which disagrees with the line of thought that Biden is President Eject, will be removed.
At which point do we say enough?