Larry Correia on the ongoing purge of Trump supporters from many social media networks:
Screencap of a Fox News report on the social media networks that have deplatformed President Donald Trump, January 2021.
For all of history when people have a problem they have been able to talk about it and hash it out. Solutions to complex problems don’t spring fully formed into existence the instant you note the problem. You get ideas from others. Their perspectives help you better articulate the issue and recognize consequences you didn’t expect.
Lawyers know law, engineers know engineering, artists know art, so on. So when there is a big problem that spreads across multiple fields, of course you need to talk it over with people who know those areas, because they know things you don’t. Being smart in one area doesn’t automatically make you an expert in others. We all need help. Big problems require discussion and brainstorming. Even if it isn’t effective, it’s still useful for the clever people who can make solutions to be able to listen to what the regular populace thinks and feels so that they can get the scope and understand how the problem hurts the public.
In the old days these conversations happened at churches, taverns, colleges, that kind of thing. All the famous places where big solutions to big problems were hashed out have a historical marker on them today. For us, those things are now illegal or stifled and we get the internet.
So of course the people who don’t see the problems as problems — or sometimes they are the problem — are trying to stop the rest of us from discussing the problems or they are trying to control where and how the conversations happen. Since they benefit from the problem, they will squash or sabotage people talking about solutions. It is in their best interests to do so, and when you give a bully a stick, they will beat you with it.
The topic of the current problem isn’t the important thing. This is our public square now whether we like it or not. We have foolishly abdicated the public square and now we are paying the price. Of course they can’t just let people they don’t like converse. That’s dangerous to their positions.
So when information they don’t like appears, they hide it. If they can’t hide it, they “fact check” it, and often that’s just a headline screaming false followed by an article full of straw grasping excuses they know most people won’t read. The goal is to shut you up or discredit you.
In the old days, at your pub or church, your drinking buddies or co-religionists probably shared your concerns and faced the same problems. So at least you were working toward a common goal. But now, big tech doesn’t want that. They don’t like groups or forums that don’t share their orthodoxy. They want/need to keep you here, and they need strangers to constantly kick in the doors and blunder in to tell you that you are stupid or crazy, that way we waste time arguing with them. It used to be a village had one idiot. When we talk now we get to deal with a thousand villages worth of idiot.
I always knew Larry was a smart fellow. The key point the radical left has grasped is that control of the terms of debate automatically means control of the *outcome* of the debate. Your statements don’t have to be truthful. They don’t have to make sense. They can certainly be hypocritical as hell. None of that matters so long as they are the only statements *allowed.* And the earlier you can seize control of the debate, the better. Hence the move to stifle dissent on college campuses, followed by high schools. If you can keep your target audience from ever even hearing a contrary viewpoint — or sufficiently demonize it through proselytizing “respected” and “legitimate” mentors — the battle is over. This is not a right/left thing except inasmuch as it is currently the left attempting to drive through the totalitarianization of political and philosophical debate. It is a *moral* issue, the application of an intellectually horrific and despicable mechanism to destroy pluralism and the legitimacy of the governing process, and it is equally contemptable regardless of the political bigotry of its perpetrators.
Comment by David Weber — January 14, 2021 @ 15:05
Thanks for visiting, David. I’ve read many of your books with great enjoyment.
The “long march through the institutions” has worked very well for them, sadly for us and for civilization as a whole.
Comment by Nicholas — January 14, 2021 @ 15:35