Posted on 08/11/2022 7:52:17 AM PDT by Subcutaneous Fishstick Blues
It is not easy to defend an important principle embodied in the person of a questionable man.
Once upon a time, when it still pretended to have the principles it advertised, the American Civil Liberties Union would defend free speech, due process and other such important principles, even if the man involved in the particulars was personally repellent. It was understood the principle at issue mattered far more than the incidental person because principles apply to every person.
If one person can be denied due process, then every person’s due process rights are threatened. If one person’s right to speak freely is punished then no one’s right to speak freely is sacrosanct.
The Left – as embodied by the ACLU – never had those principles, as evidenced by the fact they have been abandoned now that they are no longer useful.
This is key to understanding the Left, whose only unwavering principle is the acquisition of power by any means. Once having acquired it, the principles used as pretexts to obtain it can be discarded, along with the “useful idiots” – Lenin’s term – who were idiotic enough to take the Left at its word.
This brings us to the Alex Jones business. Which is repeat business.
Some may recall that Jones was among the first to be targeted by the Left – now institutionalized; the embodiment of the “Man” (now non-binary and blue-haired) that the Left once railed against, but only because the prior “Man” wasn’t their “Man”. Or “woman,” as the case might be.
He was de-platformed and de-monetized by institutional Leftism, the corporations that own and control the “mainstream” media, including “social” media as well as the financial institutions tied into them.
They took Jones’ videos down. They banned him from Facebook and Twitter – the same “platforms” the institutionalized Left uses to spread the very “misinformation” they claimed was the basis for banning Jones. As for example the true information about “vaccines” that – as it turns out – don’t immunize.
But do impart myocarditis.
It is easy to not like Jones, the man. He is personally obnoxious, endlessly mercenary. He appears to have made a great deal of money, in the manner of a television evangelist. He is not everyone’s cup of tea.
If so, don’t “drink” him.
No one was forced to watch his videos or compelled to send him money – as opposed to the government, which compels you to send it money in order to force you to pay for NPR, for instance – which many find just as obnoxious as Alex.
The point here being that Alex, the man, is incidental. His “de-platforming” and “de-monetizing” wasn’t about him, except incidentally. It was an expression of the principle that anyone the Left decides it doesn’t like can be – will be – treated similarly by the organs of institutional Leftism.
And so they have been. Are being. This being what is styled “cancel culture,” now very much a “thing.” An offhanded Tweet, an ancient high school photo. The deliberately misconstrued malaprop. It can be anything – so long as it is something – since to the Left the only thing that matters is cancelling anyone who questions the Left and thereby conveying the message to anyone who might be considering questioning it.
Don’t even think about it.
Heterodoxy cannot be tolerated because it represents a threat to the consolidating – the already consolidated – power of the Left, which is now institutionalized and reactionary. The very thing the useful idiots who served the Left (i.e., the average man-on-the-street Leftist, the well-meaning liberal, as these people like to think of themselves) once thought they were fighting when they fought for free speech as young people back in the ’60s, abortion rights, opposed the draft and for decriminalizing the possession, use and sale of arbitrarily illegal “drugs” the then-Man did not like.
No one was forced to watch his videos or compelled to send him money – as opposed to the government, which compels you to send it money in order to force you to pay for NPR, for instance – which many find just as obnoxious as Alex.
The point here being that Alex, the man, is incidental. His “de-platforming” and “de-monetizing” wasn’t about him, except incidentally. It was an expression of the principle that anyone the Left decides it doesn’t like can be – will be – treated similarly by the organs of institutional Leftism.
And so they have been. Are being. This being what is styled “cancel culture,” now very much a “thing.” An offhanded Tweet, an ancient high school photo. The deliberately misconstrued malaprop. It can be anything – so long as it is something – since to the Left the only thing that matters is cancelling anyone who questions the Left and thereby conveying the message to anyone who might be considering questioning it.
Don’t even think about it.
Heterodoxy cannot be tolerated because it represents a threat to the consolidating – the already consolidated – power of the Left, which is now institutionalized and reactionary. The very thing the useful idiots who served the Left (i.e., the average man-on-the-street Leftist, the well-meaning liberal, as these people like to think of themselves) once thought they were fighting when they fought for free speech as young people back in the ’60s, abortion rights, opposed the draft and for decriminalizing the possession, use and sale of arbitrarily illegal “drugs” the then-Man did not like.
The ’80s-era Soviet KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov had some interestingly premonitory things to say about this, but few listened to him at the time and now – here we are.
Which brings us back to Alex, again. And closer to us, too.
De-platforming and de-monetizing him wasn’t enough.
He has been convicted – in court – of claiming that the 2012 school shooting in Sandy Hook, CT was a “hoax.” The jury awarded his supposed “victims” $4.1 million in compensatory damages and an additional $45.2 million in punitive damages, for a total just shy of $50 million dollars.
For what, again?
Jones said things his putative “victims” didn’t like. You know, like the things the American Nazi Party said, once-upon-a-time, which many people also did not like – but their right to say them strenuously defended by the ACLU-Left.
While it suited.
Jones, himself, didn’t do anything to his putative “victims.” Apparently, some of the people who listened to what Jones said did things – such as make harassing phone calls, sent death threats, etc., to parents of kids killed in the shooting.
Jones was held responsible for what these people did.
Very much of a piece with the attempt to hold gun manufacturers “accountable” for what some people do with the guns they made (no one – yet – talks of holding Chevrolet “accountable” for the misuse of a Corvette they made, much less the government for encouraging people to buy fire-prone electric cars).
But this is all incidental.
It is not what Jones said about Sandy Hook. It is what others might say, going forward – about anything the institutional Left does not like. As for example that the “vaccines” being pushed on people are both harmful and ineffective, insofar as they do not prevent people from getting or spreading sickness and thus are not vaccines, properly speaking.
Speaking of which: Why no trials for the people who lied about these “vaccines,” such as Deborah Birx – the Scarf Lady – and the Little Doctor? These people didn’t just say things. They did things. To tens of millions of actual victims.
Ah, but what they did the Left does not dislike – and so they are free to continue doing them.
Everyone understands the situation.
If you say things the institutionalized Left likes, you are good. Literally and figuratively. You will be rewarded and encouraged.
If you say anything the institutionalized Left dislikes, you will be broke.
What happened to Jones is a big picture prequel of what is going to happen to us all, if the Left succeeds in implementing the “social credit” panopticon it intends to impose upon us all. Overwhelming – and disproportionate – sanctions.
Not for the doing but the saying. Maybe even the thinking.
Jones himself may have served to further just that purpose, not incidentally. A man who is easy to dislike, easier to lampoon. Which makes it easier to lampoon some of the truths he did tell and to tar-by-association anyone else who tries to tell them.
That, of course, is just another conspiracy theory.
Mods, please delete this post and leave the second. Made a copy-paster error in the article text of this one.
Jones’s troubles are of his own making. I don’t want him deplatformed. When you publically defame someone and they die you and win you owe money. If that hurts oh well
Hit the abuse button. They don’t have time to read each and every post.
A nation either has freedom of speech/thought or it doesn’t. there is no grey area.
I feel the same offense whenever a proabort says a human baby is not a human being.
But I value my freedom to call them murderers more.
So should these stupid grieving parents. They found a scapegoat and meal ticket in one. ACLU is envious.
Either we believe in the jury system or we don’t.
Evidence is presented, from either side. Very specific instructions are given by the judge.
Unless people are present for ALL of the trial, and the instructions by the judge…pontification is a waste of time.
And, keep in mind that this stuff will be appealed and all of the evidence, and the instructions are reviewed again.
So, what the author is suggesting is that we can no longer trust the juries, the judge, and the appeals process because they are ALL tools of the deep state.
I simply don’t buy that.
“Either we believe in the jury system or we don’t.”
I used to believe in it.
I do not any more.
Fair ‘nuff.
Verdict first, trial afterword - in fact, no trial was held or will be held on the facts. The judge did not allow a jury for the trial of the facts. This is in direct violation of the Seventh Amendment which states:
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
I am getting more insight into the legal process than I want to know because of some family estate civil litigation going on right now.
We picked the lawyer for our team partially for her legal knowledge but mostly for her intimate knowledge of the personal quirks of the judge who will be presiding in the case.
The legal process is not pretty.
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