Don’t Let Them Fool You Again

"You cannot have a free and fair election when the media, the tech companies, and the intelligence community censor information about the foreign business connections of one of the two presidential candidates."

-Joel B. Pollak, Blue State Blues: The 2020 Election* Gets a Giant Asterisk over Hunter Biden Laptop, LINK 

Since 2020 I have been saying that while Joe Biden may have won the actual vote, that vote was not fair because the media suppressed information and distorted facts into a comprehensive narrative that pushed voters away from Donald Trump and toward Joe Biden.  Time magazine, as I have previously pointed out, so much as admitted this “conspiracy” to swing the election and “save the country.” That effort to “save the country” destroyed the very democracy – the freedom of the people to decide – that makes this country what it is.

The Big Lie

But to mention any of this to other than open-eyed conservatives has been to risk being called a crazy conspiracy theorist who has fallen for the Trump and right-wing lies.  But now, perhaps, those name callers will listen.

Now the truth is coming out:  the Russian hoax that consumed the media for the entirety of Trump’s presidency and underlay at least one of the Trump impeachment attempts has been proven to have been manufactured by the Democrats.  

And, now the mainstream media is admitting what they well knew before the election:  that the infamous Hunter Biden laptop which was deemed nothing more than Russian/Trumpian disinformation is in fact real and contains incriminating emails as well as information that implicates his father, then candidate and now President Joe Biden.

It’s interesting that the Left likes to blame Russia when the anti-democratic tactics used by Russia’s government are not that different from those used by the Left here.  Russia has sham elections; those in  power, not the people, decide their results.  We are hearing, and condemning, Putin’s crack down on Russian media as he allows only his story and justification of his invasion of Ukraine to be fed to his people.  But how is that really any different than what we have in this country: a people fed not facts but narrative by an undemocratic power structure that believes it has the right to decide for the people?

Democracy Requires Information

Democracy requires freedom of thought, and freedom of thought requires a free flow of and access to information, for without information upon which to base their own decisions, the people really have no freedom to think or to decide.

In 1780 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in its Declaration of Rights of the Inhabitants stated, “The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state.”  Similarly, in 1776, North Carolina’s Declaration of Rights stated, “That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and therefore ought never to be restrained.”

Our Founding Fathers and authors of our Constitution understood that freedom of the press – the right of the people to know the facts (as opposed to a selected narrative) – is an essential underpinning of democracy.  “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. 

John Adams, our country’s second President wrote that “The liberty of the press is essential to the security of the state.” He stated, “But none of the means of information are more sacred, or have been cherished with more tenderness and care by the settlers of America, than the press.” 

Today our Press, along with the rest of our power and information structure has decided that narrative is more important than facts and truth.  When the people lose access to that information, they lose their freedom and their democracy.

The power structure that includes mainstream media decided that they did not want President Trump to have a second term and so they withheld information from the public that would have allowed them to assess both 2020 candidates on an even playing field.  They fed the public false information that was anti-Trump and pro-Biden.  This did not “fix” the election in the traditional understanding of casting fraudulent ballots (although some of that occurred too), but it did “fix” the election in the sense that it left the voters without essential facts and with manufactured/false facts with which to choose for whom to vote. 

The author of the above quote is right:  President Biden should have an asterisk after his name for the rest of history to show that this was not a fair election in the sense of American democracy and the people’s rights to inform themselves of all facts and make their own decision about for whom to vote.  Rather, this election was manipulated by a vast power structure that was anti-Trump and either pro-Biden or more generally pro-Left.

The facts of the Hunter Biden laptop are now slowly being fed to us by the media which has decided they will now admit it exists and selectively feed us its contents.  This week Republican Rep. Gaetz asked that the contents of the Biden laptop (on a flash drive) be placed into the record of the House Judiciary Committee.  Its Democratic Chair, Rep. Nadler objected.  But, after some delay and a letter from Gaetz indicating support for its entry into the record by “majority authority,” the flash drive containing a copy of the contents is now public record.

Of course, that does not stop the attempts to deny and downplay its contents by those who benefited from it being hidden during the election as nothing more than a right wing conspiracy theory.  Indeed, President Biden continues to say it is all a lie.

Would Informed Minds Have Decided Differently?

Might it have made a difference to some voters if they had been given the information that the mainstream media had available but kept hidden that candidate Biden’s son was under investigation for tax evasion, that candidate Biden himself financially benefitted from his son’s questionable foreign dealings with Ukraine and China?

Would it have made a difference if voters had been informed that Vice President Biden was not only aware of, but also intimately involved in a corrupt, multimillion-dollar, international influence-peddling scheme run by Hunter, and Joe’s brother Jim Biden, in the countries for which Joe was point man in the Obama administration, such as Russia, Ukraine and China? 

Would it have mattered to voters that during the last two years of Joe Biden’s vice presidency Hunter in conjunction with “the big guy” Joe Biden, was using the Biden name to open doors and find acquisitions for Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC?   Or that $6 million CEFC wired into the business bank account of trusted Biden family friend Rob Walker, a former Clinton administration official whose wife, Betsy Massey Walker, had been Jill Biden’s assistant when she was Second Lady?

Would it have mattered to voters that SinoHawk Holdings, which was set up on May 15, 2017, for a joint venture between CEFC and Hunter and his business partners, was the deal for which Joe Biden was to get a 10% cut, as cited in an infamous 2017 email on the laptop, “10 [percent] held by H [Hunter] for the big guy [Joe Biden].”?

There is a lot on this laptop.  The laptop that the mainstream media and Leftist power structure asserted did not exist, even while knowing that it did.  Would it have changed some people’s votes if they had been given these hidden facts?  Perhaps.  We will never know. 

Moving Forward With Open Eyes

Along with Joe, many on the Left will continue to assert that there is “nothing to see here, move along.”  But the whole point in a democracy is that it is not for some power structure to make that decision.  It is for the people, who must be given access to ALL the facts which are available, to decide what to make of those facts.  Otherwise, how is this really any different from a state media like Russia where the people are given selective facts and through those selections are manipulated and told what to think and to believe.

Some people realized this sort of thing was going on throughout Donald Trump’s presidency in an effort to inhibit his ability to serve as President and in an effort to deny him reelection.  But, as directed by the mainstream propaganda narrative machine, most people accepted the conspiracy theory label that was attached to this and any other potentially negative publicity about the Left. 

Those who ignored mutterings from the Right can label themselves fooled.  Perhaps they were blinded by Trump’s often acerbic language which was up-played and often distorted by that same propaganda machine while it downplayed or simply failed to report his many successes for this country.  It’s hard to fight the vast power and propaganda machine that currently exists.  It’s hard to find the facts and thus the truth. 

What I wish is that, as the truth and actual facts begin to come out, that the millions who were fooled will not deny that they were indeed misled.  No one likes to make a mistake, to be made a fool of, but to ignore that it happened, to explain it away, only leaves those who fooled and took advantage of you the ability to do it again.

This country cannot survive without the freedom of information, without the assertion of the populace of their right to know and to decide for themselves.  The physical country might remain as a place on a map, but the democracy that it once was will die.

So, admit you were fooled by a propaganda machine that you once could trust but no more.  Admit that this Leftist machine has an agenda that it is determined to put into place without any real input from the people. 

Losing Your Voice: The Why and How of a Power Grab

There seems to currently be an all-out war on diverse voices.  The sort of silencing that we are seeing these days makes us think of totalitarian regimes that we read about in history class, the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Stalin, etc.  I’d like to think I’m exaggerating, but friends of mine who grew up in Communist or other totalitarian regimes as well as others with firsthand knowledge of that sort of partisan political silencing now indicate they are seeing that sort of silencing here in America.  Former presidential candidate and Democrat Tulsi Gabbard has referred to what we are witnessing as not unlike a police state.

Why the attack on diverse voices?  The answer is fairly simple: When you want yourself or your party to be in control not just of your designated duties, but of society itself; when you think so less of the common man’s abilities to make the “right” decisions, when you want to create your own utopia.  When those are your goals, in order to achieve them you must silence all voices that do not parrot your own.

The “How” of this power grab in America today is multifaceted.  It includes a number of power structures all of which are complicit in a Leftest campaign for what they call “unity” but which really is designed to silence all opposition to their plans. Following are some of the tactics currently in use.

               Combine Forces with Big Tech

Big Tech’s biases sync with those of the Left.  And, Big Tech has the power to silence the voices of those holding different views. 

Democrat Tulsi Gabbard in discussing the Left’s silencing that undermines our civil liberties, noted that "Big Tech is culpable in that they are using their monopolistic power to pick and choose whose voices are heard and whose voices are squelched, whether it’s based on who they agree with, disagree with, political affiliation, who you voted for."

I am aware of the old saw that Big Tech can do as it pleases because it is a private company, not the government and therefore has no responsibility to First Amendment rights.  That view is mistaken both ethically and legally.

In today’s world, social media is our version of the old public square where everyone could speak their views.  That makes these social media sites and their Big Tech controllers uniquely important.  In Packingham v. NC, a unanimous Supreme Court held that a North Carolina law prohibiting registered sex offenders from accessing various websites, where minors were known to be active and have accounts, regardless of whether the sex offender directly interacted with a minor, violated the First Amendment.  The Court stated, “to foreclose access to social media altogether is to prevent the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.”

While the facts of that case were different from the facts of today’s censorship and silencing by Twitter, Facebook, Amazon’s server (Parlor and Parler App), and others, that case tells us that because the internet is today’s public square, there must be some protection of First Amendment rights within that square if those rights are to mean anything at all. 

               Combine Forces with News and Entertainment

When the Press silences only voices of one political viewpoint or when it presents stories in a way that assists and promotes one viewpoint, the silencing becomes a form of propaganda. 

The mainstream media has biases that, like those of Big Tech, sync with the views of the Left.  Hence, they use omission, distortion, presentation of opinion as fact, suppression of unfavorable stories (e.g., Hunter Biden and his laptop) and airtime to persuade people to adopt the Left viewpoint on most issues.

By now I think it is common knowledge that the mainstream media’s reports about Trump and his actions were over 90% unfavorable.  It is also clear that their approach toward Biden is to present everything favorably or if that is not possible to simply not report it.  As Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it, “The press does not feel responsibility for its judgments.  It makes judgments and attaches labels with the greatest of ease.  Mediocre journalists simply make headlines of their conclusions, which suddenly become generally accepted.” (See his book “Warning to the West”)

Our democracy requires informed citizenry and we in large part depend on the media for that information.  If they are not presenting it or are presenting it in a way that conforms only to one voice, then they are essentially silencing all our voices, because without having full facts and information, it is impossible to even formulate differing views.

While the news media may have become a dystopian form of entertainment, the Entertainment Industry itself, again with biases similar to the Left, has made it its mission to use its programming to bend the views of the American people to those of the Left.   A recent article in the Hollywood Reporter indicated that Hollywood needs to “double down” on pushing the Left agenda.  We will be presented with “entertainment” that reinforces what is good/acceptable and what is not.

               Combine Forces with Corporations and Academia

Again, these institutions tend to also have biases that sync with the views of the Left.  Their role seems to be to limit opportunity for those who hold diverse and opposing views.  We regularly see these institutions blackball individuals who do not share the “correct” views while at the same time making public statements in support of trending Leftist causes and those who advocate for them.

Just this week Sephora cut ties with one of their beauty “vloggers” because she had stated she supported then-President Trump and also expressed her Christian views.  The company was made aware of this via a form of “report on your neighbor” conducted by some Twitter users who accused the vlogger of being racist.  Sephora in response to these unproven allegations said the vlogger’s beliefs are “not aligned” with the company’s “values around inclusivity.”  Apparently lack of inclusivity of conservative views is OK with Sephora.

This is not a unique incident.  Over and over, we hear of individuals, including teachers, scientists, athletes, and respected community members being fired for holding conservative views or making statements that are not in line with the Left’s narrative.  A United States soccer star received backlash for standing during the United States’ National Anthem.  It seems that every entity aligned with the Left that has the power to do so is encouraging its own hiring officers as well as those of others not to hire anyone aligned with Trump or conservatives. 

When Trump Administration employees leaving government service were told by the Biden Administration that they would not be able to receive the rest of their maternity leave which they were already in the course of, their main concern was that they would not be able to find immediate employment not because of having a new child at home but because former Trump officials face an uphill climb finding a job in a Washington D.C.  Reported in Politico on Feb 2, the article notes that employees declined to go on the record for fear that it would affect [their] prospects of landing a job with a salary sufficient to support a family.

Blackballing those who speak diverse views is a form of silencing because it places a person in the untenable position of having to choose between speaking their views or being able to feed themself.  

Academia is not immune from this sort of behavior.  Just this week I received information about the Kansas Board of Regents passing a suspension of tenure and its protections through 2022.  While the justification is potential financial problems due to CoVid, the reality is that under this plan administrators could layoff faculty without any procedural safeguards, without the right to discovery, and with no procedure for reinstating faculty once the financial exigency has passed.  Thus, this makes it possible for a tenured member of the faculty to be fired for any reason, including unpopular views, as long as she is told that it is due to financial exigency.

               Taking Political Action

The current administration is right on board with the Left and its silencing.  It supports the impeachment of a political rival.  It supports calls to censure or remove Congress persons who spoke up or made objections to the Left’s position about the election’s irregularities.  Via executive order that effectively silences the voices of the people, the President is cancelling all actions of his predecessor without reflection about their benefit or detriment to the country. Some of these orders include enforcement and punishment provisions for not complying.  And the people’s Capitol is filled with military protecting not the people but those within the seats of power (while at the same time no military is sent to cities actually under violent assault from Left and anarchist organizations).

The first bills in a new Congress reflect the priorities of that administration.  In this administration we see bills that would further silence views that do not “unite” with those of the Left.  HR-1 and its counterpart S-1, eliminates any restrictions on vote-by-mail, a form of voting that is noted for its likelihood of misuse and hence dilution of legitimate voters’ voices. 

But more importantly, HR-1 allows federal regulators to categorize and regulate speech.  If desired, all speech that just mentions a candidate could be illegal for up to 4 months prior to an election; all that is required is that the speech “promotes, attacks, supports, or opposes” a candidate.   The regulators would be a Commission whose chairman would be appointed by the President and have a tie-breaking (and hence partisan) vote.  The bill also requires groups to disclose personal information of supporters, sometimes to the public at large.

While presented as a “voter protection” act, If HR-1 were to become law it would certainly intimidate if not silence those who hold viewpoints in opposition to those in power.  It would silence any form of honest debate about candidates or issues and their possible solutions.  Notably, the ACLU opposes this bill.

               Keeping the People in Fear of Speaking Out

In addition to silencing diverse views, the above activities all also serve to intimidate by creating a fear in others not yet silenced so that they too will not speak out.  This is not unlike a hate crime in which a member of a particular group is injured less to harm that particular individual and more to warn the entire group not to cause trouble – to stay silent.

This is the goal of Biden’s unity:  Unite in silence.  Silence all diverse views and from the outside it will look like we are all united.  The above methods (as well as others) all work to this end.  Do not present diverse views on social media or you may be censored or your account deleted; do not expect to get information from news, yet without information you may not be able to form cogent views and thus will not speak out; prepare to be bombarded with proper viewpoints in entertainment so that you will begin to internalize and speak those views; do not speak diverse views for fear of losing and/or not finding employment; you must follow executive orders (fiats of the executive) or fear punishment for not acting in accordance with this executive power grab; forget speaking through your vote which the Left is working to dilute.  But if you unite with the “correct” view, the party view, you will be just fine.

               And What Will You Do?

People like Poland’s Deputy Justice minister have seen this silencing before.  He recently called on the U.S. to protect every citizen from the “cancel culture” which “has more in common with the methods of Soviet Russia than modern democracies.”  Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said something similar before he was arrested and sentenced to more than two years in a Russian penal colony.  Professor Michael Rachkosvsky who grew up in the former USSR, came to this country in 1993, and now teaches at Quinnipiac University, reminds us that socialist ideologues need to eliminate opposition and control media, art, and literature.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn was seemingly prescient not only in the underlying themes of his novels condemning the ideological lie, but especially in his “Warnings to the West” originally published in 1975.

These and others who have a personal experience with silencing are warning us.  If you cannot speak, cannot vote, and must conform, then you have no voice and you are not free. 

You are being watched by the many arms of the power hungry who will silence you if you do not behave and “unite” with the Left.  You are being watched, but who will watch the watchers?  And is watching just enough?  Are you willing to sit back and watch your freedoms dissolve, perhaps because as of yet you have not been affected? 

My hope is that this taking of our freedom is being done so quickly, so openly and obviously, and so broadly that everyone will notice, that no one will be complacent about it, and that no one will simply sit back and watch.  This is a watershed moment.  Complacency gives those who seek unbridled power exactly what they want.  Indeed, complacency, which is the voice of complicity, may remove your last chance to speak up and your voice may be lost forever.