Sometimes you run across an idea so absurd you wonder how anyone could even think of it. What is one thing that would give this president more credibility? Well you could try to persuade an agency of his own government to deplatform him. I honestly cannot think of a more blatant brain fart than to ask the FCC, in a formal petition, to prohibit broadcast organizations from airing the president’s press conferences.
At a stroke you make everything the president says scarce, and valuable! Many largely ignore the man, except to note his latest prespostrous, self-referential statement. If you turn everything he says about the pandemic into illicit speech, where do you suppose that will lead? A fairy-tale land where government speaks with one voice, just not his?
How does the authoritarian left manage to mirror the president’s predilections so perfectly? The president derogates free journalists and media organizations as ‘enemies of the state’. Then down the pike comes an organization like Free Press to prove that media groups actually target free speech for all of us. Interesting someone formed an organization to restrict speech, and called it Free Press.
The difference is that Trump thinks people who disagree with him cannot be truthful. They are enemies – his enemies and by extension the state’s – and therefore must be silenced. Free Press appears to think that because Trump does not tell the truth, he is an enemy of the people, and therefore must be silenced. They both want to deploy raw, illegal power to suppress falsehood, to give their side the upper hand in endless info wars. Neither side cares about the price in freedom. They only care who wins.
The Jeffersonian 