Tag: misinformation

Little Marco Grew Up

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In the above linked video CBS journalist Margaret Brennan confronts Secretary of State Marco Rubio about JD Vance’s statement that Europe has a problem with free speech.  She condemns Vance for defending free speech in Germany where she declares free speech was responsible for the Nazi genocide against the Jews.

I found this video interesting because I wouldn’t have guessed that Rubio would be as agile as he showed himself to be.  He fired back that he disagreed with her premise and forcefully stated that there was no free speech in Nazi Germany but there was a totalitarian state there.  And it blamed part of its population for economic and social problems and had no moral qualms with murdering these innocent men, women and children on an industrial scale.

I’ve never held the opinion that Marco Rubio was all that sharp.  But he did a very competent job making Brennan seem ridiculous.  Maybe he’s wised up over the years, maybe he’s more confident nowadays to speak sensibly out in the open because Trump has his back or maybe Brennan is just such a lightweight and her logic was so ridiculous that any half intelligent person can make her look like an idiot.

But whatever the cause it was stunning to see just how stupid her case sounded.  But Brennan can’t take all the blame.  After all free speech is not the law of the land in Germany, England or France.  In fact, in Germany there are laws that ban the distribution of materials from groups like the Nazis or other “unconstitutional organizations.”  These laws are being used to try to suppress the AFD (Alternative for Germany) party because they want to restrict immigration.  So, JD Vance advocating for free speech is actually radicalism in a place like Germany.  But Margaret Brennan managed to make it sound completely ridiculous by trying to blame the Holocaust on free speech.

What you see here is the difference between the American conception on free speech and the European fear of speaking uncomfortable truths.  To them some things are too dangerous to say or even think.  And that is the viewpoint that the Democrats tried hard during the Biden administration to import.  That is the reason for the emphasis on misinformation.  Apparently, people can’t be trusted to make up their minds about what is true and what isn’t.  We are too stupid to figure out what’s true so the government and the media have to tell us.

And that is why organizations like CBS fought like hell to make sure Donald Trump didn’t become president.  Because if he did people would be allowed to say what they really thought about things like transgender identity or how bad crime is and whether millions of illegal aliens were a good thing or not.

So here was CBS trying to condemn JD Vance for outraging Europeans with the opinion that denying their people free speech would come back to bite them.  And it was a useful demonstration of where main stream media’s true beliefs sit.  They are solidly behind the globalist position that regular people should just shut up and take at face value whatever the “experts” in the government (except Trump) or the media or the NGOs tell them.  And if you voice a dissenting opinion then your guilty of spreading disinformation and in a perfect world you’d be silenced and sent to the reeducation camp.  Very interesting indeed.

Kudos to JD Vance and (surprisingly) Marco Rubio.  I guess Little Marco grew up.

FUD

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Fear, uncertainty, disinformation.  These things seem to almost define the government’s policies toward us.  Most prominent in recent years was the COVID campaign.  The use of fear and disinformation to force behavior in a population was on a previously unheard-of scale.  Most vivid was Biden’s heinous prediction that the unvaccinated would suffer a winter of severe illness and death.  Lying to their fellow citizens has now reached the ultimate stage where nothing resembling the truth is used.  Basically, we have stepped over the line and adopted the Stalinist practices described by George Orwell in his novel “1984.”  The truth has disappeared completely from the government’s communications with us.

Knowing this to be the case, it behooves each of us to become “Washington-ologists,” sort of like the Kremlinologists that the Defense Department employed to figure out Soviet nuclear strategy.  We have to parse the lies being broadcast by the government and translate them into the underlying activities that Washington is attempting to inflict upon us.

For instance, Joe Biden and his allies in the Blue States have been declaring the end of the gasoline fueled automobile.  They’ve done everything they can do to make it seem as if within five years you won’t be able to buy or use anything but a battery car.  And this produces, fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of the average person.  They think, “Can this be true?  Will I be forced to lose my investment in my automobile if I don’t unload it now and buy a battery car?”  And some people actually go ahead and buy a battery car and find out about the problems of buying into this unsatisfactory technology and the current lack of infrastructure to use it.

But once they’ve wasted the money they’re trapped into this choice and so Biden’s scare tactic succeeds.  Meanwhile based on how little has actually been done to provide power for these battery cars, there really isn’t any hope of this technology becoming dominant for the foreseeable future.  But using fear and intimidation it pushes forward the outcome that the Left desires.

I think that a wise strategy to implement when dealing with pronouncements from Washington is to assume that anything they try to scare you with is a lie and anything they tell you is for your own good is meant to hurt you.  If you use that algorithm, you probably won’t be too far from the truth.  Now the tricky part comes when you try to avoid doing what they want to force on you.  As you can see from the COVID vaccine example they’ll go pretty far to coerce behavior.  And the closer your life is enmeshed with the federal government (federal employee, contractor) the harder it will be to say no.  That right there shows you why staying out of their orbit might be the smartest thing you can do.  But even independent people have entanglements with the feds.  The IRS and government mandates applying to private corporations like the FDA and other regulatory agencies can make it difficult to just ignore the dictates of Washington.

But at least if you approach the disinformation coming out of Washington from a skeptical stance you increase your chances of avoiding harm.  Of course, your friends and family will claim you’re a conspiracy theorist but as we’ve seen many of those theories have turned out to be true.  So let the citizen beware.

But watching the recent Congressional hearings on the COVID debacle where Fauci claims that he never caused any problems or misled us about anything is comedic gold.  Listening to his side of it he’s never even heard of COVID!”

But, But, Misinformation!

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The New York Times says that Donald Trump and his allies have won the war to kill the Democrats’ and the Deep State’s efforts to control political speech online.

Well, okay. I hope that’s true. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Especially with people going to prison for writing memes that the Democrats don’t like.

But let’s say it’s a start.

“The arguments strike at the heart of an unsettled question in modern American political life: In a world of unlimited online communications, in which anyone can reach huge numbers of people with unverified and false information, where is the line between protecting democracy and trampling on the right to free speech?”

Apparently the NYT doesn’t understand that the 1st amendment isn’t just for their misinformation.  Funny thing is the description, “reach huge numbers of people with unverified and false information” sounds like a Joe Biden press conference.

“Even before the court rules, Mr. Trump’s allies have succeeded in paralyzing the Biden administration and the network of researchers who monitor disinformation.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department continue to monitor foreign disinformation, but the government has suspended virtually all cooperation with the social media platforms to address posts that originate in the United States.

“There’s just a chilling effect on all of this,” said Nina Jankowicz, a researcher who in 2022 briefly served as the executive director of a short-lived D.H.S. advisory board on disinformation. “Nobody wants to be caught up in it.””

Aww, what a shame! I guess we’re supposed to feel bad because Jankowicz’s Ministry of Truth got shut down.

So good. If the effort to censure free speech about the Democrats has failed let’s raise a cheer. But it’s a little early to declare victory. After all the TikTok law is being rolled out to take over any internet business they don’t like.

Matt Taibbi Chronicles the Ministry of Truth’s Exposure

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Taibbi is a lefty who actually believes in the constitution. And by all appearances is an honest man.  Such a rare bird.

 

In this essay he traces the origins of the information state and shows how Americans may have had enough of it.

But has it had enough of us?  Taibbi may be a bit too optimistic about his lefty comrades and their willingness to let go of power.