I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends, Calling 'Foul!' On Wilhelm's Censorship, and the Desperation of the Left

Had Judge Doughty been serving in his current capacity in 2020, the Trump campaign might have obtained a hearing of evidence of election fraud. Perhaps there may still be opportunity.

Thank God for Don Surber – if the infantile spoiled brats in Hollywood fail to provide me with inspiration, it’s a pretty good bet that Don will – in a good way, though. It is rare for me to differ with most anything he writes, and on the occasions that I do, it is usually on some mundane detail. Were it not for Brother Don, I may not have learned about this development until much, much later.

An excellent companion to the federal judge's order is what USSCJ Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion for 303 Creative, LLC v Elenis, this excerpt in particular:

The First Amendment, Gorsuch explained, ‘protects an individual’s right to speak his mind,’ even when others may regard that speech as ‘deeply misguided’ or it may cause ‘anguish.’

Judge Doughty wrote,

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’¹

Oh, I can hear the statists and other varieties of leftists (actors and actresses, "journalists," et al.) howling, "...but Facebook, Google, and YouTube are private companies! Go build your own Twitter..."

I mention this because the very same ones who invoked that “[insert social media platform here] is a private company and its owners can do as they please” are the very same ones who were beside themselves when Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk, and his prerogative was to open up the platform to all speech – even that of conservatives.

I’ll spare you the very long, and tedious history of the federal government’s machinations that laid the foundation of what would become the internet as we know it, today. Algore was visionary in that respect - he may not have actually invented the internet², but he did perceive it could disproportionately benefit Democrats, even if it wasn’t clear in what way.

The Reader’s Digest version is oversimplified as follows: The National Science Foundation funded CNET (Computer Science Network) and increased access to ARPANET (the product of ARPA, a DoD research project) by extending it to supercomputer sites in the US and Australia. Now known as NSFNet, when it expanded to academic and research organizations in Europe in 1989, it had become a truly intercontinental network, ultimately giving rise to commercial internet service providers and rendering ARPANET (decommissioned in 1990) obsolete. As of 1995, the internet was fully commercialized, relegating NSFNet (decommissioned in 1995) to the scrap heap of history.³

Alphabet Corp., AWS (Amazon Web Services), Facebook and its minion subsidiaries, and even Twitter still, have reaped trillions of dollars off of a technology to which its creation and innovation they have contributed nothing, and has been made available to their enterprises for virtually no charge, or a ridiculously nominal fee. Akin perhaps, to an NFL franchise prevailing on the municipal, county, or state government to fund the construction of a state-of-the-art venue from which the ownership syndicate reaps $MMs of profit from $BBs of revenue (but investing little of its own resources), and while every taxpayer has an ownership stake in said facility through the taxes levied on them, they'll never benefit from it.

These “private companies” are, for all intents and purposes, public utilities and given their impact on every aspect of our lives, they should be operated as such, with complete transparency and accountability. The internet itself would never have come into existence were it not initially funded by the federal government as part of the DoD's ARPA project. Absent that, it would have largely remained a means for academics and their sponsor institutions to share research data.

While the above is true and accurate, it isn’t how or why we’ve reached our current state. To understand that, we have to go back a ways.

The desire for one to have dominion over another is as old as time immemorial. It is a darker aspect of human nature, a destructive force, but if confined to an individual, it can be mitigated, even overcome. The problem is when an individual so disposed is able to leverage that malevolence through an entire nation, or its armed forces, that collective becomes a force multiplier.

By any other name – imperialism, colonialism, et al. – it is still one dominating another (be it an individual, a people, or even a country) against their will, even if “negotiated” as it likely transpired against a backdrop of armed superiority such that the only rational course of action was agreeing to be peacefully conquered.

When we were children, we called such other children bullies. We encountered them early in our lives. There was one in almost every sandbox – that one who would not or could not play well with others and was able to impose his will on everyone else. Usually, there were grown-ups nearby to mitigate the boorish behaviour without someone having to be a tattletale, but sometimes that was the only option. Nonetheless, we never had to worry about the grown-up being the bully.

A government – any government – even a constitutional republic is – is only as worthy of allegiance and respect as a moral authority as its least ethical member. It’s why kingdoms and other monarchies ultimately fail. Power that is ultimately seated in a man or woman will eventually fail because humans are flawed creatures. See what Lord Acton has to say about that.⁴

Despite that ugly facet of human nature, in establishing our constitutional republic, this nation’s founding fathers still demonstrated mankind at its best. The Wrestler declaring war on half of its states to preserve the former union notwithstanding. The Union army having prevailed meant that the republic would continue in name only.

Applying this to our current state of affairs, the sandbox known as the internet was a wonderful new invention. Like any sandbox, it attracted bullies as well as everyone else who just wanted to play – only the bullies didn’t immediately give themselves away. They seemed to play by the same unwritten rules as everyone else until the advent of social media.

Before social media emerged as the de facto public square and unofficial social credit system it would become, this nation’s captains of industry were giving way to their lieutenants and staff sergeants. However, it wasn’t just the CEOs of this nation’s largest corporations who were leaving the helms of the enterprises to which they had been entrusted – the same was happening in academia, philanthropy, government, and in our oldest and most trusted institutions.

These lieutenants and staff sergeants were children of Baby Boomers who had been raised with a decidedly leftist worldview. These were kids of privilege, having attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Brown; they earned MBAs – frequently without being required to gain any experience in the real world. All the while, their leftist political indoctrination was being reinforced by professors and mentors.

By and large, they managed to bide their time, assimilate into the hated “establishment” of corporations, universities and colleges, foundations, and government while waiting for the opportunity to finally “change the world” as their parents had hoped to do.

As it turns out, these new leaders were going to change the world in ways their parents and others of their parents’ generation could only dream of, and they had designs on leveraging the power of the establishment of which they were now in charge to do just that.

The new executive directors, chiefs, and deans of the institutions and foundations now under their control effected change by throwing off a priority on empirical evidence, scientific methodology, and impartial academic standards in favor of wokeism – those who had gained stature and influence in the deep state, elected office in the US House of Representatives, in the US Senate, and in statehouses throughout the nation did likewise.

The new CEOs, presidents, and other C-level senior management personnel in the corporations they now led effected change by ushering in corporatism and showing capitalism the door. One way to define corporatism is by its most obvious visible feature, its outsized scale and the absence of the necessity to be profitable.

Once an enterprise achieves economies of scale, it no longer exists to make a profit, as profitability is almost built into the business model from years of doing the heavy lifting of establishing relationships with financiers, suppliers, and distributors as the focus was on growth and showing a profit on the balance sheet.

It now exists to preserve itself by severely limiting competition to effectively eliminate it. Typically, this is done through leveraging the authority of agencies and legislatures at the national and state levels. By creating regulatory hurdles with which only it and perhaps one or two other enterprises of similar scale can comply, it becomes all but impossible for new entities to attract venture capital to launch, let alone compete on a level playing field.

Now free of P&L accountability and the performance of its stock, the CEO of any such enterprise is now merely a custodian of the ‘C’ suite. Secure in the knowledge that the majority of the shareholders are institutional investors whose fund managers share a similar leftist political orientation, he is insulated from the consequences of declining value of the enterprise and its stock. As a result, he is able to use the enterprise’s presence domestically, and its reach globally to effect the future reflected in his and his management team’s utopian worldview – until he isn’t. Even then, his globalist elite masters aren’t necessarily inclined to remove such a well and highly placed useful idiot. See Bud Light, Target, and P&G’s BJ property.

Hence, the Corporate, Political, and Philanthropic Classes sought to do what government could not, given the constraints placed on it by the constitution. This included changing the language and the definitions of words, especially those like “justice,” and later, “equity.”

A subtle abridgement of rights protected by the constitution such as the freedom of speech and peaceable assembly would morph into a nakedly brazen assault on the right to bear arms in the wake of mass shooting incidents like those which occurred at Sandy Hook⁵, the US Naval Station in Norfolk, Fort Hood in Texas, Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, et al.

I submit the distinct possibility that each of these was orchestrated by entities possessed by dark forces to bring about a seemingly organic groundswell of support for the repeal of the second amendment has not yet been demonstrated to be false.

Some day, long after he has died completely broke, Alex Jones will be vindicated.

In 2020, the most egregious infringement on freedom of speech by social media had long been suspected by a multitude of those not of a leftist political orientation. This suspicion pre-dates by years when the masks came off of the faces of the new statists. Those in charge of the social media companies in this nation determined that maintaining the appearance of equitability was no longer necessary. Hence, as Judge Doughty cited:

In this case, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants suppressed conservative-leaning free speech, such as:

(1) suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 Presidential election;

(2) suppressing speech about the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin;

(3) suppressing speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns;

(4) suppressing speech about the efficiency of COVID-19 vaccines;

(5) suppressing speech about election integrity in the 2020 presidential election;

(6) suppressing speech about the security of voting by mail;

(7) suppressing parody content about Defendants;

(8) suppressing negative posts about the economy;

(9) suppressing negative posts about President Biden.

I suppose it is a relatively significant victory that not only could such a lawsuit against the administration and social-media giants be filed, but that it would actually be heard in a federal court. It’s remarkable, considering that Trump’s lawyers couldn’t get even one federal court to hear any of the lawsuits alleging election fraud in 2020. It’s a shame Judge Doughty wasn’t Chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, then.

What Doughty’s decision validates is what almost everyone else (even the perps) already knew: that which represented the grown-ups on whom we relied to police the sandbox when necessary was in fact, the bully – deciding who could and could not have full access to the sandbox. A more grim representation would be the story told in William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies.

The original (B&W), made in 1963, was a much better film – the point is the same, though – it was shown to our Literature class in ninth grade, in the school auditorium.

Sadly, there is no guarantee that any grown-up is coming to restore order and equitability to the sandbox, let alone our society.

The bully is appealing the decision as such is its right. Notice that no one is actively working against its exercising that right, yet as part of the now years-long campaign to Get Trump at Any Cost, more than one organization is working to deny it to us by seeking to keep Trump’s name off of the ballot in a number of states.

It begs the question, “Just what are they trying to keep hidden that would justify denying a candidate his right to be on the official ballot? Of just what is it they are so afraid?” My guess is that they fear being subjected to that which they would enthusiastically do to those with whom they disagree.

I’d like to think that the vast majority of those of us who recognize this for the travesty it is would be equally outraged were the shoe on the other foot, however unlikely. It is unlikely because those of us who only wish to be left the hell alone are not inclined to punish those whose politics are different from ours. Ours is not to weaponize agencies of the federal government against our own fellow citizens and the chief political opponent of the occupant of the oval office. That’s what happens in third-world countries and banana republics.

I can only take hope and encouragement from Sasha Stone’s writing in her essays – each one is welcomed by me as a child awaits Christmas morning.

What I Love About America

She displays an uncommon sensibility in her faith in humanity, her grasp of history, and the swing of its pendulum which has grown longer over the past decade.

Thank you, dear reader, for your indulgence.

It is my hope that you can identify instances of hope and sanity in your own world in between dispatches from me – the arrogant assumption being that my writing is a source of hope and sanity. Even if it isn’t, I’m hoping that you find it worthwhile.

Toward that end, I recommend subscribing to Lillia Gajewski’s substack if only for its weekly feature, For Funk’s Sake.

An "Abnormal" Court and Making Liberals Look like Idiots

It’s an excellent warm-up to Brother Don Surber’s weekly recap of the madness and insanity of our day.

Highlights of the week

Until next time…

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-key-ruling-against-social-media-censorship-missouri-v-biden-government-covid-9b457364?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

2. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0603/Political-misquotes-The-10-most-famous-things-never-actually-said/I-invented-the-Internet.-Al-Gore

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

4. https://www.acton.org/research/lord-acton

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting_conspiracy_theories