500 Words
My fellow Americans.
Red and yellow, black and white and brown; liberal, conservative; Christian, non, atheist, something else; rich, poor: For all our differences, we MUST come to our senses.
The blatant censorship of last week by big tech (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and complicit media outlets should render all Americans horrified.
Reflexively, defensively, “But the story is a political smear.” Maybe.
But who appointed big tech and the media as filters for what we see and hear? This is America! Not China. America doesn’t tolerate censorship—until lately.
The America we argue over and love and are preparing to vote about had a noose put around her neck last week when Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al—yet again—censored, blocked, closed, and otherwise shut down a viewpoint with which they disagreed. Enough!
You say, “But I hate Donald Trump!” Do you hate so bitterly that you will tolerate America’s demise?
Censorship is inexcusable.
If we—all of us—tolerate censorship, we passively permit big tech and the media to kick the box from under America. Left undefended, we will hang, all of us.
Sadly, we have tolerated censorship for some time. What culminated in an egregious sin against America last week, we have accommodated and named “cancel culture.” This too is censorship.
Our once confident, embracing culture that melted us into Americans we have replaced with an insecurity that is grievously wounded when a foreign word sounds offensive to our English ears. The esteemed language professor was replaced after his lecture because students were offended by a Chinese word.
Bit by bit we have cancelled this and that. It’s beyond comprehension that saying “all lives matter—every single one” is an egregious sin against society. This person, that person. Cancelled.
Then, after too much tolerance: Boom!
Big tech and media block an entire story, shut down a major aspect of the other side’s political campaign, and locked the ability of the nation’s leadership to speak unless they recanted their view—and “leadership” is plural, not just an unpopular President.
Remorse is nonexistent or chalked up to a mistake. Right. These companies terminated leading American voices, even satirical ones, because they disagree with them.
Whatever political ilk you are, censorship is NOT what we do in America. Censorship is what they do in China.
We should ALL be indignant—apoplectic with American outrage.
With a voice that is 330,000,000 strong, we MUST lock arms and with set jaws declare, “Censorship is a national offense. This shall not pass into American society!”
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, our biased media outlets—these purveyors of “journalistic excellence” who arrogantly and unilaterally determine what they want us to see, while blocking what they do not want us to see, all while fomenting national rancor and division do not deserve to do business in America.
What they did last week has no place in America or among free people.
There can be NO free society that justifies or tolerates silencing an alternative point of view for political power, financial gain, or any other perceived benefit.
America is a raucous, loud family. We push, and bump, and we love, and kiss, and hug, and argue. But woven into our national DNA is a profound sense of right and wrong.
Censorship. Blocking. Throttling. Terminating. Locking accounts. Making stuff up. Cancelling. Calling right wrong and wrong right. For Americans, these things—these tactics—these are wrong every day, every way, all the time.
My fellow Americans, we must declare, “Censorship shall not pass into American life!”
If we acquiesce. If we fail. If we tolerate.
There will be no American life. There will be something else.