After living through the last ten years of speech codes, sensitivity readers, mandatory DEI loyalty oaths and pronoun enforcement etc, plus all the profs and writers attacked for committing heresy against Social Justice dogma (even when they're dead and beloved like Dr Seuss or Tolkien)‚ plus gently debating with my friends in the Blue Bubble all the controversies of this time period—Trump, Russia, Covid, Gender theory and Transmania and Drag Queen Story Hour and BLM and Biden and now Kimmel etc etc—I've come to the unavoidable conclusion that:
Progressives have fallen victim to some sort of mass psychosis that makes it impossible for them to admit when they're wrong, admit that their opponents (on any issue at any moment) may have a single valid point, and even worse, are sort of trapped in a permanently recurring delusion where every input, no matter how irrelevant or ill-suited, must be squeezed Procrustes-style into the same single simplistic narrative, where Left-liberals reside forever on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and they are always Dr King fighting for truth, justice and equality with everyone not on their team cast as George Wallace and Bull Connor.
If we've gotten to the point where even slimy shallow courtiers like Jake Tapper can look in the mirror and see a brave warrior residing eternally on the Right Side of History™, then there's no hope for the patient(s). Our ruling class is officially as demented and impervious to reality as the late Soviet Politburo.
Our progressive aristocracy are trapped in an epistemic rubber room where they reside after suffering the effects of an ideological lobotomy, and there's absolutely nothing that can cure their deranged delusions or bring them back anywhere near sanity. They're hopeless and we will just have to wait for them to go bankrupt and/or die off....
As evidenced by the pregnant women downing Tylenol on TikTok to prove they are part of The Resistance. Even if it is just fake sugar pills they are ingesting, that is beyond stupid. Good luck, little niblet.
He is bored in retirement. Now -hatred, negativity and violent rhetoric towards Trump, Vance and Musk is his new hobby horse. I don’t recognize him anymore.
I see dumb MAGA people sometimes, but I don’t see nasty, bitter MAGA people-and didn’t from 2020-24 either. Charlie Kirk was right-demeanor and an open approach matter.
i think smartphones + social media + constant internet access are the greatest brainwashing machines ever invented and push people into more extreme positions and postures without them even knowing it. it has created really ugly cult dynamics and destroyed civil discourse. clickbait is essentially rage bait and politics has replaced religion (and swallowed our entire culture), thus we have a permanent tribal war where everyone's convinced the other side is the embodiment of evil and needs to be destroyed. is ugly out there!
Go hike The Camino. It was the best two weeks I’ve had in a very long time. Outdoors, no politics, laughter, exercise the body not the brain and people from all over the world greeting you gracefully in their languages and not one .. zero.. nasty comment about my American Flag on my backpack. I felt like I WAS in heaven
He has had what is considered a mental conversion, or a mind-snap. Seen in the structures of extreme politics, extreme religion, or psychiatric afflictions. Often manifests within herds or cults.
I think that this is true without question. If memory serves Matt recently called him "a central figure of their eschatology." That is a typically great turn of phrase, but I think it actually understates his influence. He's more like the anti-deity of their anti-religion, their omega and their alpha, etc.
And if nothing else, it's easy to find ppl with all sorts of different views among his supporters. Look at RFK Jr.'s environmental career. Can you imagine anyone with a career of publicly extolling the virtues of fossil fuels making it to a comparable position in Dem admin? Also consider that Trump himself spoke out against Florida's heartbeat law, repeatedly saying he thought 6 weeks wasn't enough time.
One of the many ironies of the past 10 years is the fact that, from a policy POV, I think Trump has to be judged to be uncommonly moderate, especially by R standards. Remember his comments about the longshoremen's contract??
In regards to Trump he's more a populist than recent Republicans. He was beloved of Democrats looking for favor and favors until he came down the escalator.
Which tracks with the fact that up until he stopped donating to the Clintons and ran as a Republican, he was "just alright" (as the song goes) with Dems. Only AFTER he beat Hillary did he become the Devil incarnate to them. They gave him 100s of millions of dollars' worth of free publicity during the 2016 election cycle precisely because they were so sure his candidacy was their ticket to power, by enervating the GOP and making sure he was their opponent and not one of the 16 or however many other also-ran GOP establishment competitors he eventually dispatched to the dustbin of history.
"Can you imagine anyone with a career of publicly extolling the virtues of fossil fuels making it to a comparable position in Dem admin?"
I have no trouble at all imagining that. Offhand I cannot think of a flamboyantly anti-environment member of Clinton's or Obama's Cabinet, BUT for sake of a comparable political discrepancy, recall that Hillary Clinton, for whom the term "Women" seems to be an alternative 1st-person pronoun (much like some Christian fundies seem to do with "Jesus"), wanted to tap Larry Summers, who's on the record as saying he believes females are inherently inferior at math, for Fed Chairman!
"He's more like the anti-deity of their anti-religion...."
Why even bother with the prefixes, though? As I've tried to admonish some of my own relatives, maltheism is a form of worship.
I should have clarified, I meant a current Dem admin. I don't have trouble picturing it for WJC either, good point.
Also - you probably remember that Obama actually did hire Summers to run his NEC, which I would probably count as more or less on par with HHS. Although, fwiw - I don't want to start a whole tangent about it - that's a pretty bad mischaracterization of what LS actually said. It's interesting to wonder if he would've "rebounded" to the same extent nowadays (he did face fairly serious professional consequences back then, at least at first).
It's funny you ask about the prefixes - when I first made that observation to a friend, I went back and forth about whether to include them. You're right that they're not strictly necessary. I just thought it conveyed the idea a little more clearly. You're spot on that it's worship all the same. To paraphrase the late great David Foster Wallace, there is no such thing as atheism. Everybody worships.
"It's interesting to wonder if he would've 'rebounded' to the same extent nowadays (he did face fairly serious professional consequences back then, at least at first)."
Is it? He's a loyal Blobbist, as long as that's true They'd let him get away with anything.
"To paraphrase the late great David Foster Wallace, there is no such thing as atheism. Everybody worships."
You lost me here; I agree it's easier to slip into than many realize (and SOOOO much of this is a semantic issue), but let's just say that any statement beginning with words like "everybody", "we all", etc is as a dangerous overstatement.
In fact, if you're not already aware, it may be of general interest to you that it's even a sign of pathology:
"Larry Summers, who's on the record as saying he believes females are inherently inferior at math"
Larry Summers said no such thing. He was talking about the greater male variability hypothesis, and he wasn't even promoting it, just outlining it as a possible reason for gender imbalances at BOTH extremes of aptitude curves.
This is a great example of the type of blatant-mischaracterization-plus-bullying-hysteria that created the climate we're living in today, over the last ten years of going essentially unchallenged.
As a speech-language pathologist working with developmentally disabled youngsters, including those on the spectrum, I share your concerns, DarkSkyBest. Autism is currently being waaaaaaaayyyyyy over-diagnosed, but still. With the current prevalence at one in 36, some of these Tylenol-chuggers are bound to end up with a kiddo on the spectrum, whether there is correlation with Tylenol or not. And how will these mothers feel then? Will they wonder if their snarky "activism" caused damage to their own children? Why risk it for a few "likes?" Sad.
Thank you for your response. So we have narcissistic TikTok pregnant women. Sad. And, irresponsible. So society will be responsible for their child’s needs. Of course, the Venn diagram will be abortion as birth control plus pregnant TikTok pill swallowers. That is something else.
I have a non-verbal autistic extended family member. That there is not the moonshot/cancer moonshot/autistic moonshot sort of pisses me off. Why is it that so hard. Hmm. Maybe they have already connected the dots.
And thank you for your thoughtful response, DarkSkyBest. I'm sorry to hear about your non-verbal family member. I pray for that moonshot.
We just don't understand this malady at all. And the definition, if we can even call it that, is simply way too broad, which accounts in part for the incomprehensible increase in prevalence. We simply cannot continue to encompass non-verbal children, adolescents with awkward eye contact, people who memorize train timetables, and Bill Gates all under the same umbrella. That's like categorizing people with "floaters" and the totally blind as all part of the "visually impaired spectrum."
Have a lovely day, DarkSkyBest. Love that moniker. ;-)
You haven't heard? When Trump repeated about a Harvard study that found a potential link between Tylenol usage during pregnancy and risks for autism (link below). When some TDS-afflicted individuals heard about this, many started downing large amounts of Tylenol to "prove Donald Trump wrong"
Well...I'm autistic, and I honestly think the world would be a far better place if everyone was. I used to joke - USED TO - that if vaccines cause autism (which I didn't believe anyway, and am now "up in the air" about at best), that'd be a great reason to make them mandatory!
With parents like these, I suppose this might be their progeny's best shot at being a lot less stupid - especially since we are quite precisely talking about the kind of stupidity caused by GROUPTHINK. Soooo...between that and the possibility of Tylenol poisoning claiming some Darwin Awards, maybe there are some silver linings to be seen here?
The more people born *without* a USB-port to the Human Hivemind, the better, whatever form the mutagen might take.
There's already at least one. The woman is pretty much dead of liver damage and the father is faced with the choice of trying to save a 24-week fetus.
Even if the influencers were swallowing tic tacs and other look alikes, they still are just as responsible as the ones who caused deaths over the Tide Pod challenge...
I'm not so sure about who's responsible for another's suicidally stupid act. Remember the go-to admonition from moms everywhere, "If someone told you to jump off the top of a skyscraper, would you do it?" A grown person should be expected to have at least a shred of common sense.
Liars and their works notwithstanding, I'm going to have to abide by individuals being responsible for their own actions; the alternative is a hell-on-Earth trainwreck of The Buck stopping NOWHERE (which is precisely how we got here to start with).
The bonus of that is that it deflates the entire concept of "influencers", so if only that standard were embraced. they'd get what was coming to them (or at least more of it) anyway.
Funny you talk about the bubble. Once upon a time Bill Maher used to do a segment about the Republican bubble that made me howl. I was literally just thinking about that last night and if the Republican bubble was made of Plexiglass, today's left has a bubble made of nuclear bomb resistant 30 foot thick concrete.
The Insanity of of overdosing on Tylenol struck me this morning. TDS is a form of Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
“What Are the Signs and Symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder?
Irrational temper
Easily annoyed
Angry and resentful
Argues with authority figures
Actively defies and refuses to comply with requests from authority figures
Deliberately annoys others
Blames others
Acts in spiteful or vindictive ways”
Most often seen in boys and girls under 8, although also in girls post puberty. One of our children had this behavior, and thankfully now is past it as an adult.
But the insane report today of a pregnant woman now dying of liver failure from toxic amounts of Tylenol shook me into suspecting adult onset ODD aimed to spite Orange Man Bad. Just because anything he might say must be opposed and resisted, even at personal cost of safety and sanity.
I don’t think progressive is the right word to describe democrats- not in the media and the press anyway. If anything the ‘liberal’ press seem to be promolgating regressive extremism and yet people keep using the word progressive to describe them and those who fall prey to them.
I'm so old I can remember when the Covid shots first came out under Trump, and people were refusing to take them. A few months later, these same people were insisting that everybody take them -- and they were the same shots.
I saw someone online earlier this week suggesting that Trump should make a statement that it's never a good idea to put dog poop on your head, just to see how many TDS sufferers would do so.
I know that Tapper is a liar's liar, but he's also clearly as dumb as a sack of hair. Which come to think of it, is a gift for being such an accomplished liar.
It's not a metaphorical rubber room, it's a digital bubble reality. They are on facebook talking to friends while blocking voices that discomfort them, they are on bluesky after leaving twitter so as not to hear things that contradict them, and they are on the substacks of Heather Cox Richardson, Paul Krugman, and Robert Reich.
They judge the entire population as if it should behave exactly like their friends from college would, and they are mystified that anyone would do or think differently.
Wonderful piece - but you and Matt are far, far, far too sanguine about the "reality" - War unites a people and war with Russia, nuts as it sounds, is the next step. Trump is out of power in 36 months, far less if the GOP lose the House.
The neocon fronts for the corporations and their European allies are willing to wait Trump out and use war to enforce an and to all free speech. Think I'm kidding?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcru8ITO7gM - The EU security state will prevent populists who might oppose war from taking power. Ferguson, the "sanest?" panelist makes the explicit argument that Europe must re-arm to oppose Russia and solve their economic problems.
The third leg of this plan is to suppress populism - the war hawks rightly recognize that improvements in the economy will reduce populist support. That's the future of America.
Our next president is going to be Newsom or Shapiro. The new California law allowing Social Media companies to be fined for leaving up comments and posts that cause feelings to be hurt is just the first step towards are eventual UK police visits and prison time for those that dare to say, God Bless the USA.
Watched France 24 (English) a French general on the panel observed the European nations and Ukraine have destroyed their economies while the US gets rich. Surprise!
Such is the nature of religious (or in this case pseudoreligious) cults, no challenge to holy dogma is permitted and heretics (or worse, apostates) must be shunned and expelled at a bare minimum.
Forget the aristocracy. Charlie Kirk wasn't interested in debating them. He focused on the countless "heads full of mush" on college campuses. That's the future.
Since they obviously can't be reasoned with or expected to compromise, where do we go from here? A lot of bad things can happen in the interval between now and the time they "go bankrupt and/or die off."
When collectivists keep score, the score is always "a lot to zero". Points against their own side don't count for one reason or another.
We especially can't expect an honest reckoning from the Left regarding a principle they fundamentally loathe, such as free speech. Free speech is the antithesis of their beloved technocracy, which holds the masses must shut up and trust the "experts".
They already are. The snowball is melting and the 'normies' are fleeing the Democratic party. The reaction to Charlie Kirk was a big wake-up call, and we've gone through others in the last few years (covid was a big one).
Increasingly, the people left in the party are the extremists. It's up to the Democratic politicians to try to tact to the center, but I don't think it's possible. Looks like they're going to ride the Democratic party to ruin. (I'm writing an article about this right now!)
As terrible as Covid was with its impacts on children (kept out of school), seniors suffering and dying in hospitals while quarantined from family, and the oppression from the government against everyone except BLM protestors, the long term impact may well be that it has awakened a significant number of the citizenry to the fact that the government is not to be trusted with our lives and liberty.
I'm sad and cynical about this - I just don't believe that, come November of next year, the people "leaving" the Dems "in droves" will vote against their intellectual and emotional security blanket that is the Democratic Party.
Charlie Kirk's life and death will be so far in people's rear view mirrors that they will be swayed by the "But, but - ORANGE MAN BAD" a$$holes - even if he does win a Nobel Prize - and those voters will either just stay home or go ahead and vote like they always do.
If Democrats continue down this path and (for example) allow Antifa to fuck up Portland for another 4 years, those voters will just stay home.
They have a chance right now to turn it around, but Newsom, AOC, Crockett, etc all continue to dial up the temperature. (Because of course they do. The Glorious Revolution isn't canceled because of a death. Or two. Or twenty.)
That's definitely one of the issues. You're expected to just be tolerant of the needles and homeless you step over to get some ice cream. Wouldn't want to upset "our unhoused neighbors"
Takes a lot of time, propaganda and effort to turn someone into a cult member; the overwhelming majority will not question or retreat merely by being exposed to the truth.
The first step might be actually reversing course, or just shutting up, after you realize you have crossed the line.
Trump so far has showed worrying tendencies to limit speech, but as with everything he does, and as Matt noted, it tends to be done (by him, and apparently his appointees) in public. And thus easily identified and criticized, deservedly or not.
<Edit> And so far Trump has shown a willingness to reverse course in the face of criticism (at least, from his own side).
This is a refreshing contrast to the previous administration's (the use of the word previous instead of Biden is deliberate) careful concealment of it's censorship efforts, behind millions of dollars in funding to special quasi government agencies, countless hours spent harassing social media platforms, and millions of dollars spent defending a lawsuit, to pretend they weren't indulging in it.
Because deep down, they know they behaved badly but they don't want forgiveness as much as they want atonement. But atonement requires penance. And that's what many fear. IMHO.
Ugh. Spare me. Last week I tagged Elon Musk's Twitter account in a tweet calling him a douchebag and IMMEDIATELY had my account muzzled. This is what happens when audience capture prevents someone like Matt from being able to see the entire picture.
So your contention is that the owner of a 40 billion dollar company is obligated to let you insult him on the platform he owns? And unless you can show the Trump admin put him up to it, it has nothing to do with the issue Matt is addressing here.
Oh, we already know that Elon is not the "free speech absolutist" he claims to be. He only recently allowed Gavin MacInnes back on. I used to routinely encounter people in chat rooms who had been suspended or banned on X.
Agreed. But I just couldn't sit and watch the avalanche of ridiculous speech-vs-law switcheroo arguments about Musk. For a while, he was arguably the highest-profile free speech advocate, and that *has* to be called out, regardless of what the law says he can do.
Jesus Christ... so many people here reveling in the right of Elon Skum to deliver a shit product just because "he owns it". Why the hell are you worried about what the LAST owners did then? Freedom to fuck your customers applies to them, too, right?
Yes, It would apply to them too and nobody is arguing against that... what they/Matt are arguing against is the GOVERNMENT telling/mandating those previous owners to sensor speech.
And if "Elon Skum" is delivering a "shit product"... why do you care so much about being part of it?
"The issue is government censorship not some guy's right to tell you to go to hell on the platform he owns."
You're confusing the actual problem with the limits of the First Amendment. The issue *that matters* is the concept of free speech -- whether you actually believe that it should be permitted and encouraged, or whether you believe power plays controlling it are perfectly fine when the law permits it. For if it's the latter, then some *other* stealth principle is at play.
I believe you are mistaken. The issue that Matt was addressing was government censorship, which is in no way related to Musk's ability to control what is said on his platform. The First Amendment is no bar to private actors censoring whatever they want. There is no "right to free speech" among private actors.
I had a door-to-door magazine seller call me an asshole as I was closing the door. I opened it back up, grabbed him by the neck and launched him face-first into the flower bed. Next day a supervisor came and asked me if I had done what he accused me of. I said it was true, and she could live a re-enactment by calling me an asshole on my front porch.
Not defending Elon, but pointing out your invalid argument. Doesn't matter who you're claiming is obligated to let you insult them, same answer.
FWIW I was kicked off Twitter for re-tweeting Trump trains back in the day, and even under Elon, multiple requests to be reinstated were denied, and eventually my case number was flagged for automated "Hell no" response when I ask again. Unlike you, I don't claim Elon owes me the use of his platform.
Again (since some of you don't seem to understand Twitter): Elon is providing a service used by billions that does not mention anything in its TOS about picking on him. If he has programmed his service to harm the quality of that service for anyone who criticizes him personally or his beliefs or his business skills....
(You know what? I think Matt wrote a whole expose on what happens when Twitter behaves this way/. How about reading it?)
You being "muzzled" for being a royal asshole is obviously not equivalent to mass censorship of speech on issues of public interest directed by the government.
People do it all the time. There is an entire side of twitter X that talks shit to Elon. You just aren’t saying anything of consequence (clearly by your comments here) so no one is engaging. Doesn’t mean you are being suppressed. And since you made the original claims it’s on you to prove them not the other commenter.
Great article! (Not just because it sounds like the one I published yesterday!)
I couldn't believe Clyburn's statement. The Biden admin ABSOLUTELY censored jokes and TV shows -- I linked Twitter Files 6 as a great example of one that had (IIRC) 2 shares, 2 comments, and 10 likes. The censorship also included WAY MORE than just covid "misinformation." Then he says Trump said to put Clorox in your veins?
Just a reminder they can say the most outrageous shit possible while we got banned for sharing screenshots of official covid pages.
Remember Clyburn is the same guy who gave us Biden in 2020 in South Carolina after Biden was DOA after two caucuses and a primary and then everything had to end and Biden had to be the nominee from the basement because of COVID. Clyburn is a political hack of the first order. They really have given up on reasoned argument and frankly did so long ago. They are full-fledged "tell a lie enough and it becomes true" acolytes.
Yep. Biden's victory in SC led to Mayor Pete and Amy K. dropping out right before Super Tuesday and throwing their support behind Biden so that Bernie didn't win a split-vote race.
You know what? He was neck and neck with Bernie in that primary, he had a lot of support in my state at least. Pete is too McKinsey brain for me, but at least he has a brain. If we couldn't have had Bernie, I would have rather had Pete than Biden.
Ha- Yes. President of the Earth and Governor of Georgia, where does the imagination/delusion end? I don't recall if Clyburn gave us Kamala, but it is plausible that Joe's promise on picking a woman of color was Clyburn's ask in exchange for delivering SC and the nomination.
I think they got so used to being able to say the most ridiculous things and having it accepted without question that they don't even bother trying to remember what half-baked story they spun in the past, even when what they're saying now contradicts what they said in the recent past. Reminds me of a great line from Judge Judy: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory".
When the Twitter Files were dropped in 2022 and 2023 --with receipts--it was like a serial of horror to me. I suppose now some shrug them off, but the Twitter Files were the beginning of exposure. They were not boring to me at all.
In the before times, everybody was getting pressured by the government to censor the legal speech of Americans, but nobody had the balls to actually say something about it.
Nobody's worshipping him. He's just as much of a hypocrite as anybody else when it comes to HIS website. We just give him credit for spilling the beans about the OLD Twitter and exposing the censorship complex we only understood the very tip of.
I wasn't on Twitter before covid, so I can't speak to what it was like then. I am shadowbanned now and Substack links don't embed. Hurray new Twitter.
I'm sorry, but this "it's HIS website" is as gross a form of fellatio as saying Coca Cola can poison their customers because it's THEIR syrup.
If I use Twitter under any circumstances then yes, I get to call the owner a retard. I can call anyone else a retard without being punished. Why the hell are you running to the defense of a guy who rewrites his TOS every morning after cornflakes?
Ah you’re one of those bot types. Could be a bot could be a sock puppet or could be a retard it’s really hard to tell these days. Either way nothing of consequence to bring to the table.
From —William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall Of the Third Reich”:
“No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.”
My wife has a fairly significant Instagram following. We went together for our Covid vax on the day of our wedding anniversary, soon after the shots were made available. We were genuinely happy to get them. She got home and posted on her Instagram page a pic of us after the shots. She said she was glad she got it, but was feeling a bit achy and out of sorts. Instagram immediately put a warning label on her post. It was horrifying that they were monitoring such innocuous posts.
Meanwhile the information the CDC put out showed a huge amount of people having trouble after the shots.
Hell, most pro-vaxxers had a story that went something like "That booster sure knocked me on my ass for a couple days....", but they were incredulous if you suggested that maybe some people had even worse reactions.
While I can't defend Carr's statement, or a half dozen other Trump administration actions that either unequivocally or probably violate the first amendment, I think the Obama and Biden administration threats to free speech were far, far graver for their lack of transparency, for the careful way many of them were constructed and concealed and for the incredible effort that went into building legal and media support for the measures. When the Trump administration does it, it's just overt, blatantly incompetent and thus far more likely to be challenged.
Thank you for writing the comment I came here to write.
Maybe Tapper hadn't "seen" a more "direct infringement by the government on free speech" than Carr's remark about Kimmel because the Biden era infringements were behind the scenes.
(But I'm probably giving Tapper too much credit. More likely he's had his brain broken by TDS or is just a liar.)
And it is challenged often from within their party. Mostly, they try to correct like during Charlie’s memorial, free speech mentioned often. It seemed like they were good to include it. Bidens violations were hidden, sneaky Nasty harassing
It's obvious that the excuse makers in media are so afraid of losing access to their big money daddys that they are petrified from reporting anything close to a 'balls and strikes' coverage style.
They're not media.... they're just pravda in a $1200 suit.
I was hopeful the USAID clean out in early 2025 would start the dominos falling behind this manufactured consensus on MSM. But now I think this regime needs to lose 2-3 more elections in a row for the job to really be done.
Agreed, but a lot (everything?) depends on who follows Trump. Premature to discuss, however. The GOP must first focus on holding the House. High-fiving in the first quarter is worse than hubris - pure lunacy. Again, we'd all be f-ed without Elon.
Musk is the single most important figure of our time - perhaps more so than Trump, coz without Elon....
Agreed! "I suspect Tapper knows it" ???? WTF - Matt's piece is excellent - but he's still unwilling to put his finger directly into the wound. This piece reminds me of his reluctance to name Obama as the author of the censorship program he ran on the American people.
Tapper is a paid agent and propagandist of the security state - period. I hope Matt understands that the moment Trump is gone - the noose tightens and free speech ends, unless, unless, unless...
George Carlin made this point years ago and it's as true today as it was then. You don't need a formal, paid conspiracy when interests align. Tapper and the rest of the cowards in media believe it's in their best interests to not hit the establishment with anything more than a wet noodle. They STILL see themselves as 'journalists' despite years of dishonest, unobjective story telling. They love the word narrative because it perfectly describes what they do.... telling a story.
You know Carlin was not an optimist on this topic? Charlie Kirk was just assassinated. The murders at the ICE center are the product of Tapper's "journalism." The Church committee hearings only forced the CIA et al to be more creative and imaginative about their mischief.
We're living in a window of sunlight as storm clouds swirl and gather on all horizons. This freedom is all temporary and the levers to slam this window shut are all in place and ready to bring an end to our party the moment Trump leaves the stage. My motto - "expect more of the same, only worse" See Candide.
Using Google's disclosure of censorship as an example, if you had to, how would you explain a tech company's collective nod of approval of censoring thousands of people? To my eyes, that's not a conspiracy. It's cowardice and lack of leadership. It's what can happen when bedwetters are elevated to leadership roles and lack the stomach to do their jobs.
I see what happened at Google as not that different than what happened at Harvard.
But aren't all these tech companies a bit leery of the government breaking up their monopolies if they fail to censor what the government tells them to?
Not to defend Tapper, but IMO, Tapper barely knows how to read copy from a teleprompter. To suggest that he "knows" what he's spewing is a reach. He is however, a perfect dupe of the left.
That's true, but I also think that they live in a hermetically sealed bubble where they've been so isolated from any opinion that doesn't precisely conform to their worldview, that the slightest deviation is seen as an aberration. And, since they see themselves as the "elite", the "educated", and the "experts", anyone who doesn't enthusiastically embrace their viewpoints doesn't just have a different opinion, they are stupid and evil and a threat that must be suppressed and eradicated to Protect Our Democracy™️.
The myth was that journalism was about getting to the truth, the reality is that journalism has become about supporting the narrative of the ruling class.
I agree Orin. The mainstream media journalists all go to the same schools, they mostly all live in New York in their progressive bubbles and have little contact with those outside of their belief system. They mostly report for each other, and many switch networks so making those contacts is important. This includes Fox News by the way, and the Wall Street Journal. I for one wish our media was more geographically diverse.
It's astounding in that by the internet opening up publication to anyone, we ended up with ideological capture of the main media by one faction of one party.
Grotesque propaganda campaign. Ah, yes. In other words, “the left”. Really, honestly, can anyone cite anything from the last 9 years from these assholes that isn’t just that?
BLM
Covid
#defund
Gender goblins
Climate crisis
#metoo
Russiagate
Palestinian “genocide”
I could go on. It’s wall to wall bullshit all the fucking time.
Please try and keep in mind that there are honest people, people who agree with you on many important issues, but who probably came to their views differently and would consider themselves part of "the left" if forced to choose. Those people are repulsed when you paint them with a broad and inaccurate brush, or make other similar base appeals to faction. They could be your allies, but not if you make comments like this one.
He used quotation marks which insinuates, quite obviously, he is using it colloquially. People like you do nothing but make the rest of us hate the “the left” even more. You are exactly the kind of person you expect to find on “the left” that can’t infer past your own emotional response and takes everything personally.
When somone in the media runs a news story about opposition to vaccine mandates, and the punchline is that opposers are motivated by ignorance or blind partisan loyalty rather than any of the many legitimate critiques of such mandates, do you think the news story was helpful or fair or appropriate? That's roughly the level of discourse you've achieved with your comment attributing disfavored positions and characteristics to someone you know nothing about.
Who? Van Jones? You? I can’t really find any. All the things I listed are major pillars of the left’s political platform and dogma, really. If the overwhelming majority of people that politically align with everything I’m against, then they don’t agree with with me on many important issues- or ANY important issues.
Also, to the degree that people are “forced” to choose a political identity, I see that as a malady of the left as well.
It was not conservatives that chided people without black squares on social media.
It was not conservatives that demanded people hold up a fist and say “Black Lives Matter” under duress at intersections full of protesters rioting.
I have roughly 3 dozen more examples I could go into.
To the extent that someone still calls themselves “left” but agrees with me on “many important issues”, they are simply confused about what left denotes in the current political climate.
Every line here is brilliant. Including: "The New York Times ran hundreds of stories about Covid-19 during the pandemic, including many that repeated inaccurate claims and remain uncorrected, along with countless editorials decrying Covid “misinformation” or reporting about an “onslaught” of “toxic” content. How much space did it give the Google announcement, which touched on all these things? 347 words."
Progressives have always insisted they are the guardians of democracy, which is why they spend so much time throttling it. Nothing screams "open society" like unelected bureaucrats screaming at billion-dollar corporations to delete speech that doesn’t break any rules.
This is the progressive paradox in action. They rail against authoritarianism while eagerly adopting its entire toolkit. They ban books, blacklist speakers, demand apologies under duress, and outsource censorship to Silicon Valley middle managers. Then, with a straight face, they declare themselves the last bulwark against fascism, inspiring the mentally unstable losers in their rotten cohort to cowardly shoot people like it happened to Charlie Kirk. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of a pyromaniac applying for the fire chief job.
Notice how they twist language into weapons. Misinformation doesn’t mean falsehoods - it means anything progressives don’t like this week. Yesterday’s disinformation becomes today’s CDC talking point, but the censors never apologize for smearing people who were right all along. They rely on linguistic terror. Call your opponents deniers, extremists, or threats to democracy, and suddenly silencing them feels virtuous.
And this isn’t some one-off pandemic policy. It’s the model. De-platform, de-amplify, dehumanize. Progressives have discovered that you don’t need jackboots when you can weaponize a Terms of Service agreement. You don’t need book burnings when you can just label every contrary opinion as "harmful content." Their "compassionate" authoritarianism is cleaner, more digital, more smug.
The effect is chilling. People censor themselves before Google or Meta ever has to lift a finger, because they know the progressive panopticon is always watching. Speech becomes narrower, flatter, sanitized. And progressives cheer this cultural lobotomy as progress.
If the essence of fascism is centralized power, enforced conformity, and crushing dissent, then progressives aren’t fighting fascism - they’re perfecting it! They’ve traded the brownshirt for the ban hammer, the party rally for the "content moderation summit," and the dictator’s fist for the HR-approved press release.
Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in broad daylight, smiling, congratulating itself, while a progressive assures you it’s all "for your safety."
To this I would add, infantilized. Being forced to say shit like 'unalived', 'grape', 'pew-pew', etc is a humiliation exercise in itself. Suddenly a group of adults sharing urgent, deep thoughts sounds like a bunch of 5th graders trying to get around a particularly strict recess supervisor. It can't be good for either free speech or mental health.
Matt, they are not losing their minds - they know exactly what they are doing and they know they are being dishonest to the marrow of their bones. This is not some moment on the road to Damascus, this is a campaign to make a mountain out of a molehill while ignoring the Himalayan plateau they were looking down from,
It's a very small "world" that is losing its mind. It isn't helpful to presume that these media outlets are significant. They continue to behave as they did in the past, and they will be suitably ignored, as they deserve. Inside baseball has a place for those who are inside, but it is profoundly boring for everyone else.
They’ve definitely lost credibility with the vast majority of people. A lot of us stopped paying attention to the MSM when the internet started to take hold in the late 90s early 00s and haven’t looked back. Though their (MSM/DNC) propaganda and retarded takes still does filter down into normie culture unfortunately.
After living through the last ten years of speech codes, sensitivity readers, mandatory DEI loyalty oaths and pronoun enforcement etc, plus all the profs and writers attacked for committing heresy against Social Justice dogma (even when they're dead and beloved like Dr Seuss or Tolkien)‚ plus gently debating with my friends in the Blue Bubble all the controversies of this time period—Trump, Russia, Covid, Gender theory and Transmania and Drag Queen Story Hour and BLM and Biden and now Kimmel etc etc—I've come to the unavoidable conclusion that:
Progressives have fallen victim to some sort of mass psychosis that makes it impossible for them to admit when they're wrong, admit that their opponents (on any issue at any moment) may have a single valid point, and even worse, are sort of trapped in a permanently recurring delusion where every input, no matter how irrelevant or ill-suited, must be squeezed Procrustes-style into the same single simplistic narrative, where Left-liberals reside forever on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and they are always Dr King fighting for truth, justice and equality with everyone not on their team cast as George Wallace and Bull Connor.
If we've gotten to the point where even slimy shallow courtiers like Jake Tapper can look in the mirror and see a brave warrior residing eternally on the Right Side of History™, then there's no hope for the patient(s). Our ruling class is officially as demented and impervious to reality as the late Soviet Politburo.
Our progressive aristocracy are trapped in an epistemic rubber room where they reside after suffering the effects of an ideological lobotomy, and there's absolutely nothing that can cure their deranged delusions or bring them back anywhere near sanity. They're hopeless and we will just have to wait for them to go bankrupt and/or die off....
As evidenced by the pregnant women downing Tylenol on TikTok to prove they are part of The Resistance. Even if it is just fake sugar pills they are ingesting, that is beyond stupid. Good luck, little niblet.
Trump may control the minds and souls of his opponents much more than he does of his supporters.
Tragically, my oldest brother is one of them.
He is bored in retirement. Now -hatred, negativity and violent rhetoric towards Trump, Vance and Musk is his new hobby horse. I don’t recognize him anymore.
I see dumb MAGA people sometimes, but I don’t see nasty, bitter MAGA people-and didn’t from 2020-24 either. Charlie Kirk was right-demeanor and an open approach matter.
I know somebody like that. Who took every Covid booster offered. Coincidence?
No, but co-linear perhaps not causal. Self-selecting for stupidity.
How does this happen? I have friends like this and there is no way to have a rational conversation.
same here.
i think smartphones + social media + constant internet access are the greatest brainwashing machines ever invented and push people into more extreme positions and postures without them even knowing it. it has created really ugly cult dynamics and destroyed civil discourse. clickbait is essentially rage bait and politics has replaced religion (and swallowed our entire culture), thus we have a permanent tribal war where everyone's convinced the other side is the embodiment of evil and needs to be destroyed. is ugly out there!
Go hike The Camino. It was the best two weeks I’ve had in a very long time. Outdoors, no politics, laughter, exercise the body not the brain and people from all over the world greeting you gracefully in their languages and not one .. zero.. nasty comment about my American Flag on my backpack. I felt like I WAS in heaven
Plus talk radio. Talk about programming.
He has had what is considered a mental conversion, or a mind-snap. Seen in the structures of extreme politics, extreme religion, or psychiatric afflictions. Often manifests within herds or cults.
"The Art Of The Deal" may add a new chapter: "How To Live RENT FREE In Their Heads 24/7/365."
bahahaha . good. :)
I think that this is true without question. If memory serves Matt recently called him "a central figure of their eschatology." That is a typically great turn of phrase, but I think it actually understates his influence. He's more like the anti-deity of their anti-religion, their omega and their alpha, etc.
And if nothing else, it's easy to find ppl with all sorts of different views among his supporters. Look at RFK Jr.'s environmental career. Can you imagine anyone with a career of publicly extolling the virtues of fossil fuels making it to a comparable position in Dem admin? Also consider that Trump himself spoke out against Florida's heartbeat law, repeatedly saying he thought 6 weeks wasn't enough time.
One of the many ironies of the past 10 years is the fact that, from a policy POV, I think Trump has to be judged to be uncommonly moderate, especially by R standards. Remember his comments about the longshoremen's contract??
In regards to Trump he's more a populist than recent Republicans. He was beloved of Democrats looking for favor and favors until he came down the escalator.
Trump is basically Richard Daley or Frank Rizzo with a billion dollars and an eye for the ladies.
Holy cow! A Frank Rizzo reference.
He occupies more of an Emmanuel Goldstein position in their pantheon of boogeymen.
Most of Trump's policies seem to be those of a 1990's centrist Democrat.
Which tracks with the fact that up until he stopped donating to the Clintons and ran as a Republican, he was "just alright" (as the song goes) with Dems. Only AFTER he beat Hillary did he become the Devil incarnate to them. They gave him 100s of millions of dollars' worth of free publicity during the 2016 election cycle precisely because they were so sure his candidacy was their ticket to power, by enervating the GOP and making sure he was their opponent and not one of the 16 or however many other also-ran GOP establishment competitors he eventually dispatched to the dustbin of history.
"Can you imagine anyone with a career of publicly extolling the virtues of fossil fuels making it to a comparable position in Dem admin?"
I have no trouble at all imagining that. Offhand I cannot think of a flamboyantly anti-environment member of Clinton's or Obama's Cabinet, BUT for sake of a comparable political discrepancy, recall that Hillary Clinton, for whom the term "Women" seems to be an alternative 1st-person pronoun (much like some Christian fundies seem to do with "Jesus"), wanted to tap Larry Summers, who's on the record as saying he believes females are inherently inferior at math, for Fed Chairman!
"He's more like the anti-deity of their anti-religion...."
Why even bother with the prefixes, though? As I've tried to admonish some of my own relatives, maltheism is a form of worship.
I should have clarified, I meant a current Dem admin. I don't have trouble picturing it for WJC either, good point.
Also - you probably remember that Obama actually did hire Summers to run his NEC, which I would probably count as more or less on par with HHS. Although, fwiw - I don't want to start a whole tangent about it - that's a pretty bad mischaracterization of what LS actually said. It's interesting to wonder if he would've "rebounded" to the same extent nowadays (he did face fairly serious professional consequences back then, at least at first).
It's funny you ask about the prefixes - when I first made that observation to a friend, I went back and forth about whether to include them. You're right that they're not strictly necessary. I just thought it conveyed the idea a little more clearly. You're spot on that it's worship all the same. To paraphrase the late great David Foster Wallace, there is no such thing as atheism. Everybody worships.
"It's interesting to wonder if he would've 'rebounded' to the same extent nowadays (he did face fairly serious professional consequences back then, at least at first)."
Is it? He's a loyal Blobbist, as long as that's true They'd let him get away with anything.
"To paraphrase the late great David Foster Wallace, there is no such thing as atheism. Everybody worships."
You lost me here; I agree it's easier to slip into than many realize (and SOOOO much of this is a semantic issue), but let's just say that any statement beginning with words like "everybody", "we all", etc is as a dangerous overstatement.
In fact, if you're not already aware, it may be of general interest to you that it's even a sign of pathology:
https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/health-and-families/depression-language-differently-mental-health-kurt-cobain-a8194731.html
"Larry Summers, who's on the record as saying he believes females are inherently inferior at math"
Larry Summers said no such thing. He was talking about the greater male variability hypothesis, and he wasn't even promoting it, just outlining it as a possible reason for gender imbalances at BOTH extremes of aptitude curves.
This is a great example of the type of blatant-mischaracterization-plus-bullying-hysteria that created the climate we're living in today, over the last ten years of going essentially unchallenged.
I am open to this; my information, like the occasion itself, is from quite some time ago, and it's possible I trusted a source I shouldn't have.
I don't suppose you have a specific quote of what he said?
Yup. He's the de facto leader of the Democrat party. %-)
Valid point here!
As a speech-language pathologist working with developmentally disabled youngsters, including those on the spectrum, I share your concerns, DarkSkyBest. Autism is currently being waaaaaaaayyyyyy over-diagnosed, but still. With the current prevalence at one in 36, some of these Tylenol-chuggers are bound to end up with a kiddo on the spectrum, whether there is correlation with Tylenol or not. And how will these mothers feel then? Will they wonder if their snarky "activism" caused damage to their own children? Why risk it for a few "likes?" Sad.
Thank you for your response. So we have narcissistic TikTok pregnant women. Sad. And, irresponsible. So society will be responsible for their child’s needs. Of course, the Venn diagram will be abortion as birth control plus pregnant TikTok pill swallowers. That is something else.
I have a non-verbal autistic extended family member. That there is not the moonshot/cancer moonshot/autistic moonshot sort of pisses me off. Why is it that so hard. Hmm. Maybe they have already connected the dots.
And thank you for your thoughtful response, DarkSkyBest. I'm sorry to hear about your non-verbal family member. I pray for that moonshot.
We just don't understand this malady at all. And the definition, if we can even call it that, is simply way too broad, which accounts in part for the incomprehensible increase in prevalence. We simply cannot continue to encompass non-verbal children, adolescents with awkward eye contact, people who memorize train timetables, and Bill Gates all under the same umbrella. That's like categorizing people with "floaters" and the totally blind as all part of the "visually impaired spectrum."
Have a lovely day, DarkSkyBest. Love that moniker. ;-)
Wait...what???
You haven't heard? When Trump repeated about a Harvard study that found a potential link between Tylenol usage during pregnancy and risks for autism (link below). When some TDS-afflicted individuals heard about this, many started downing large amounts of Tylenol to "prove Donald Trump wrong"
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250924012222.htm
Well...I'm autistic, and I honestly think the world would be a far better place if everyone was. I used to joke - USED TO - that if vaccines cause autism (which I didn't believe anyway, and am now "up in the air" about at best), that'd be a great reason to make them mandatory!
With parents like these, I suppose this might be their progeny's best shot at being a lot less stupid - especially since we are quite precisely talking about the kind of stupidity caused by GROUPTHINK. Soooo...between that and the possibility of Tylenol poisoning claiming some Darwin Awards, maybe there are some silver linings to be seen here?
The more people born *without* a USB-port to the Human Hivemind, the better, whatever form the mutagen might take.
There's already at least one. The woman is pretty much dead of liver damage and the father is faced with the choice of trying to save a 24-week fetus.
Even if the influencers were swallowing tic tacs and other look alikes, they still are just as responsible as the ones who caused deaths over the Tide Pod challenge...
I'm not so sure about who's responsible for another's suicidally stupid act. Remember the go-to admonition from moms everywhere, "If someone told you to jump off the top of a skyscraper, would you do it?" A grown person should be expected to have at least a shred of common sense.
Liars and their works notwithstanding, I'm going to have to abide by individuals being responsible for their own actions; the alternative is a hell-on-Earth trainwreck of The Buck stopping NOWHERE (which is precisely how we got here to start with).
The bonus of that is that it deflates the entire concept of "influencers", so if only that standard were embraced. they'd get what was coming to them (or at least more of it) anyway.
You honestly think the world would be a far better place if everyone had a neurodevelopmental disorder? FFS.
As the double-entendre bumper-sticker/T-shirt on the matter said: It's not like you think.
I hope they were taking just fake sugar pills in their insane actions. Otherwise, if those pills were real drugs, those women were outright evil.
Funny you talk about the bubble. Once upon a time Bill Maher used to do a segment about the Republican bubble that made me howl. I was literally just thinking about that last night and if the Republican bubble was made of Plexiglass, today's left has a bubble made of nuclear bomb resistant 30 foot thick concrete.
The Insanity of of overdosing on Tylenol struck me this morning. TDS is a form of Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
“What Are the Signs and Symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder?
Irrational temper
Easily annoyed
Angry and resentful
Argues with authority figures
Actively defies and refuses to comply with requests from authority figures
Deliberately annoys others
Blames others
Acts in spiteful or vindictive ways”
Most often seen in boys and girls under 8, although also in girls post puberty. One of our children had this behavior, and thankfully now is past it as an adult.
But the insane report today of a pregnant woman now dying of liver failure from toxic amounts of Tylenol shook me into suspecting adult onset ODD aimed to spite Orange Man Bad. Just because anything he might say must be opposed and resisted, even at personal cost of safety and sanity.
Wow, that's good.
Oppositional Defiant Disorder or just plain ODD. ;)
Or just 21st century Progressive Democrats?
I don’t think progressive is the right word to describe democrats- not in the media and the press anyway. If anything the ‘liberal’ press seem to be promolgating regressive extremism and yet people keep using the word progressive to describe them and those who fall prey to them.
I'm so old I can remember when the Covid shots first came out under Trump, and people were refusing to take them. A few months later, these same people were insisting that everybody take them -- and they were the same shots.
I saw someone online earlier this week suggesting that Trump should make a statement that it's never a good idea to put dog poop on your head, just to see how many TDS sufferers would do so.
😂😂😂
TDS = Tylenol Derangement Syndrome
Nice!
I know that Tapper is a liar's liar, but he's also clearly as dumb as a sack of hair. Which come to think of it, is a gift for being such an accomplished liar.
It's not a metaphorical rubber room, it's a digital bubble reality. They are on facebook talking to friends while blocking voices that discomfort them, they are on bluesky after leaving twitter so as not to hear things that contradict them, and they are on the substacks of Heather Cox Richardson, Paul Krugman, and Robert Reich.
They judge the entire population as if it should behave exactly like their friends from college would, and they are mystified that anyone would do or think differently.
Yes, I think we're saying more or less the same thing, just with different words.
The good thing is - they are in the minority and their numbers slowly dwindle. You can fool fewer and fewer of the people all of the time.
Bi coastal elite.
I blame it on all those participation trophies they received as children.
Brilliant!
thanks
Wonderful piece - but you and Matt are far, far, far too sanguine about the "reality" - War unites a people and war with Russia, nuts as it sounds, is the next step. Trump is out of power in 36 months, far less if the GOP lose the House.
The neocon fronts for the corporations and their European allies are willing to wait Trump out and use war to enforce an and to all free speech. Think I'm kidding?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcru8ITO7gM - The EU security state will prevent populists who might oppose war from taking power. Ferguson, the "sanest?" panelist makes the explicit argument that Europe must re-arm to oppose Russia and solve their economic problems.
The third leg of this plan is to suppress populism - the war hawks rightly recognize that improvements in the economy will reduce populist support. That's the future of America.
Our next president is going to be Newsom or Shapiro. The new California law allowing Social Media companies to be fined for leaving up comments and posts that cause feelings to be hurt is just the first step towards are eventual UK police visits and prison time for those that dare to say, God Bless the USA.
Ferguson said it out loud. “It’d be great for the economy”.
Watched France 24 (English) a French general on the panel observed the European nations and Ukraine have destroyed their economies while the US gets rich. Surprise!
Wait out Trump too. Wait out everything. Wait. And sprinkle your wait with a little audacious hope.
Such is the nature of religious (or in this case pseudoreligious) cults, no challenge to holy dogma is permitted and heretics (or worse, apostates) must be shunned and expelled at a bare minimum.
And those already in no longer employ critical thinking skills to discern and detect truth.
TM for “Right Side of History”—perfect!
They do feel very proprietary toward that phrase...
Forget the aristocracy. Charlie Kirk wasn't interested in debating them. He focused on the countless "heads full of mush" on college campuses. That's the future.
Outstanding
Thanks!
Since they obviously can't be reasoned with or expected to compromise, where do we go from here? A lot of bad things can happen in the interval between now and the time they "go bankrupt and/or die off."
Bravo, man. The "TM" symbol really is the icing on the cake for this award winning comment.
AMEN Clever! You said it better than I could've. I hope we can survive in the interim.
When collectivists keep score, the score is always "a lot to zero". Points against their own side don't count for one reason or another.
We especially can't expect an honest reckoning from the Left regarding a principle they fundamentally loathe, such as free speech. Free speech is the antithesis of their beloved technocracy, which holds the masses must shut up and trust the "experts".
https://principlesvstribes.substack.com/p/on-technocracy
And the first step in gaining back trust is explaining what you did and why it was wrong.
I haven't heard any of that with regards to covid OR censorship.
We will never hear it. But will more people wake up to these lies?
They already are. The snowball is melting and the 'normies' are fleeing the Democratic party. The reaction to Charlie Kirk was a big wake-up call, and we've gone through others in the last few years (covid was a big one).
Increasingly, the people left in the party are the extremists. It's up to the Democratic politicians to try to tact to the center, but I don't think it's possible. Looks like they're going to ride the Democratic party to ruin. (I'm writing an article about this right now!)
As terrible as Covid was with its impacts on children (kept out of school), seniors suffering and dying in hospitals while quarantined from family, and the oppression from the government against everyone except BLM protestors, the long term impact may well be that it has awakened a significant number of the citizenry to the fact that the government is not to be trusted with our lives and liberty.
I'm sad and cynical about this - I just don't believe that, come November of next year, the people "leaving" the Dems "in droves" will vote against their intellectual and emotional security blanket that is the Democratic Party.
Charlie Kirk's life and death will be so far in people's rear view mirrors that they will be swayed by the "But, but - ORANGE MAN BAD" a$$holes - even if he does win a Nobel Prize - and those voters will either just stay home or go ahead and vote like they always do.
So sad.
If Democrats continue down this path and (for example) allow Antifa to fuck up Portland for another 4 years, those voters will just stay home.
They have a chance right now to turn it around, but Newsom, AOC, Crockett, etc all continue to dial up the temperature. (Because of course they do. The Glorious Revolution isn't canceled because of a death. Or two. Or twenty.)
I thought Swalwell was probably the dumbest Democrat out there, but Crockett is neck and neck.
Normies are also fleeing the violent crime in blue cities and states.
Hell, West Virginia is the number one inbound state in the country.
That's definitely one of the issues. You're expected to just be tolerant of the needles and homeless you step over to get some ice cream. Wouldn't want to upset "our unhoused neighbors"
Takes a lot of time, propaganda and effort to turn someone into a cult member; the overwhelming majority will not question or retreat merely by being exposed to the truth.
The first step might be actually reversing course, or just shutting up, after you realize you have crossed the line.
Trump so far has showed worrying tendencies to limit speech, but as with everything he does, and as Matt noted, it tends to be done (by him, and apparently his appointees) in public. And thus easily identified and criticized, deservedly or not.
<Edit> And so far Trump has shown a willingness to reverse course in the face of criticism (at least, from his own side).
This is a refreshing contrast to the previous administration's (the use of the word previous instead of Biden is deliberate) careful concealment of it's censorship efforts, behind millions of dollars in funding to special quasi government agencies, countless hours spent harassing social media platforms, and millions of dollars spent defending a lawsuit, to pretend they weren't indulging in it.
Insightful as always, Commander!
Because deep down, they know they behaved badly but they don't want forgiveness as much as they want atonement. But atonement requires penance. And that's what many fear. IMHO.
“Words are violence” from the Grandmaster of the Democrats himself, just today.
Are there any "moderates" at all?
https://x.com/BarackObama/status/1971213460525482347
Get it correct: Left wing violence is speech, right wing (or any challenging the left) speech is violence.
Or as progressives put it: "Shut up, racist!"
He’s ba-a-ck. Beware the Obama/Holder strategy forthcoming.
So, using his logic, I would assume his role in Russiagate would amount to "violence" against the Constitution.
Right before he left for a cruise on Spielberg’s yacht
wasn't it geffen's yacht?
Harold Ford.
What?! Did Obama really say that?! Today?!
He posted video of himself saying it and quoted himself in the post.
Apparently, this is one way to "fundamentally transform[ing] America." Holy shit.
Ugh. Spare me. Last week I tagged Elon Musk's Twitter account in a tweet calling him a douchebag and IMMEDIATELY had my account muzzled. This is what happens when audience capture prevents someone like Matt from being able to see the entire picture.
So your contention is that the owner of a 40 billion dollar company is obligated to let you insult him on the platform he owns? And unless you can show the Trump admin put him up to it, it has nothing to do with the issue Matt is addressing here.
"So your contention is that the owner of a 40 billion dollar company is obligated to let you insult him on the platform he owns? "
Not legally obligated, but it's certainly very bad form for a free-speech promoter, in their product designed to host speech.
Oh, we already know that Elon is not the "free speech absolutist" he claims to be. He only recently allowed Gavin MacInnes back on. I used to routinely encounter people in chat rooms who had been suspended or banned on X.
Agreed. But I just couldn't sit and watch the avalanche of ridiculous speech-vs-law switcheroo arguments about Musk. For a while, he was arguably the highest-profile free speech advocate, and that *has* to be called out, regardless of what the law says he can do.
Oh boy, another Elon-head who drank the orange Kool-Aid and is holding out for grape. Is Twitter a fucking "free speech platform" or isn't it?
Are you ignorant or what? The issue is government censorship not some guy's right to tell you to go to hell on the platform he owns.
Jesus Christ... so many people here reveling in the right of Elon Skum to deliver a shit product just because "he owns it". Why the hell are you worried about what the LAST owners did then? Freedom to fuck your customers applies to them, too, right?
Yes, It would apply to them too and nobody is arguing against that... what they/Matt are arguing against is the GOVERNMENT telling/mandating those previous owners to sensor speech.
And if "Elon Skum" is delivering a "shit product"... why do you care so much about being part of it?
If you feel that way, thank your lucky stars he expelled you from your misery
"The issue is government censorship not some guy's right to tell you to go to hell on the platform he owns."
You're confusing the actual problem with the limits of the First Amendment. The issue *that matters* is the concept of free speech -- whether you actually believe that it should be permitted and encouraged, or whether you believe power plays controlling it are perfectly fine when the law permits it. For if it's the latter, then some *other* stealth principle is at play.
I believe you are mistaken. The issue that Matt was addressing was government censorship, which is in no way related to Musk's ability to control what is said on his platform. The First Amendment is no bar to private actors censoring whatever they want. There is no "right to free speech" among private actors.
I thoroughly believe in free speech. You call me a douche bag in my house I’m kicking your ass right out the door
I had a door-to-door magazine seller call me an asshole as I was closing the door. I opened it back up, grabbed him by the neck and launched him face-first into the flower bed. Next day a supervisor came and asked me if I had done what he accused me of. I said it was true, and she could live a re-enactment by calling me an asshole on my front porch.
She declined
Oh God... how to explain this to you without knowing if you at least completed the third grade? Okay, here goes:
Jackie? Mr. Musk doesn't actually *live* inside of Twitter.
Are you really this fucking stupid or do you have a syphilitic squirrel in your ass telling you what to type?
Free speech doesn't mean that X is obligated to publish vulgar language or every F bomb you choose to lob.
Not defending Elon, but pointing out your invalid argument. Doesn't matter who you're claiming is obligated to let you insult them, same answer.
FWIW I was kicked off Twitter for re-tweeting Trump trains back in the day, and even under Elon, multiple requests to be reinstated were denied, and eventually my case number was flagged for automated "Hell no" response when I ask again. Unlike you, I don't claim Elon owes me the use of his platform.
Again (since some of you don't seem to understand Twitter): Elon is providing a service used by billions that does not mention anything in its TOS about picking on him. If he has programmed his service to harm the quality of that service for anyone who criticizes him personally or his beliefs or his business skills....
(You know what? I think Matt wrote a whole expose on what happens when Twitter behaves this way/. How about reading it?)
I highly doubt you have read the terms of service. So here’s some straw for you to grasp at.
Not sure you'll find too many people who really think Elon is a glorious free speech warrior.
We can't even embed Substack links on Twitter.
You being "muzzled" for being a royal asshole is obviously not equivalent to mass censorship of speech on issues of public interest directed by the government.
Dude, I can smell Elon’s smegma on your breath from here.
Honestly, based on the vile, sophomoric insults you throw around here, I’d muzzle your ass too.
Speak for yourself. People on the Right can only wish that we had to actually do something rude like that before we risked being banned.
You think no one on the right has ever called the billionaire drug addict a douchebag?
Prove it. Just because people ignore you does not mean you were "muzzled" by Elon Musk.
Prove it to yourself. Go on Twitter and call @elonmusk a retard and see what happens.
People do it all the time. There is an entire side of twitter X that talks shit to Elon. You just aren’t saying anything of consequence (clearly by your comments here) so no one is engaging. Doesn’t mean you are being suppressed. And since you made the original claims it’s on you to prove them not the other commenter.
Musk isn't the government. And, sorry, you aren't a martyr!
Doubt seriously that’s what caused the blocking. It’s most likely all the other crap you are spewing
Quit equating the left with liberals. We of the left were supporting Matt’s work while ya’ll were believing Fox News was some sort of real opposition.
And unlike the headline, it’s not “better” now. The ownership hasn’t even changed, only the cast is different.
Great article! (Not just because it sounds like the one I published yesterday!)
I couldn't believe Clyburn's statement. The Biden admin ABSOLUTELY censored jokes and TV shows -- I linked Twitter Files 6 as a great example of one that had (IIRC) 2 shares, 2 comments, and 10 likes. The censorship also included WAY MORE than just covid "misinformation." Then he says Trump said to put Clorox in your veins?
Just a reminder they can say the most outrageous shit possible while we got banned for sharing screenshots of official covid pages.
Remember Clyburn is the same guy who gave us Biden in 2020 in South Carolina after Biden was DOA after two caucuses and a primary and then everything had to end and Biden had to be the nominee from the basement because of COVID. Clyburn is a political hack of the first order. They really have given up on reasoned argument and frankly did so long ago. They are full-fledged "tell a lie enough and it becomes true" acolytes.
Yep. Biden's victory in SC led to Mayor Pete and Amy K. dropping out right before Super Tuesday and throwing their support behind Biden so that Bernie didn't win a split-vote race.
You're a bit too gentle there.
"...led to Mayor Pete and Amy K. being forced to drop out by the DLC cabal..."
fify.
That's probably way more accurate. Mayor Pete, at least, sure failed up.
You know what? He was neck and neck with Bernie in that primary, he had a lot of support in my state at least. Pete is too McKinsey brain for me, but at least he has a brain. If we couldn't have had Bernie, I would have rather had Pete than Biden.
Anyone who had a functioning brain
Didn't Clyburn (or Obama via Clyburn) force Kamala on Joe for VP?
He could have picked Stacey Abrams, with her experience as President of United Earth!
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/President_of_United_Earth
Or Karen “watch CA burn “ Bass. Biden declared a black woman
Ha- Yes. President of the Earth and Governor of Georgia, where does the imagination/delusion end? I don't recall if Clyburn gave us Kamala, but it is plausible that Joe's promise on picking a woman of color was Clyburn's ask in exchange for delivering SC and the nomination.
Clyburn is a racist hack.
The fact that Clyburn is still peddling the “drinking bleach” hoax, which has been thoroughly debunked, shows you how truly stupid he is.
Not stupid, just a liar who is believed
None of us should be surprised by statements from politicians. 95% of them are straight up town whores.
But they don't have to be so damned stupid about it, do they?
Their commitment to selling out supercedes everything else.
They’re just town whores during the week, on Sundays they are on the first pew in church demanding to give the sermon
I think they got so used to being able to say the most ridiculous things and having it accepted without question that they don't even bother trying to remember what half-baked story they spun in the past, even when what they're saying now contradicts what they said in the recent past. Reminds me of a great line from Judge Judy: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory".
Forget what we told you yesterday, believe what we're telling you today -- but not too much, because you'll have to forget it tomorrow.
🤣😂 Just keep on shoveling it down the old Memory Hole.
"We have always been at war with Eastasia."
Your article yesterday was excellent btw
Thank you! It always makes me happy when I'm on the same page as Matt. :)
You've *read* the Twitter files? Whoa... I've heard of people like you! Tell us of the before-fore times, Wandering Elder!
I have the Twitter Files on my bookmark bar and you can, too--- they are a Landmark.
https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter
I'm still making my way through the 1985 Manhattan white pages. Shorter and less boring.
When the Twitter Files were dropped in 2022 and 2023 --with receipts--it was like a serial of horror to me. I suppose now some shrug them off, but the Twitter Files were the beginning of exposure. They were not boring to me at all.
Willfully ignorant isn’t a good look.
I laughed.
Wow. Thank you.
In the before times, everybody was getting pressured by the government to censor the legal speech of Americans, but nobody had the balls to actually say something about it.
Then Elon Musk bought Twitter.....
Oh, right... like "shadowbanning" wasn't a huge deal before Covid.
As for Elon, how do people still get away with worshiping this K-Holed jizz slinger?
Nobody's worshipping him. He's just as much of a hypocrite as anybody else when it comes to HIS website. We just give him credit for spilling the beans about the OLD Twitter and exposing the censorship complex we only understood the very tip of.
I wasn't on Twitter before covid, so I can't speak to what it was like then. I am shadowbanned now and Substack links don't embed. Hurray new Twitter.
I'm sorry, but this "it's HIS website" is as gross a form of fellatio as saying Coca Cola can poison their customers because it's THEIR syrup.
If I use Twitter under any circumstances then yes, I get to call the owner a retard. I can call anyone else a retard without being punished. Why the hell are you running to the defense of a guy who rewrites his TOS every morning after cornflakes?
Ah you’re one of those bot types. Could be a bot could be a sock puppet or could be a retard it’s really hard to tell these days. Either way nothing of consequence to bring to the table.
I read them too. And the WPATH files. A lot of people have.
Not to mention the other kind of censorship:
From —William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall Of the Third Reich”:
“No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.”
Fear of the Gestapo will destroy all thought.
In America right now, it's more like the fear of the mob.
I was talking on the phone to my cousin about this phenomenon. We were both unintentionally whispering.
My wife has a fairly significant Instagram following. We went together for our Covid vax on the day of our wedding anniversary, soon after the shots were made available. We were genuinely happy to get them. She got home and posted on her Instagram page a pic of us after the shots. She said she was glad she got it, but was feeling a bit achy and out of sorts. Instagram immediately put a warning label on her post. It was horrifying that they were monitoring such innocuous posts.
Meanwhile the information the CDC put out showed a huge amount of people having trouble after the shots.
Hell, most pro-vaxxers had a story that went something like "That booster sure knocked me on my ass for a couple days....", but they were incredulous if you suggested that maybe some people had even worse reactions.
yeesh. that's creepy as hell.
While I can't defend Carr's statement, or a half dozen other Trump administration actions that either unequivocally or probably violate the first amendment, I think the Obama and Biden administration threats to free speech were far, far graver for their lack of transparency, for the careful way many of them were constructed and concealed and for the incredible effort that went into building legal and media support for the measures. When the Trump administration does it, it's just overt, blatantly incompetent and thus far more likely to be challenged.
Thank you for writing the comment I came here to write.
Maybe Tapper hadn't "seen" a more "direct infringement by the government on free speech" than Carr's remark about Kimmel because the Biden era infringements were behind the scenes.
(But I'm probably giving Tapper too much credit. More likely he's had his brain broken by TDS or is just a liar.)
And I wonder where Jake Tapper was when ABC fired Roseanne Barr from her own show, at the behest of Barack and Michelle?
TDS/Liar synonymous
And it is challenged often from within their party. Mostly, they try to correct like during Charlie’s memorial, free speech mentioned often. It seemed like they were good to include it. Bidens violations were hidden, sneaky Nasty harassing
I agree.
This.
It's obvious that the excuse makers in media are so afraid of losing access to their big money daddys that they are petrified from reporting anything close to a 'balls and strikes' coverage style.
They're not media.... they're just pravda in a $1200 suit.
I was hopeful the USAID clean out in early 2025 would start the dominos falling behind this manufactured consensus on MSM. But now I think this regime needs to lose 2-3 more elections in a row for the job to really be done.
Agreed, but a lot (everything?) depends on who follows Trump. Premature to discuss, however. The GOP must first focus on holding the House. High-fiving in the first quarter is worse than hubris - pure lunacy. Again, we'd all be f-ed without Elon.
Musk is the single most important figure of our time - perhaps more so than Trump, coz without Elon....
Agreed! "I suspect Tapper knows it" ???? WTF - Matt's piece is excellent - but he's still unwilling to put his finger directly into the wound. This piece reminds me of his reluctance to name Obama as the author of the censorship program he ran on the American people.
Tapper is a paid agent and propagandist of the security state - period. I hope Matt understands that the moment Trump is gone - the noose tightens and free speech ends, unless, unless, unless...
George Carlin made this point years ago and it's as true today as it was then. You don't need a formal, paid conspiracy when interests align. Tapper and the rest of the cowards in media believe it's in their best interests to not hit the establishment with anything more than a wet noodle. They STILL see themselves as 'journalists' despite years of dishonest, unobjective story telling. They love the word narrative because it perfectly describes what they do.... telling a story.
When you're right, you're right.
You know Carlin was not an optimist on this topic? Charlie Kirk was just assassinated. The murders at the ICE center are the product of Tapper's "journalism." The Church committee hearings only forced the CIA et al to be more creative and imaginative about their mischief.
We're living in a window of sunlight as storm clouds swirl and gather on all horizons. This freedom is all temporary and the levers to slam this window shut are all in place and ready to bring an end to our party the moment Trump leaves the stage. My motto - "expect more of the same, only worse" See Candide.
Using Google's disclosure of censorship as an example, if you had to, how would you explain a tech company's collective nod of approval of censoring thousands of people? To my eyes, that's not a conspiracy. It's cowardice and lack of leadership. It's what can happen when bedwetters are elevated to leadership roles and lack the stomach to do their jobs.
I see what happened at Google as not that different than what happened at Harvard.
But aren't all these tech companies a bit leery of the government breaking up their monopolies if they fail to censor what the government tells them to?
Solid response, A.
Not to defend Tapper, but IMO, Tapper barely knows how to read copy from a teleprompter. To suggest that he "knows" what he's spewing is a reach. He is however, a perfect dupe of the left.
Good point!
That's true, but I also think that they live in a hermetically sealed bubble where they've been so isolated from any opinion that doesn't precisely conform to their worldview, that the slightest deviation is seen as an aberration. And, since they see themselves as the "elite", the "educated", and the "experts", anyone who doesn't enthusiastically embrace their viewpoints doesn't just have a different opinion, they are stupid and evil and a threat that must be suppressed and eradicated to Protect Our Democracy™️.
The myth was that journalism was about getting to the truth, the reality is that journalism has become about supporting the narrative of the ruling class.
I agree Orin. The mainstream media journalists all go to the same schools, they mostly all live in New York in their progressive bubbles and have little contact with those outside of their belief system. They mostly report for each other, and many switch networks so making those contacts is important. This includes Fox News by the way, and the Wall Street Journal. I for one wish our media was more geographically diverse.
It's astounding in that by the internet opening up publication to anyone, we ended up with ideological capture of the main media by one faction of one party.
Grotesque propaganda campaign. Ah, yes. In other words, “the left”. Really, honestly, can anyone cite anything from the last 9 years from these assholes that isn’t just that?
BLM
Covid
#defund
Gender goblins
Climate crisis
#metoo
Russiagate
Palestinian “genocide”
I could go on. It’s wall to wall bullshit all the fucking time.
Please try and keep in mind that there are honest people, people who agree with you on many important issues, but who probably came to their views differently and would consider themselves part of "the left" if forced to choose. Those people are repulsed when you paint them with a broad and inaccurate brush, or make other similar base appeals to faction. They could be your allies, but not if you make comments like this one.
He used quotation marks which insinuates, quite obviously, he is using it colloquially. People like you do nothing but make the rest of us hate the “the left” even more. You are exactly the kind of person you expect to find on “the left” that can’t infer past your own emotional response and takes everything personally.
When somone in the media runs a news story about opposition to vaccine mandates, and the punchline is that opposers are motivated by ignorance or blind partisan loyalty rather than any of the many legitimate critiques of such mandates, do you think the news story was helpful or fair or appropriate? That's roughly the level of discourse you've achieved with your comment attributing disfavored positions and characteristics to someone you know nothing about.
Well you didn’t disprove or address my point so my point still stands.
Who? Van Jones? You? I can’t really find any. All the things I listed are major pillars of the left’s political platform and dogma, really. If the overwhelming majority of people that politically align with everything I’m against, then they don’t agree with with me on many important issues- or ANY important issues.
Also, to the degree that people are “forced” to choose a political identity, I see that as a malady of the left as well.
It was not conservatives that chided people without black squares on social media.
It was not conservatives that demanded people hold up a fist and say “Black Lives Matter” under duress at intersections full of protesters rioting.
I have roughly 3 dozen more examples I could go into.
To the extent that someone still calls themselves “left” but agrees with me on “many important issues”, they are simply confused about what left denotes in the current political climate.
Every line here is brilliant. Including: "The New York Times ran hundreds of stories about Covid-19 during the pandemic, including many that repeated inaccurate claims and remain uncorrected, along with countless editorials decrying Covid “misinformation” or reporting about an “onslaught” of “toxic” content. How much space did it give the Google announcement, which touched on all these things? 347 words."
The Iron Law of Woke Projection
yes. As I often say....it's not the heat, it's the hypocrisy.
For heavens sake isn’t it obvious by now that the left/legacy media’s only game is the Big Lie and relentless gaslighting?
Progressives have always insisted they are the guardians of democracy, which is why they spend so much time throttling it. Nothing screams "open society" like unelected bureaucrats screaming at billion-dollar corporations to delete speech that doesn’t break any rules.
This is the progressive paradox in action. They rail against authoritarianism while eagerly adopting its entire toolkit. They ban books, blacklist speakers, demand apologies under duress, and outsource censorship to Silicon Valley middle managers. Then, with a straight face, they declare themselves the last bulwark against fascism, inspiring the mentally unstable losers in their rotten cohort to cowardly shoot people like it happened to Charlie Kirk. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of a pyromaniac applying for the fire chief job.
Notice how they twist language into weapons. Misinformation doesn’t mean falsehoods - it means anything progressives don’t like this week. Yesterday’s disinformation becomes today’s CDC talking point, but the censors never apologize for smearing people who were right all along. They rely on linguistic terror. Call your opponents deniers, extremists, or threats to democracy, and suddenly silencing them feels virtuous.
And this isn’t some one-off pandemic policy. It’s the model. De-platform, de-amplify, dehumanize. Progressives have discovered that you don’t need jackboots when you can weaponize a Terms of Service agreement. You don’t need book burnings when you can just label every contrary opinion as "harmful content." Their "compassionate" authoritarianism is cleaner, more digital, more smug.
The effect is chilling. People censor themselves before Google or Meta ever has to lift a finger, because they know the progressive panopticon is always watching. Speech becomes narrower, flatter, sanitized. And progressives cheer this cultural lobotomy as progress.
If the essence of fascism is centralized power, enforced conformity, and crushing dissent, then progressives aren’t fighting fascism - they’re perfecting it! They’ve traded the brownshirt for the ban hammer, the party rally for the "content moderation summit," and the dictator’s fist for the HR-approved press release.
Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in broad daylight, smiling, congratulating itself, while a progressive assures you it’s all "for your safety."
This is all Bolshevism 101.
"Speech becomes narrower, flatter, sanitized."
To this I would add, infantilized. Being forced to say shit like 'unalived', 'grape', 'pew-pew', etc is a humiliation exercise in itself. Suddenly a group of adults sharing urgent, deep thoughts sounds like a bunch of 5th graders trying to get around a particularly strict recess supervisor. It can't be good for either free speech or mental health.
Brilliantly stated!
Excellent post. 👏👏
Thank you Matt, excellent article. I hope more can be done to hold officials of the former censorship apparatus accountable.
Matt, they are not losing their minds - they know exactly what they are doing and they know they are being dishonest to the marrow of their bones. This is not some moment on the road to Damascus, this is a campaign to make a mountain out of a molehill while ignoring the Himalayan plateau they were looking down from,
It's a very small "world" that is losing its mind. It isn't helpful to presume that these media outlets are significant. They continue to behave as they did in the past, and they will be suitably ignored, as they deserve. Inside baseball has a place for those who are inside, but it is profoundly boring for everyone else.
They’ve definitely lost credibility with the vast majority of people. A lot of us stopped paying attention to the MSM when the internet started to take hold in the late 90s early 00s and haven’t looked back. Though their (MSM/DNC) propaganda and retarded takes still does filter down into normie culture unfortunately.