January 20th 2021,
Inside of the nation’s capital, newly surrounded by fences and barricades and occupied by armed National Guard troops, Joseph Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. Today of half of the country is celebrating the departure of incumbent Donald J Trump, whose one term presidency proved to be incredibly divisive and the other half of the country mourns for what they see as their only shot at avoiding the no longer slow trudge into tyranny, unfairly stolen away from them by a leftist cabal within the government.
Big Tech now sits comfortably in their throne as “arbiter of definitive truth”. Personalized algorithms and political talking heads shape our worldview and ideas that run counter to any individuals dogmatic political beliefs are met with hostility or dismissed without being given even a moment of consideration. Physical books are now relics of antiquity and the already factually questionable history we all once shared can now be altered in real time with a few strokes of the keyboard. Digital tools have made social engineering the easiest it’s ever been. As it stands the majority of Americans are comfortable living in their digital ideological echo chambers or consuming themselves to death with endless entertainment and food, as long as they don’t have to face the deeply unsettling reality they find themselves in.
The ‘mind control’ like effect of social media and the constant consumption of information (true or not), cannot be understated. The free market of ideas, where discussions and debates with others lead to personal growth and learning, has been replaced with militant partisanism and self administered political opium.
I often wonder what it is about us humans that make us so prone to easily exploitable binary thinking and tribal mentalities. As it stands, the masses have been programmed to equate the defense of free speech, gun ownership, concerns with bodily autonomy, constitutionality and the fear of government overreach with the supporting President Trump and due to recent events, that has become an increasingly dangerous ‘scarlet letter’ to bear.
On January 6th, during a public rally, allegedly for the purpose of disputing the outcome of the presidential election, a group of people wearing “Make America Great Again” hats stormed the capital building and freely handed the establishment armor piercing ammunition to attack our constitutional rights. “Who is to blame for the storming of the Capital Building” is, like everything else, a matter of partisan debate. The left blames right wing radicals and the right blames left wing radicals posing as Trump supporters, but as someone who tries to look only at the bigger picture, the motivations of the people that stormed the Capital don’t really matter.
Following the lead of their ideological pied pipers, the right was quick to defend the actions of the stormers, citing their lack of weaponry and the fact that the stormers didn’t physically attack anyone, while folks on the left were told to react as if this were another 9/11, conveniently forgetting their soft embrace of the BLM riots in multiple cities earlier this year. I personally believe that it was in fact Trump supporters who stormed the Capital Building; although I highly suspect the involvement of establishment agent provocateurs. The immediate response by the media and the suspicious nature of the event (by most non-partisan accounts, the Trump Team’s legal challenges to the election results were toothless and largely for optics; so what purpose does it serve to enflame your base after avoiding making a real attempt to challenge the election?) lead me to believe that the entire incident was a cleverly crafted setup and those misguided Trump supporters who followed into the Capital Building, triggered the trap that will be used to snap all of our spines.
As a nation we spend so much time finger pointing that we are totally missing the bigger picture. We are not as free as we were ten years ago. The government instituted lockdowns have essentially made the internet the only place we can congregate and share ideas and our apathy towards tech censorship has allowed any ideas deemed dangerous to the narratives fed to us by The Oligarchy to be silenced. It is impossible for us to have any real perspective on ANYTHING that happens when our reality can be shaped by for-profit enterprises and institutions. We take no actions against rampant censorship because of the convenience these digital products allow us and if we did, propaganda has programmed everyone else to associate simply asking questions with the insane people who go out looking for Bigfoot, so good luck getting anyone to stand beside you.
The storming of the Capital wasn’t a good thing and the fallout from that event is going to be used against all Americans regardless of their political leaning. Even people who cheer on the government restricting and removing our rights will suffer at the loss of them. It’s tempting to blame the individuals who stupidly ran into that building, or the individuals that promote censorship because they are to emotionally impotent to have their worldview challenged, but realize that everyone is a victim of the psychological manipulation that social media and our constant need for consumption of information has enabled. We can’t hold victims of sex trafficking morally responsible for engaging in prostitution like we can’t hold each other responsible for behaviors and responses that were deliberately programmed into us by social media, institutions and our puppet leaders. Instead of looking at one another for where to place the blame like we have been programmed to, we need to start looking at those who are pulling the strings and realize that anger concentrated at only one place, such as Washington or the Executive Branch is like kicking a Wal-Mart cashier in the shin because they came into town and your small business had to close.
America wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the willingness of man to question authority, so why have we stopped doing so just because authority says not to?
B
Legalize Free Thought 