Eric Weinstein lays it out succinctly for you, no matter what your political persuasion. These entities need to be regulated or we need to create public equivalents. If only we could trust our politicians to step in and protect free speech across the board . . .
I’m a libertarian who would usually agree, “Yes it’s a private company, sit down and shut up.” But the big tech companies are not acting like private companies. They are acting in concert like a self-appointed world government, and an authoritarian one at that. The coordinated attack on Parler is a horror, and it extends to payment platforms, all technology vendors and beyond. Members of the House who voted not to certify the electoral vote are targeted for expulsion by people who forget their colleagues who voted the same way in 2016. Senators who claim that the election was stolen belong on the no-fly list; what about those who said the same thing in 2016? When Big Tech bands together to determine who shall have access to the public square for debate, it is no longer acting as a group of independent companies. It is acting as an unelected government.
The focus on unity is really on comformijty. Biden never fails to disappoint, but he has outdone himself this time. All the talk about coming together, unity, working in unison, is crap. He is taking every opportunity to savage Trump and anyone associated with him, often for the wrong things. The narrative that the federal government botched the rollout of the vaccines is hogwash. Getting to a vaccine in less than 5 years is a miracle, especially with the CDC, FDA and half the state governors fighting the effort. Every governor got the same instructions and advice, and the same number of doses per population, but half of them proved incompetent or, worse, craven, hoping that denying their citizens vaccines would score some political points. This was the most challenging logistics effort faced by the US since World War II, and half the population was actively encouraging opposition to anything the other half did. THAT is inciting sedition.
The capitol incident has been used as cover for firing people, abrogating contracts, attempts to expel members of congress, withdraw earned degrees, and the list goes on. This is not a political movement, it’s a lynch mob. I don’t care what your politics are, you’re still my fellow American. How has hatred so corrupted us?
We now know that whatever Trump said didn’t cause the invasion of the capitol. On other sites I have asked “What words were used that amounted to inciting sedition?” and am told that it’s not the words, it’s what the words really mean. Thank you, Humpty Dumpty. Translating using some sort of secret-squirrel code so that “use no violence” is translated as code for “kill my enemies” isn’t done in liberal Western democracies. Was Trump’s tone too harsh? Probably. Compare to the Speaker of the House contemptuously tearing up a copy of the State of the Union Speech, governors declaring Trump a terrorist, and Representative Tlaib’s “Impeach the M*********er.” I’ve visited and worked in countries with authoritarian regimes. We’re headed there in a handbasket from hell with no brakes.