I just finished reading “The Most Terrifying Conclusion From the Twitter Files That Everyone’s Ignoring,” by J.D. Rucker.  He makes these observations, with which I agree.

Government and their proxies have been censoring American citizens by ordering Big Tech companies to do it for them. This is a clear betrayal of the spirit of the 1st Amendment at the very least and is likely worthy of legal action. . . .

But while conservative media is busy discussing the ramifications of censorship and the near certainty that both the last two elections as well as the Covid “vaccine” rollout were dramatically impacted by illegal actions taken by members of our government, there’s actually a far more troubling takeaway from all of this. For the various misinformation operations to have gone unreported by anyone in or out of government and media, that means an unfathomable number of people have been aware at the least. Many have been directly involved and we’re just getting confirmation of it now.

Halfway through Rucker’s article I did a search for the word “Twitter” at the websites of the NYT, Washington Post, MSNBC and NPR.  There is almost zero coverage of the Twitter Files at any of these outlets, with the exception of one article by the NYT. It’s as if the Twitter Files were never released. This non-coverage is predictable based on the “news” covered by these outlets over the past several years, during which they have been selectively embellishing and stuffing stories mostly in unison, to push their Woke agenda and to elect democrats. These outlets want to claim that nothing interesting is going on because the Twitter Files revelations reflect so poorly on the “journalism” being produced by these media corporations. They want to act as though nothing is happening, but Rucker’s article accurately describes that these things have been going on–there is enough here to convince any legitimate journalist with even low-level curiosity to write hundreds of articles:

1. The FBI set up a command center in San Francisco in fall 2020 that forwarded censorship requests from bureau headquarters to social media platforms.
2. The FBI succeeded frequently with social media firms when it forwarded censorship requests, including content posted by Americans.
3. Federal agencies also partnered with contractors to ensure certain content was policed and censorship, creating a degree of separation.
4. Homeland Security officials took part in weekly meetings with Twitter executives as the 2020 election approached.
5. Homeland Security knew Twitter had second thoughts about censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story.
6. Whistleblower memos show DHS downplayed plans for a “Governance Board” to fight “misinformation.”
7. FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million as part of its disinformation monitoring
8. Federal agencies launched a coordinated campaign to discredit stories about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
9. Federal agencies also impacted Americans’ debate over the COVID-19 pandemic, at times censoring factually accurate posts at odds with the government’s preferred narrative.
10. What’s next? Congress is investigating how far reaching federally sanctioned censorship has become, including at platforms beyond Twitter.

Rucker is aghast. So am I. Here is one more excerpt from Rucker’s post:

The Deep State can coordinate massive campaigns for decades and if it weren’t for Elon Musk, this campaign may have continued indefinitely. But here’s the thing. Even Elon Musk has not been able to break through to the masses. The corporate media silence on the biggest story of the year tells us it’s far, far worse than just an attack on our rights by hundreds of thousands of American citizens. Every institution of truth has been subverted from the media to academia to the Department of Justice and all of the supporting industries.It is impossible for this to have happened… and yet it did.

Rucker’s passage smacks of hyperbole, but it is not. Not for anyone who understands how and why the Founders created the United States. Not for anyone who has even a slight understanding of why the First Amendment exists, an understanding that the First Amendment is a legal embodiment or the much broader concept of free speech and an understanding of the grave challenges that free speech imperfectly but impressively solves. For a deep dive on all of these issues, I highly recommend Jonathan Rauch’s Constitution of Knowledge.

Speaking of hyperbole, check out this video by Russel Brand. You will hear a quote by Noam Chomsky that seemed like hyperbole when I first heard it a few months ago, but it now seems spot on.

The United States has imposed constraints on freedom of access to information which are astonishing and, which in fact, go beyond what was the case in post-Stalin Soviet Russia.

For anyone who is dismayed by the lack of intelligence repeatedly displayed regarding domestic and foreign policy by United States officials for years, there is likely a connection between the lack of meaningful debate (some of it due to US government imposed censorship) and this stunningly bad decision-making.  Jonathan Haidt has described the problem like this: Whenever vigorous conversation within an institution is shut down through censorship, what results is “structural stupidity.” 

The most pervasive obstacle to good thinking is confirmation bias, which refers to the human tendency to search only for evidence that confirms our preferred beliefs. Even before the advent of social media, search engines were supercharging confirmation bias, making it far easier for people to find evidence for absurd beliefs and conspiracy theories, such as that the Earth is flat and that the U.S. government staged the 9/11 attacks. But social media made things much worse.

The most reliable cure for confirmation bias is interaction with people who don’t share your beliefs. They confront you with counterevidence and counterargument. John Stuart Mill said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that,” and he urged us to seek out conflicting views “from persons who actually believe them.” People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain. People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider, almost as if they are shooting darts into their own brain.

May the year 2023 somehow grant us more honest conversation, including substantial relief from the government-sponsored widespread censorship revealed by the Twitter Files.