FB Rant About the Many People Who Cling to Legacy News

On FB: I offered this to someone:

"If you keep sticking closely to legacy news as your primary information ecosystem, you will stay stuck where you are."

Here's the comment I received in return:

I've read and checked the stuff you cite. It is garbage. It is not factual, it is not truthful, it is not honest. When you first start posting this stuff, I looked under the hood. I read what they cited, including papers published in journals. I googled and found the stuff they screenshot and did not link to. I did my own research. And I found that the folks you are relying on consistently misrepresented the sources they cited. And by misrepresented, I don't mean minor errors. Indeed, a couple of times the author of a work being cited specifically called out the misrepresentation of their work.

Your insistence that I stick too closely to "legacy news" for my information is a statement made without any knowledge about what I read and rely on. I believe that I read a wider range of original sources than you do. I know that I read them with a whole lot more care than you read yours.

So I offered the following:

Who destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline? I already know that you think Ukrainian history prior to 2022 is irrelevant. Did you take a stand against teenage girls being told by "experts" to cut off their breasts or getting permanently sterilized with "puberty blockers" because they were boys? Where have you been on the issue of all of those Asian students being kept out of Ivy League Schools due to DEI? Why were you silent when 51 deep state operatives swung the election to Biden re the Hunter Biden Laptop? Did you shout it from the rafters when it was clear that Joe Biden was completely incompetent to serve as dog catcher? Didn't you sit on your hands during all those Biden pardons, including Fauci? I don't remember you ever expressing concern about the vast censorship-industrial complex that has been exposed by the Twitter Files and beyond, based on a massive factual record discussed in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Where have you been for the BIG issues for the past four years? I know. You've hanging out with your tribe. That's why I say that you cling to legacy news. I voted for Biden, but then I figured what was happening and I criticized the fuck out of him. I went counter-narrative on that story and others. I've been doing what one is supposed to do: Try to make sense of the world regardless of what one's "tribe" thinks.

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Free Speech Hypocrisy

Nico Perrino (of FIRE) sternly points out the rampant hypocrisy.

Do we actually believe in free speech?

Do we actually believe controversial speakers have a right to speak in America — free from government censorship?

For the past decade, I stood alongside conservatives who loudly — and justifiably — protested when speakers like Ben Shapiro and Charles Murray were prevented from speaking on college campuses, often under the guise of vague appeals to "safety."

Will those same voices rise up now that the boot is on the other foot?

Do we actually believe in free speech as a principle, or merely as an expedient argument when our side is censored?

Do we actually oppose cancel culture?

Do we actually oppose the heckler's veto?

Do we actually oppose vague security rationales for censorship?

I will work with anyone to defend free speech in any scenario, even if doing so means those same people — whether they are the canceled conservatives of the past or the canceled left-wingers of the present — will sometimes abandon free speech when it's their side doing the censoring.

Believing in free speech is as simple as the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Nat Henthoff's book title comes to mind: "Free Speech for me, but not for thee."

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How Dangerous is the COVID Vax?

Mary Talley Bowden, MD:

How many Americans have died from the shots? CDC confirmed 19,355 of the 38,541 deaths reported to VAERS were legit. With a conservative underreporting factor of 30, that amounts to over 600,000 casualties. @US_FDA normally removes after 50 deaths.

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