Anyone who believes that locking President Trump out of his social media accounts will serve as the first step on the path to healing the political divide in the United States is likely to be in for a bitter disappointment.

The flaws in this reasoning need to be peeled away, like the layers of an onion.

Twitter’s decision to permanently ban Trump for, among other things, “incitement of violence” effectively cuts him off from 88 million followers. Facebook has said it will deny Trump access to his account till at least the end of his presidential term.

The act of barring an elected president, even an outgoing one, from the digital equivalent of the public square is bound to be every bit as polarising as allowing him to continue tweeting.

These moves threaten to widen the tribal divide between the Democratic and Republican parties into a chasm, and open up a damaging rift among liberals and the left on the limits of political speech.

Claims of ‘stolen’ election

The proximate cause of Facebook and Twitter’s decision is his encouragement of a protest march on Washington DC last week by his supporters that rapidly turned violent as several thousand stormed the Capitol building, the seat of the US government.

Five people are reported to have died, including a police officer struck on the head with a fire extinguisher and a woman who was shot dead inside the building, apparently by a security guard.

The protesters – and much of the Republican party – believe that Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, “stole” November’s presidential election. The storming of the Capitol occurred on the day electoral college votes were being counted, marking the moment when Biden’s win became irreversible.

Since the November election, Trump has cultivated his supporters’ political grievances by implying in regular tweets that the election was “rigged”, that he supposedly won by a “landslide”, and that Biden is an illegitimate president.

The social networks’ immediate fear appears to be that, should he be allowed to continue, there could be a repetition of the turmoil at the Capitol when the inauguration – the formal transfer of power from Trump to Biden – takes place next week.

No simple solutions

Whatever we – or the tech giants who now dominate our lives – might hope, there are no simple solutions to the problems caused by extreme political speech.

To many, banning Trump from Twitter – his main megaphone – sounds like a proportionate response to his incitement and his narcissistic behaviour. It appears to accord with a much-cited restriction on free speech: no one should be allowed to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.

But that comparison serves only to blur important distinctions between ordinary speech and political speech.

The prohibition on shouting “Fire!” reflects a broad social consensus that giving voice to a falsehood of this kind – a lie that can be easily verified as such and one that has indisputably harmful outcomes – is a bad thing.

There is a clear way to calculate the benefits and losses of allowing this type of speech. It is certain to cause a stampede that risks injury and death – and at no gain, apart from possibly to the instigator’s ego.

It is also easy to determine how we should respond to someone who shouts “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. They should be prosecuted according to the law.

Who gets to decide

Banning political speech, by contrast, is a more complicated affair because there is rarely consensus on the legitimacy of such censorship, and – as we shall see – any gains are likely to be outweighed by the losses.

Trump’s ban is just the latest instance in a growing wave of exclusions by Twitter and Facebook of users who espouse political views outside the mainstream, whether on the right or the left. In addition, the tech giants have been tinkering with their algorithms to make it harder to find such content – in what amounts to a kind of pre-censorship.

But the critical issue in a democracy is: who gets to decide if political speech is unreasonable when it falls short of breaching hate and incitement laws?

Few of us want state institutions – the permanent bureaucracy, or the intelligence and security services – wielding that kind of power over our ability to comment and converse. These institutions, which lie at the heart of government and need to be scrutinised as fully as possible, have a vested interest in silencing critics.

There are equally good grounds to object to giving ruling parties the power to censor, precisely because government officials from one side of the political aisle have a strong incentive to gag their opponents. Incitement and protection of public order are perfect pretexts for authoritarianism.

And leaving the democratic majority with the power to arbitrate over political speech has major drawbacks too. In a liberal democracy, the right to criticise the majority and their representatives is an essential freedom, one designed to curb the majority’s tyrranical impulses and ensure minorities are protected.

‘Terms of service’

In this case, however, the ones deciding which users get to speak and which are banned are the globe-spanning tech corporations, the wealthiest companies in human history.

Facebook and Twitter have justified banning Trump, and anyone else, on the grounds that he violated vague business “terms of service” – the small print on agreement forms we all sign before being allowed access to their platforms.

But barring users from the chief means of communication in a modern, digitised world cannot be defended simply on commercial or business grounds, especially when those firms have been allowed to develop their respective monopolies by our governments.

Social media is now at the heart of many people’s political lives. It is how we share and clarify political views, organise political actions, and more generally shape the information universe.

The fact that western societies have agreed to let private hands control what should be essential public utilities – turning them into vastly profitable industries – is a political decision in itself.

Political pressures

Unlike governments, which have to submit to intermittent elections, tech giants are accountable chiefly to their billionaire owners and shareholders – a tiny wealth elite whose interests are tied to greater wealth accumulation, not the public good.

But in addition to these economic imperatives, the tech companies are also increasingly subjected to direct and indirect political pressures.

Sometimes that occurs out in the open, when Facebook executives get hauled before congressional committees to explain their actions. And doubtless pressure is being exerted too out of sight, behind closed doors.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple all want their respective, highly profitable tech monopolies to continue, and currying favour with the party in power – or the one coming into power – is the best strategy for avoiding greater regulation.

Either way, it means that, in their role as gatekeepers to the global, digital public square, the tech giants exercise overtly political powers. They regulate an outsourced public utility, but are not subject to normal democratic oversight or accountability because their relationship with the state is veiled.

Censorship backfires

Banning Trump from social media, whatever the intention, will inevitably look like an act of political suppression to his supporters, to potential supporters and even to some critics who worry about the precedent being set.

In fact, to many it will smack of vengeful retaliation by the “elites”.

Consider these two issues. They may not seem relevant to some opponents but we can be sure they will fuel his supporters’ mounting sense of righteous indignation and grievance.

First, both the department of justice and the federal trade commission under Trump have opened anti-trust investigations of the major tech corporations to break up their monopolies. Last month the Trump administration initiated two anti-trust lawsuits – the first of their kind – specifically against Facebook.

Second, these tech giants have chosen to act against Trump now, just as Biden prepares to replace him in the White House. Silicon Valley was a generous funder of Biden’s election campaign and quickly won for itself positions in the incoming administration. The new president will decide whether to continue the anti-trust actions or drop them.

Whether these matters are connected or not, whether they are “fake news” or not, is beside the point. The decision by Facebook and Twitter to bar Trump from its platforms can easily be spun in his supporters’ minds as an opportunistic reprisal against Trump for his efforts to limit the excesses of these overweening tech empires.

This is a perfect illustration of why curbs on political speech – even of the most irresponsible kind – invariably backfire. Censorship of major politicians will always be contested and are likely to generate opposition and stoke resentment.

Banning Trump won’t end conspiracy theories on the American right. It will intensify them, reinforce them, embolden them.

Obnoxious symptom

So in the cost-beneft calculus, censoring Trump is almost certain to further polarise an already deeply divided American society, amplify genuine grievances and conspiracy theories alike, sow greater distrust towards political elites, further fracture an already broken political system and ultimately rationalise political violence.

The solution is not to crack down on political speech, even extreme and irresponsible speech, if it does not break the law. Trump is not the cause of US political woes, he is one obnoxious symptom.

The solution is to address the real causes, and tackle the only too justified resentments that fuelled Trump’s rise and will sustain him and the US right in defeat. Banning Trump – just like labelling his supporters “a basket of deplorables” – will prove entirely counter-productive.

Fixing a broken system

Meaningful reform will be no simple task. The US political system looks fundamentally broken – and has been for a long time.

It will require a much more transparent electoral system. Big donor money will have to be removed from Congressional and presidential races. Powerful lobbies will need to be ousted from Washington, where they now act as the primary authors of Congressional legislation promoting their own narrow interests.

The old and new media monopolies – the latter our new public square – will have to be broken up. New, publicly funded and publicly accountable media models must be developed that reflect a greater pluralism of views.

In these ways, the public can be encouraged to become more democratically engaged, active participants in their national and local politics rather than alienated onlookers or simple-minded cheerleaders. Politicians can be held truly accountable for their decisions, with an expectation that they serve the public interest, not the interests of the most powerful corporations.

The outcome of such reforms, as surveys of the American public’s preferences regularly show, would be much greater social and economic equality. Joblessness, home evictions and loss of medical cover would not stalk so many millions of Americans as they do now, during a pandemic. In this environment, the wider appeal of a demagogue like Trump would evaporate.

If this all sounds like pie-in-the-sky idealism, that in itself should serve as a wake-up call, highlighting just how far the US political system is from the liberal democracy it claims to be.

Jonathan Cook, UNZ Review

A government is an institution that has the power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area.

Do men need such an institution — and why?

Since man’s mind is his basic tool of survival, his means of gaining knowledge to guide his actions – the basic con­dition he requires is the freedom to think and to act ac­cording to his rational judgment. This does not mean that a man must live alone and that a desert island is the environment best suited to his needs. Men can derive enormous benefits from dealing with one another. A social environment is most conducive to their successful survival – but only on certain conditions.

“The two great values to be gained from social exis­tence are: knowledge and trade. Man is the only species that can transmit and expand his store of knowledge from generation to generation; the knowledge potentially available to man is greater than any one man could be­gin to acquire in his own lifespan; every man gains an incalculable benefit from the knowledge discovered by others. The second great benefit is the division of labor: it enables a man to devote his effort to a particular field of work and to trade with others who specialize in other fields. This form of cooperation allows all men who take part in it to achieve a greater knowledge, skill and pro­ductive return on their effort than they could achieve if each had to produce everything he needs, on a desert island or on a self-sustaining farm.

“But these very benefits indicate, delimit and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society: only rational, productive, indepen­dent men in a rational, productive, free society.” ( The Objectivist Ethics.)

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment – a society that sets up a conflict between its edicts and the requirements of man’s nature­ is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. Such a society destroys all the values of human coexistence, has no possible justi­fication and represents, not a source of benefits, but the deadliest threat to man’s survival. Life on a desert island is safer than and incomparably preferable to existence in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.

If men are to live together in a peaceful, productive, rational society and deal with one another to mutual benefit, they must accept the basic social principle with­out which no moral or civilized society is possible: the principle of individual rights. (See my articles on rights in the April and June 1963 issues of The Objectivist Newsletter.)

To recognize individual rights means to recognize and accept the conditions required by man’s nature for his proper survival.

Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.

The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships – thus establish­ing the principle that if men wish to deal with one an­other, they may do so only by means of reason: by discus­sion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement.

The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initi­ate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physi­cal force a moral imperative.

If some “pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door – or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into the perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages.

An Objective Code

The use of physical force – even its retaliatory use­ cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens. Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment. Whether his neighbors’ intentions are good or bad, whether their judgment is rational or irrational, whether they are moti­vated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by preju­dice or by malice – the use of force against one man can­ not be left to the arbitrary decision of another.

Visualize, for example, what would happen if a man missed his wallet, concluded that he had been robbed, broke into every house in the neighborhood to search it, and shot the first man who gave him a dirty look, tak­ing the look to be a proof of guilt.

The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed and to prove who committed it, as well as objective rules to define punishments and enforcement procedures. Men who attempt to prosecute crimes, without such rules, are a lynch mob. If a society left the retaliatory use of force in the hands of individual citizens, it would degenerate into mob rule, lynch law and an endless series of bloody private feuds or vendettas.

If physical force is to be barred from social relation­ships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules. This is the task of a government – of a proper govern­ment – its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government.

A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control – i.e., under objectively defined laws.

The fundamental difference between private action and governmental action – a difference thoroughly ig­nored and evaded today – lies in the fact that a govern­ment holds a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. It has to hold such a monopoly, since it is the agent of restraining and combatting the use of force; and for that very same reason, its actions have to be rigidly defined, delimited and circumscribed; no touch of whim or ca­ price should be permitted in its performance; it should be an impersonal robot, with the law as its only motive power. If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled.

Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others) , while a govern­ment official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden)· a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

This is the means of subordinating “might” to “right.”

This is the American concept of “a government of laws and not of men.”

The nature of the laws proper to a free society and the source of its government’s authority are both to be de­rived from the nature and purpose of a proper govern­ment. The basic principle of both is indicated in The Declaration of Independence: “to secure these [individ­ual] rights, governments are instituted among men, de­riving their just powers from the consent of the gov­erned . . .”

Since the protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of a government, it is the only proper subject of legislation: all laws must be based on individ­ual rights and aimed at their protection. All laws must be objective (and objectively justifiable): men must know clearly, and in advance of taking an action, what the law forbids them to do (and why) , what constitutes a crime and what penalty they will incur if they commit it.

The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

There is only one basic principle to which an individ­ual must consent if he wishes to live in a free, civilized society: the principle of renouncing the use of physical force and delegating to the government his right of physi­cal self-defense, for the purpose of an orderly, objective, legally defined enforcement. Or, to put it another way, he must accept the separation of force and whim (any whim, including his own).

Now what happens in case of a disagreement between two men about an undertaking in which both are in­volved?

In a free society, men are not forced to deal with one another. They do so only by voluntary agreement and, when a time element is involved, by contract. If a con­tract is broken by the arbitrary decision of one man, it may cause a disastrous financial injury to the other – and the victim would have no recourse except to seize the of­ fender’s property as compensation. But here again, the use of force cannot be left to the decision of private in­dividuals. And this leads to one of the most important and most complex functions of the government: to the function of an arbiter who settles disputes among men according to objective laws.

Criminals are a small minority in any semi-civilized society. But the protection and enforcement of contracts through courts of civil law is the most crucial need of a peaceful society; without such protection, no civilization could be developed or maintained.

Man cannot survive, as animals do, by acting on the range of the immediate moment. Man has to project his goals and achieve them across a span of time; he has to calculate his actions and plan his life long-range. The better a man’s mind and the greater his knowledge, the longer the range of his planning. The higher or more complex a civilization, the longer the range of activity it requires – and, therefore, the longer the range of con­tractual agreements among men, and the more urgent their need of protection for the security of such agree­ments.

Even a primitive barter society could not function if a man agreed to trade a bushel of potatoes for a basket of eggs and, having received the eggs, refused to deliver the potatoes. Visualize what this sort of whim-directed action would mean in an industrial society where men deliver a billion-dollars-worth of goods on credit, or con­tract to build multi-million-dollar structures, or sign ninety-nine-year leases.

A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man re­ceiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession) , not by right – i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without their owner’s consent, under false pretenses or false promises. Extortion is an­other variant of an indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values, not in exchange for values, but by the threat of force, violence or injury.

Some of these actions are obviously criminal. Others, such as a unilateral breach of contract, may not be crim­inally motivated, but may be caused by irresponsibility and irrationality. Still others may be complex issues with some claim to justice on both sides. But whatever the case may be, all such issues have to be made subject to objectively defined laws and have to be resolved by an impartial arbiter, administering the laws, i.e., by a judge (and a jury, when appropriate) .

Observe the basic principle governing justice in all these cases: it is the principle that no man may obtain any values from others without the owners’ consent­ and, as a corollary, that a man’s rights may not be left at the mercy of the unilateral decision, the arbitrary choice, the irrationality, the whim of another man.

Such, in essence, is the proper purpose of a govern­ment: to make social existence possible to men, by pro­tecting the benefits and combating the evils which men can cause to one another.

Police, Military, and Courts

The proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories, all of them involving the issues of physi­cal force and the protection of men’s rights: the police, to protect men from criminals – the armed services, to protect men from foreign invaders – the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objective laws.

These three categories involve many corollary and derivative issues – and their implementation in practice, in the form of specific legislation, is enormously complex. It belongs to the field of a special science: the philosophy of law. Many errors and many disagreements are possible in the field of implementation, but what is essential here is the principle to be implemented: the principle that the purpose of law and of government is the protec­tion of individual rights.

Today, this principle is forgotten, ignored and evaded. The result is the present state of the world, with man­kind’s retrogression to the lawlessness of absolutist tyran­ny, to the primitive savagery of rule by brute force.

In unthinking protest against this trend, some people are raising the question of whether government as such is evil by nature and whether anarchy is the ideal social system. Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction: for all the reasons discussed above, a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would pre­cipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare. But the possi­bility of human immorality is not the only objection to anarchy: even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that ne­cessitates the establishment of a government.

A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is be­fuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called “competing governments.” Accept­ing the basic premise of the modern statists – who see no difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production, and who advocate government ownership of business – the proponents of “competing governments” take the other side of the same coin and declare that since competition is so beneficial to business, it should also be applied to govern­ment. Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses.

Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean.

One cannot call this theory a contradiction in terms, since it is obviously devoid of any understanding of the terms “competition” and “government.” Nor can one call it a floating abstraction, since it is devoid of any con­tact with or reference to reality and cannot be concretized at all, not even roughly or approximately.

One illustra­tion will be sufficient: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.

The History of Government

The evolution of the concept of “government” has had a long, tortuous history. Some glimmer of the government’s proper function seems to have existed in every or­ganized society, manifesting itself in such phenomena as the recognition of some implicit (if often non-existent) difference between a government and a robber-gang – the aura of respect and of moral authority granted to the government as the guardian of “law and order” – the fact that even the most evil types of government found it nec­essary to maintain some semblance of order and some pretense at justice, if only by routine and tradition, and to claim some sort of moral justification for their power, of a mystical or social nature. Just as the absolute mon­archs of France had to invoke “The Divine Right of Kings,” so the modern dictators of Soviet Russia have to spend fortunes on propaganda to justify their rule in the eyes of their enslaved subjects.

In mankind’s history, the understanding of the gov­ernment’s proper function is a very recent achievement: it is only two-hundred years old and it dates from the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution. Not only did they identify the nature and the needs of a free so­ciety, but they devised the means to translate it into practice. A free society-like any other human product­ cannot be achieved by random means, by mere wishing or by the leaders’ “good intentions.” A complex legal sys­tem, based on objectively valid principles, is required

to make a society free and to keep it free – a system that does not depend on the motives, the moral character or the intentions of any given official, a system that leaves no opportunity, no legal loophole for the development of tyranny.

The American system of checks and balances was just such an achievement. And although certain contradic­tions in the Constitution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism, the incomparable achievement was the concept of a constitution as a means of limiting and re­stricting the power of the government.

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Con­stitution is a limitation on the government, not on pri­vate individuals – that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the govern­ment – that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the govern­ment.

The Law Perverted

Now consider the extent of the moral and political in­ version in today’s prevalent view of government. Instead of being a protector of man’s rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and co­ercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serv­ing as the instrument of objectivity in human relation­ships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of non-objective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of unlimited whim – so that we are fast approach­ing the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

It has often been remarked that in spite of its material progress, mankind has not achieved any comparable de­gree of moral progress. That remark is usually followed by some pessimistic conclusion about human nature. It is true that the moral state of mankind is disgracefully low. But if one considers the monstrous moral inversions of the governments (made possible by the altruist – collectiv­ist morality) under which mankind has had to live through most of its history, one begins to wonder how men have managed to preserve even a semblance of civi­lization, and what indestructible vestige of self-esteem has kept them walking upright on two feet.

One also begins to see more clearly the nature of the political principles that have to be accepted and advo­cated, as part of the battle for man’s intellectual Renais­sance.

____

This article — by the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead — appeared in the December, 1963 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter, and was reprinted by permission in the March, 1964 Freeman. Copyright © 1963 by The Objectivist Newsletter, Inc., 120 East 34th Street, New York 16, N. Y.

Now that the impeachment scam has been completed, the narrative-creators will start letting the truth about what really happened in the Capitol riot on January 6 to start dribbling out. Thus it is that today we see the narrative creators at the Department of Justice who rashly promoted a false claim that those who entered the Capitol that day were planning to “capture and assassinate” various lawmakers, including Mike Pence and San Fran Nan Pelosi suddenly walking that claim back.

From a story at Townhall.com:

Justice Department attorneys have walked back the claim that Capitol rioters planned to “capture and assassinate” lawmakers. The move follows acting US attorney Michael Sherwin’s comments earlier in the day that “no direct evidence” establishes the presence of so-called “kill capture teams” during last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Prosecutors in the case of Jacob Anthony Chansley, the man captured in viral images wearing a horned fur headdress and carrying a spear, have formally requested the court strike a line from a recent filing where prosecutors assert that “strong evidence” exists showing “the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States Government,” CNN reported. Prosecutors have described Chansley as a regular drug user who suffers from mental illness.

At a press conference on Friday, acting US Attorney Michael Sherwin said, “We don’t have any direct evidence of kill capture teams.”

[End]

Oh. You don’t say.

The DOJ’s original false claim, of course, was used by the Democrats and supporting Republicans in congress to dummy up a justification for an actual impeachment vote this week, a vote that was held without any due process or the holding of a single hearing prior to that vote. Now that the deal is one, oh hey, they were just kiddin’.

Despicable.

Hey, no one could have seen this one coming! – Oh, wait, we saw it coming right here at DBDailyUpdate just yesterday, didn’t we?

That’s when I detailed the arrest of one John E. Sullivan, a professional BLM/Antifa rioter/agitator who helped organize and execute the Capitol riot, and who was arrested on Thursday in Provo, Utah. In yesterday’s report, I predicted that Sullivan would almost certainly be released very quickly. Later in the day on Friday, he was released without having to even post bail.

I swear I do not make this stuff up. From a report in the Salt Lake City Tribune:

Judge Daphne Oberg denied a prosecutor’s request to keep Utah activist John Sullivan in jail, but she agreed to release him only under conditions that include electronic monitoring and a mental health evaluation. Sullivan was in virtual court Friday afternoon, one day after being booked at the Tooele County Jail on a warrant for allegedly participating in the rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Sullivan was charged in federal court in the District of Columbia with civil disorder, being in a restricted area and disorderly conduct. He previously told The Salt Lake Tribune that he attended the riot to document what was happening, but a government affidavit alleges he did more than just film. The affidavit says Sullivan yelled things such as “We accomplished this sh–. We did this together,” and, “We are all a part of this history. … Let’s burn this s— down.” He also broke a window and claimed to have a knife, according to the affidavit. Sullivan claimed in a YouTube video that he was just trying to fit in at the riot for his own safety. [End] Oh, yeah, sure, uh-huh, you betcha: This professional rioter scumbag was “just trying to fit in.”

Holy crap.

Meanwhile, here is what Washington, DC, the national capital city of the formerly free nation of the United States of America, looks like today:

This is what a police state looks like, folks, and if the Democans and Republicrats in the DC UniParty have their way, it is what all of the country will look like soon. They are using the false narrative created in the wake of the Capitol riot to advance their real agenda right before our very eyes, supported by their agents in the corrupt news media and the Big Tech monopolies.

There are 26,000 National Guard troops in DC right now, advancing the false narrative that congress and the incoming Biden/Harris Harris/Biden Administration must be protected from violent Trump supporters. They have closed all of the bridges coming into the city and established checkpoints on all the main roads and arteries as well. In order to get into the City of Washington DC today, you must be able to present the proper papers to the authorities.

Sound familiar?

papers please – Stereotypical Nazi Officer – quickmeme

You cannot say you haven’t been warned.

That is all.

David Blackmon

So we are to imagine that those who objected to Biden’s having stolen the election are responsible for the violence at the Capitol? And that, going forward, any public official who questions Biden’s win should be removed from office, and that any corporate leader who objects should be fired? All this when the truth is that Trump in all likelihood won the election.

It is the perfect example of Orwellian speech. In his classic essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell spoke of the condition where “words and meaning have almost parted company.” If that “almost” is a measure of Orwellian speech, then today’s Democrat leaders are beyond Orwellian. Their words and meaning have parted company entirely.

As Orwell also stressed, the decline of language is both cause and effect of the decline of politics. When politicians and media begin speaking nonsense, it is the symptom of an underlying corruption of political thinking. The idea that the president should be removed from office for having defended the electoral process is truly bizarre, but it has been repeated throughout the liberal media and by most liberal politicians and even by some conservatives.

One might say progressives like Nancy Pelosi have become “unhinged,” but that would let them off the hook. It would suggest that they don’t quite realize what they are doing. But what they are doing is the result of crafty political calculation. They want to tie President Trump with the Capitol violence to the point that he can never run again. The same political deviousness lies behind suggestions that he should not be in control of the nation’s nuclear arsenal because of his supposed mental instability.

None of these charges has anything to do with the truth. Those most responsible for the Capitol disturbance were those who rigged the presidential election, and certainly these individuals and those who coordinated their efforts or knew in advance or concealed information afterward should be punished. One might say those who committed acts of violence on the Hill should be punished to the same extent that Antifa and BLM rioters were punished last summer.

But the charges against President Trump are Orwellian in that they invert the truth. The president argued, as he had every right to do, that the election was rigged, and he urged peaceful protest to defend our republic.

Even the president’s calming words on the afternoon of the Capitol break-in have been met with Orwellian reaction. When President Trump said, “Go home. Go in peace,” the media charged him with inciting further violence because he expressed his “love” for his supporters. That expression of love did more than anything to get them to go home.

In a further Orwellian twist, Biden and his cronies appear to have adopted many of President Trump’s ideas for running the country, but they can’t admit where those ideas came from. Biden’s not entirely sure we can afford to forgive all student debt, and he now believes that the existing border policies are necessary for the time being. Gov. Cuomo now says we must “open things up,” just as President Trump and many conservative governors said we should. But he can’t admit that the idea came from conservatives — it’s his idea. None of these ideas was right when Trump was president — they’re right only after Biden takes office.

The media will go along with this lie, in typical Orwellian fashion.

The most important line in Orwell’s famous essay is this: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” The progressive inversion of the truth is just that: an attempt to defend the indefensible.

If progressives were honest and straightforward, they would be forced to state that they are radical environmentalists and socialists who want government to control the economy and equalize wages; who want socialized medicine for all; who think religious expression should be outlawed; who believe in a universal guaranteed income; who want to outlaw the use of fossil fuels; who want to expand affirmative action putting blacks and Hispanics farther ahead of whites; who believe that any reference to biological sex should be outlawed; who believe that America should be not a global superpower, but merely one nation among others; who believe that abortion at any stage is a universal right; who believe that American aid should go to the Palestinians and not to Israel; and so on.

President Trump clearly stated his own beliefs on a thousand occasions — President Biden should do so as well, but he won’t. He uses the Orwellian tactic of disguising his beliefs in gibberish, and this is not because he’s going daft, as he well may be. He’ll speak of “expanding Obamacare” rather than socialized medicine. He’ll talk of “defense partnerships” rather than abandoning control of our military. And on the environment, it’s not even possible to tell what he wants, but he wants $400 billion to do it. Once again, “the defence of the indefensible.”

The coordinated effort to impeach and convict the president is nothing less than a propaganda campaign, and the associated suppression of free speech on social media and elsewhere is the beginning of a dangerous national decline. It’s not possible to say where it will end, but we must be entirely clear about what is happening. A progressive government will attempt to further limit free speech, assembly, religious expression, gun rights, access to employment, and other basic liberties. Progressives have already threatened conservatives with prosecution and imprisonment for the “crime” of denying anthropogenic global warming and for questioning the result of the 2020 election. What’s next? The persecution of every American conservative in the same way that Gen. Flynn was persecuted?

It’s a fine line between federal prison here in America and Dachau in Germany, and one can transform into the other in a matter of weeks. It did so in Germany in 1933, just five weeks after Hitler became chancellor. Don’t think it can’t happen here. It begins with “the defence of the indefensible” — and that is already well underway.

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

What this ridiculous impeachment accomplishes: Intensified hatred and lack of respect for the legitimacy of ANY Democrat by ANY Trump supporter … ever again. I mean loathing like nothing seen in this country since 1861. You can FORGET any sense of unity, ever again. It also accomplishes: A sense of righteous self-satisfaction for hard-left Democrats. Gee, you’d almost think the Democrats weren’t secure in the legitimacy of Biden’s election. If they were, they would have moved on by now. But that’s how it is with irrational people. They never, ever get enough. Censoring President Trump and conservative voices everywhere … you’d think that would be enough. But nothing is enough. And nothing ever will be. Their rage is so deep-seated, and so beyond a derangement about President Trump. THIS is why I maintain that today’s leftists are at least as bad as their National Socialist counterparts who took over Germany in the 1930s. I don’t know that there has ever been hatred on this scale. Not just directed at Trump; but directed at all things related to freedom. Arm yourselves, psychologically and literally. These people are unhinged.

More evidence:

AOC and other leftists in Congress are demanding a commission on “media literacy”.

Dave Rubin, of the classically liberal “Rubin Report”, came up with the right response:
“When [Ocasio-Cortez] says disinformation or misinformation, she means really anything that goes against progressive leftist dogma.” Rubin said Ocasio-Cortez’s rhetoric is consistent with the “totalitarian authoritarian ideology” that the left continues to push.

The left “is trying to crush dissent,” Rubin said. “When you mix the Big Tech portion of this, where they are going to censor the rest of us anyway, as it has become incredibly obvious over the last few days, well now you have politicians saying ‘let’s get rid of misinformation.’ Instead of the government having to do it they can do it through Big Tech, so it doesn’t seem like a full-on assault on the First Amendment, which is about the government going after speech.”

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason