On Alex Berenson’s interesting censorship vs mandates poll
I voted that mandates were worse
A brief shout out to three amazingly generous fellow substack writers who have promoted my stack! Thank you so much!
Don Surber ~ read his stack here
Chris Bray ~ read his stack here
Liberty’s Newspaper ~ read the stack here
We live in a country where people believe the TV is a glowing oracle of truth instead of seeing it for the device it really is: a cool way to deliver the entertainment of a theater or playhouse to you instead of you having to travel to the theater.
I believe that the reason I do not see the TV as a glowing oracle of truth is because my mom, repeatedly and consistently, told me as a child, “Don’t believe everything you see on TV, Sarah Louise. It’s a television, not a glowing oracle of truth.”
It matters. Parents matter. I am the person who called into the Arlington County Board meeting to object to discriminatory mask and vaccine policies instated by the elected official I worked for because both of my parents repeatedly told me that speaking up against abuse of power is not only the right thing to do, it’s a privilege. One enshrined in the 1st Amendment, one that every soldier who fought and died during the Revolutionary War fought and died for. And you’re not only a coward if you don’t speak up, you’re ungrateful. You are unthankful for freedom itself. (Really nice people, my mom and dad. Easygoing, cheerful, fun at parties. No, I’m kidding!)
Force is the opposite of liberty — which is why so many of us opposed the mandates so intensely: because they violate body autonomy. Censorship has a similar element of force because it violates the speaker or writer’s liberty, their freedom to choose to share information (with their body! through physically writing, typing, tapping or speaking). But Berenson’s poll got me thinking: does censorship also violate the (would-be, would-have) recipient’s freedom to hear and learn and receive information? Link below.
Interestingly enough, the tweet embed above does not show the poll. (Another reason I’m still an Elon skeptic.) But it looked like this 2 hours before it closed…
I knee-jerk reaction tapped option 2: mandates. Then I read some replies…
Ok — great point. But …
…these people are speaking my language.
But a little mind worm had taken hold and I wanted to understand the people who chose censorship in the poll and then reason my way through either proving their argument to be true or proving it to be untrue.
So, facts first.
The government lied.
People who were not trained to be skeptical of what the government tells us through the glowing oracle of truth box believed them.
People who were not trained to be skeptical of what corporations who make billions of dollars by getting you (or the government which is again, you) to buy a product (with our tax dollars) tell us through the glowing oracle of truth box believed them.
The other day, I was thinking about how lucky I am to have had the parenting I received. I asked myself, “I wonder what kind of parenting you had to have to grow up to be the person who calls for jailing the unvaccinated or holding them down and forcing them to be injected.”
I thought about the poor people who got the vaxx who are not naturally skeptical of highly concentrated power vacuums (governments). They’re unlucky.
I thought about the poor people who aren’t naturally smart, who aren’t naturally bright enough and “quick on the uptake” (as my parents used to say) to realize how suspicious it was that the government was literally offering people money (bribes!) to get an injection.
I thought about the poor people who are so suggestible — even if basically intelligent — that their rudimentary high school health class understanding of the human body went out the window as they completely forgot (blanked out?) that natural immunity means, if you had a disease, you don’t need a vaccine for it, that the definition of herd immunity had been changed in front of their eyes, and that the definition of the word vaccine had been changed, right in front of their eyes. Don’t you remember health class? I watched smart people I knew (lawyers, doctors, people with multiple degrees) seemingly get amnesia.
But here’s the thing: I posit to you that the truth wasn’t censored. Individual truth-tellers were. Now wait: I know that’s bad. Heck, I was censored! I would still like to know which federal agency asked Twitter to disable my periscope account. Just 2 days after the 2020 election, when I went live on periscope as my Deep State Valley Girl character, the periscope app stopped tweeting my livestreams (prior to that night, twitter would simultaneously tweet my periscope video so that people could watch it live on twitter even if they didn’t also have the periscope app). Then in February of 2021, my access to the periscope app was disabled completely. Since Elon took over, I have emailed periscope support twice to request it be reinstated, to no avail. Several content creators still actively broadcast through periscope so please don’t believe the rumor that “periscope is gone.” You can’t download the app anymore but all existing accounts are still active (ha ha — except mine).
But back to Alex Berenson: after he was forced off twitter, didn’t he go from niche novelist/journalist to hyper-popular, loved, subscribed to, monetized substack reporter, overnight? He started reaching more people than ever before! And making a shit ton of money to boot!!
Yes, some censorship happened but it wasn’t why the mandates went into effect. Censorship wasn’t causal. No, I think the total operation was way more sinister and covert. Here’s what I witnessed.
Step 1. Create division in order to eventually conquer the population via step 2 …
Step 2: Establish as much binary division as possible, i.e. black v white, us v them, red v blue, R’s v D’s, no third option, no gray area
Step 3. Get people to hate Trump supporters even more than Trump himself
Step 4. Associate opposition to or hesitancy toward the vaxx with Trump supporters (this was really brilliant — you aren’t gonna get vaxxed? Bet you voted for Trump too, you racist)
Step 5: Label truth tellers as conspiracy theorists (the usual)
Step 6: Associate truth-tellers with Trump supporters (remember when Glenn Greenwald was called a rightwing blogger and Berenson “conservative”? LMAO)
Step 7: Sit back & relax as the vaxx money rolls in!
Kudos, Deep State, kudos!! But still, not completely without flaw. Banishing Berenson only made him that much braver, and it fueled his anger, and it was rocket fuel no less, which he then used to turn around and fight you back even harder. Plus, you only made him look even more heroic in our eyes.
Now back to addressing, you, my subscribers. The same hero status was bestowed on everyone who was banished from Twitter, Dr Malone, et al. Many migrated to substack and were very lucky to find this flourishing freedom of speech neck of the internet woods.
The truth was being told every day by people all over the internet, myself included, especially regarding anti-body dependence enhancement that the vaccine caused during the trials. The propaganda buildup was so heinous and obvious, you’d have to be living under a rock not to see how hard and bizarrely this “vaccine” was being pushed! Or you’d have to be blinded — by your own hate.
They were! Most still are. That was the goal. Fill people with hate and then trigger gleeful vengeance and fearful compliance.
Oh, and the cowardice! Those who wanted us to be held down and force-vaxxed didn’t want to do it themselves! Oh no, wouldn’t want to make physical contact with an untouchable. But they’d want to watch. Sick.
One important point: twitter isn’t real. I mean, it exists lol (let’s not go all Descartes on ourselves this early in the morning). Everyday people, for example, my family members, are not on twitter. Not one of them. Because they have real lives and kids and jobs and stuff to do (I have a job but not the other things). Some of them watch TV and some watch glowing oracle of truth boxes/screens. Rounding, approximately 1 in 5 Americans has a twitter account. (But how many of them are active?? The question asked in the survey was, “Do you ever use twitter?” So perhaps we should round down, way down.) People who say censorship caused the mandates remind me of people who say Hillary lost because of Wikileaks.
What we have is a character weakness problem in our country, not a censorship problem (or, we have both). Cowardice, hatred of our neighbor, apathy, fear — these are endemic to American society in 2023 and the *toleration* of censorship is the symptom of this societal cancer. The Deep State had President Kennedy assassinated in broad daylight over 60 years ago, and the government is still releasing pages of completely redacted documents (because nothing to see here! Literally! You can’t see it — but we have nothing to hide!!). But we allow it. Have we — you, me, We The People — objected to that abuse of power by authority? Are we out there protesting that six decade-long censorship injustice? Maybe if we hadn’t *tolerated* that censorship 60 years ago, we wouldn’t be in our current predicament.
It’s a republic, ma’am, if you can keep it!
Earlier I asked, does censorship also violate the (would-be, would-have) recipient’s freedom to hear and learn and receive information? I think the answer is yes, and so from that standpoint, it truly becomes a morally malevolent act because it’s a kind of deprivation: we’re deprived of the interesting mental and emotional experience of thinking and reflecting on new information. Also, I brought a lot of joy to people through my periscopes, so censoring people doesn’t just prevent the free exchange of information, it snuffs out light that would have made life a little less dark. We could call it a conspiracy except it’s being done right out in the open.
What say you? Which was worse, the mandates or the censorship?
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this is an interesting question you pose. the reflexive answer is that censorship "allowed" the mandates to happen but that's a bit too simplistic. i was able to find alternative information; it's out there even if it takes a bit of digging.
i'm reminded of something my friend said recently. she and her husband were subjects in the moderna trials but she called me for help getting her mother IVM when she had covid. she was telling me that she intended to get the bivalent booster as soon as it was approved and my dismay was obvious. "you read different things than i read," she answered.
i wanted to say "but you don't read at all." of course i see all the stuff about how great the vaccines are; you'd have to be blind and deaf to miss it. but i also see what's going on around me even if i didn't have access to malone, berenson (they disagree), mcCollough, RFK jr and Del Bigtree. in fact i never listened to or even heard of most of those people UNTIL i became suspicious of the vaccine. then i sought them out.
sure you give a child a cartoon bandage when they're afraid of needles, but donuts and lottery tickets for adults? and when the carrots failed to work- the sticks. i lost my job, my passion of 40 years over my refusal to take a shot. but in the previous 39 years, no one had ever checked my medical records. they might have guessed what i would do based on my prior insistence that the tetanus shot requirement boilerplate language be stricken from my contract.
my Moderna friend had a bad bout of Delta followed by a bout of Omicron and she called me to ask for advice and, like i said before, for help getting IVM to her unvaccinated best friend and later her mother. surely she saw how the wonders attributed to the vaccines kept being downgraded. the back pedaling, the shifting goal posts.
for her to say that i read different stuff (i.e., fringe, alternate, conspiracy theory) while she reads mainstream based on "Science" and "Truth" is kind of a lazy man's excuse.
but the reality is this: EVEN IF COVID HAD BEEN AS DEADLY AS THEY SAID IT WAS AND THE VACCINES AS EFFECTIVE AND SAFE AS ADVERTISED, the mandates still would not have been justified. they are unconstitutional, they violate bodily autonomy. what rights do we have if we can't decide what to do with our own bodies?
then to see the My Body My Choice crowd advocate forced vaccination, the people you might expect to be most sympathetic to a refuseniks cause!!! "you have no right to spread your germs to me!" i might answer "Well, you have no right to deprive me of the future worker, cannon fodder and tax payer who is going to support me in my old age."
formerly intelligent people lost the ability to think, to reason, to see what was obvious to anyone with eyes and a few brain cells.
so i guess, yes. censorship violates the first amendment but the mandates violated something even more sacred
Lockdowns and mandates were assaults on the body. Censorship is an assault on both the truth and your mind. I think maybe there isn’t a “correct” answer. Each individual has to decide for themselves which was worse.