Tag: Free Speech

Government, woke

Did He Just Say That?

Something just happened that has left me literally shaking. I… I, I’m going to try and pull myself together so I can share this outrage. There’s this football guy, Troy Aikman who I’m told was a pretty good quarterback at one time, who’s now a TV broadcaster. Well, I guess football has gotten really mean and unsafe lately, so the referees have been over-reacting and calling “roughing” penalties that are a bit controversial. After one such call, Aikman said this: “My hope is the competition committee looks at this in the next set of meetings and, you know, we take the dresses off”.

I am offended to my core. To insult women like that is so… so… I don’t even know. Let me compose myself. <deep calming sigh> Rightly, there was an immediate outcry and Aikman issued a statement apologizing for making a “dumb remark”. Sorry, not good enough. He needs to be cancelled. These dinosaurs, these symbols of the old, white, patriarchy must be destroyed. We cannot let misogynists like this remain in positions of influence.

[End Sarcasm] This is now us as a society. Perpetual outrage mode. Thousands of soy-boys and flotillas of Karens, all just waiting to pounce on whatever they perceive as the latest offensive comment or action. And their intention is never to just point out the offense and offer education – no, they want to cancel and destroy the offender. They want society to live in fear of wrongspeak.

And they’re wining. Look at Troy Aikman. Rather than simply laughing at it and telling these folks to go pound sand and return to their weird Disney cosplay conventions and video games, he caved. He gave in to the mob and apologized rather than risk being cancelled.

That is not a good place for a society to be in. The world economy is cratering. Government spending, overreach, and oppression is expanding at a frightening rate. The lunatic left is doing everything possible to foment racial wedges in every aspect of life. Right now, if you don’t bend the knee to the official narrative you’re either a racist, a Russian apologist, or eagerly awaiting a Gilead-style Handmaidens Tale remake of the world. Probably all three.

Because of cancel culture, who’s going to be brave enough to say no to these lunatics? If you dare say that men should not be competing in women’s sports, some Antifa, nose ring wearing thug will appear with spittle flying out of their mouth and shriek “racist!!!” at you. You’ll be removed from social media and risk losing your job. Because, after all, you did take the mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training, so you were aware of the corporate policy against hate and misgendering someone.

I honestly don’t know where we go from here. A self-reflective analysis might be appropriate:

  • Do you have a Ukraine flag in your profile? (and you’re not Ukrainian)
  • Did you post a black square on Instagram and/or post any BLM propaganda?
  • Did you read the previous item and think, OMG that’s so racist?
  • Did you ever lecture/shame people on social media for not getting the vaccine?
  • Did you ever look at people with disdain who weren’t wearing masks?
  • Do you still wear a mask? Alone, in your car?
  • Do you list your pronouns in your bio?
  • Is your main source of news CNN and The View?
  • Do you refer to Jan 6th as an insurrection? Do you eagerly await news that Trump has been arrested?
  • Do you drive an electric vehicle because you care about the environment?
  • Does the term “illegal alien” horrify you?
  • Do you order your coffee at Starbucks with more than two ingredients?

If you answered yes to any of the above… I hate to break it to ‘ya cupcake – but YOU are the problem. Your faux tolerance and empathy are destroying this country. I could care less if you think there are 27 genders and why wouldn’t we keep giving money to Ukraine? More power to you. Just realize there are people who have opinions that are different than you. Trying to cancel people because they don’t think like you is dangerous and wrong.

We keep down this road and The Ministry of Truth will eventually govern everything. The crime of wrongspeak is serious business kids. Go to wrongspeak/us.gov to report family members and neighbors who you suspect are committing these heinous crimes. Your government thanks you for your cooperation.

Government

An Upside Down Dystopia

If you haven’t seen it, the Handmaid’s Tale is a fabulous series. It describes a dystopian world in which an ultra-right religious group has seized control of portions of the former United States following a civil war and subjugated women to be nothing more than breeders and servants. It’s probably an accurate picture of what many left-leaning thinkers feel the conservative right would enact given the chance. Mrs Troutdog and I started re-watching season 3 in preparation for the newly dropped season 4. Naturally since our phones are always listening to us in the background (cue foreshadowing) I logged on to YouTube and had a bunch of Handmaid’s Tale video suggestions.

One of those video suggestions was a discussion of a map of the former United States and the territories that Gilead (the new country) occupied. This map was created by a fan of the series, pieced together by vague references in the series and the original book by Margarat Atwood. My first thought was who has enough time (or interest) to create an elaborate map on a work of fiction? But then again I don’t get people who cosplay and I didn’t play dungeons and dragons in high school. But what got me thinking is a comment the video creator made. In the TV series, most of the regions of the country seized by Gilead are the Northeast, East and West coast. The Midwest is controlled by the former United States. Here’s the rub. Gilead is a far-right religious group. The East and West coasts are dominated by left leaning progressive folks. How is it the far-right took over the liberal centers and, presumably, the left occupied the middle of the country? It doesn’t make sense.

Which leads me to where we are today. Our world has been flipped upside down. What used to be conventional wisdom, isn’t any more. For years articles, news stories, and movies have been made that declared the threat of the right wing. The right wanted to suppress speech. The right was intolerant. They were potentially violent, spawning shadowy right-wing militia groups. The left were the creative thinkers, lovers of free speech, and defenders of individual rights. Today it feels like we’re in opposite world. The right are the new counter culture. The woke left have spawned a cancel culture that strives to shut down any independent thinking. When the pandemic which shall not be named arrived, the left seized the opportunity to exert control over every aspect of your life. Power hungry governors and mayors quickly shut down business, restricted free movement and gatherings, and all but mandated martial law in some cities.

Censorship and restricting free speech are now a thing. From killing the Hunter Biden laptop story, banning a sitting president from speaking, to the intentional shutdown of Parlor, the left has done everything possible to control what information you see. Just in the last few days they actually started brazenly saying it out loud. The Whitehouse press secretary said that they are working with Facebook and other social media entities to “flag” problematic posts that spread disinformation. This should scare the hell out of you. Twitter, Facebook, and Google were already banning, suspending, or flagging accounts by the thousands that mentioned anything they deemed harmful information. Now they’re coordinating directly with the deep state to suppress any non-conforming thoughts? Scary stuff.

Of course all of this is done for your own good. We locked down to protect you. Unfortunate that you lost your business, but it was for the greater good. We’re not going to allow you to see data refuting the effectiveness of masks because that might spawn disharmony. You will not be allowed to question a mandatory vaccine, government lockdowns, election audit results, who killed Ashley Babbitt, Hunter Biden’s business dealings, or border policies. You silly little citizen, not to worry, the adults are in charge now. Go back to your fun Facebook password phishing memes, the state is here to protect you. The bad orange fascist is gone now. And if any of your family members or friends seem to be, you know – “extremists”, you can always report them to the FBI.

“The beatings will continue until moral improves”

Captain Bligh, HMS Bounty

Cool, Government, Politics

News Of The Weird
  • When I was a kid, every once in a while my friends and I would pick up a copy of the Weekly World News. They bill themselves as “The worlds only reliable news”. As kids we knew it was just a silly tabloid with articles containing headlines like “5 things to avoid during an alien abduction“. But also as a kid, something in the back of your brain would wonder if maybe, just maybe, it was true? Reporters couldn’t just make stuff up could they? As a so called “adult” I’ve always been firmly in the skeptical bigfoot camp when it comes to UFO’s. Billions of people on this planet… if aliens have visited we’d know about it. Government isn’t competent enough to keep a secret like that. So imagine my surprise when I saw this article – “Pentagon admits it has been testing wreckage from UFO crashes & findings may ‘change our lives forever”. This comes from 154 pages released by the Defense Intelligence Agency after a three year FOIA request by researcher Anthony Bragalia. Could this be real? I honestly don’t know what to think. If it is, what other secrets has the government managed to keep? It is odd the Kennedy assassination still hasn’t been declassified after all these years. Maybe we really are holding the bodies of aliens from the Roswell UFO crash at Area 51? Could there actually be a Bigfoot type creature running around the pacific northwest? My skeptical roots have been shaken a bit today.
  • Speaking of journalism, I saw an image this morning of the giant 1st Amendment plates being taken down from the former Newseum in Washington DC. It’s an interesting image given the current dissenting speech purge and cancel culture of today. When we visited DC a few years ago I had never heard of the Newseum and only went as an afterthought on the recommendation of a friend. It ended up being in the top three things we saw. Interestingly, the thing I was most looking forward to was the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. That ended up being the most disappointing attraction. Meanwhile a little museum about journalism I’d never heard of became one of my favorites. Sadly it closed down at the end of 2019.
  • Meanwhile, it appears Sen Ted Cruz left with his family to Cancun while the state he represents freezes over because of their decision not to join the East and West power grids. While I don’t begrudge anyone going on a planned vacation with their family, how do you not have any political awareness of how this would look? Not that he could actually do anything about it, but still. More proof that politicians from both sides of the aisle really don’t care about you.
  • The other day former MMA star turned actress Gina Carano was cancelled by Disney for sharing a dissenting opinion from that of woke Hollywood. She’s probably one of those domestic insurrectionists we’ve been hearing about. Anyway, despite the clumsiness of her tweet, there are some parallels to today and 1930’s Germany. This post is worth a read.
  • I broke the law yesterday. Despite being a contrarian, I am a rule follower so this was definitely out of character for me. I’d run an errand and on the way back home I realized the streets were mostly dry. I have not been able to test drive the new motorcycle due to large amounts of fluffy white global warming that have been falling from the sky lately. The bike has not been registered, titled, and does not yet have a license plate. All that went out the window when I saw an opportunity to go for a quick ride. I’m in love. It’s smooth, powerful, and rides like a dream. Super agile for such a big bike. It exceeded all my expectations. It does however have more buttons and switches than the space shuttle. I can easily see myself riding off a cliff as I try to navigate the touch screen display to change riding modes or turn on the heated grips. It’s so complicated, Honda created an online simulator so you can practice while not on the bike. I don’t care. The sound that engine makes when you twist the throttle makes my heart skip a beat. It was worth being a lawbreaker. Spring can’t come soon enough.

Song of the day: George Thorogood – Bad To The Bone – 7/5/1984 – Capitol Theatre (Official)

Uncategorized

The Purge
  • The tech takeover is complete. They waited until democratic control of all three branches of government was official, then on Jan 8th 2021 began purging any speech that doesn’t match the party line. The President has been permanently banned from every social media platform. Any government official or associate that attempted to tweet out a message from the president had their account suspended or removed. Google removed Parler from their app store and Apple gave them 24 hours to put a moderation policy in place or they’ll be removed. YouTube began removing multiple conservative channels, deleting Steve Bannon’s podcast mid-stream. Sidney Powell and General Flynn had their accounts on most platforms deleted. Reddit removed a popular Trump discussion thread. Twitter is stripping followers from conservative accounts. People are reporting losing tens of thousands of followers a day. Facebook and Instagram continue to suspend or delete prominent conservative accounts. The message is clear – voice an opinion contrary to the views of the left and big tech and you risk being shut down. Most of the media are giddy over this. Ironically (there’s that word again) Biden yesterday compared Sen Cruz and Hawley to Nazi propaganda minster Goebbels for spreading Trump’s “big lie”. Tech and the media have now taken away the main communication platform we have in this country from anyone they don’t agree with. It’s hard to overstate how frightening this is. Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, and the major media outlets will now freely modulate and control with impunity what news and speech you’re allowed to hear. Continuing with the irony, the left used to be the champions of free speech, speaking out against McCarthyism and the evil authoritarian right. The left warned Trump was going to be a fascist authoritarian and the hashtag #notmypresident spread across social media. Trumps inauguration spawned multiple protests, with DC turning into a scene of chaos. Cars were torched, windows broken, and police used tear gas, pepper spray, and stun grenades. 217 people were arrested and six officers were injured by flying bricks and bottles. On his first day in office we had the million women march in DC to protest the Nazi, white supremacist, pussy grabber that had been elected to office. All of that was ok by the left. Such short and selective memories we have. I don’t see this going well. 75 million people voted against the left’s octogenarian puppet. A very large portion of them are very upset right now. I truly don’t think the establishment appreciates the level of anger they’ve spawned. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the tech pacification program will work. Give it a few months without being able to spread counter opinion and the people will turn back into passive sheep, happy to answer the latest Facebook quiz while waiting for their monthly stimulus check. But as I’ve said before, squeeze people hard enough, long enough, and bad things tend to happen.

Song of the day: Pharrell Williams – Happy (Official Music Video)

Government, Politics

Are You Ok With Censorship?
  • Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert comic. He also has a YouTube (Google) channel with about 90k subscribers and does a daily show. Yesterday they shut him down, demonetized and pulled down his video. His crime? He mentioned the lawsuits about alleged voter fraud in the election. Here is YouTube’s reason: “Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election is not allowed on YouTube.” I don’t care what you think of the claims. I don’t care if you’re the most lefty, leftist, left leaning person around. This should make you mad and frightened. The freedom to speak your mind is a basic tenet of this country. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s conspiracy theory being spouted by a tinfoil hat wearing prepper living in a bunker somewhere in Wyoming. They have the right to say it. Today, the outlets we have where we can speak our mind are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the mainstream media. ALL of them are actively censoring content they don’t approve of. Other content creators are talking about this story but are having to be very careful to not mention certain “trigger” words so YouTube won’t take down their videos as well. This is not ok. As the old saying goes, you may be ok with this today because it fits your political narrative but tomorrow – they may come after something important to you. Do we really want thought police? I don’t know what the answer is. I do know this shouldn’t be a left/right thing. I’d hope that as a thinking person you’d believe in the whole “I do not agree with what you have to say, but will defend to the death your right to say it”. The influence of big tech on how and what we think is going down a dangerous path.
  • New York just shut down indoor dining with no end date. Kiss the restaurant industry by-by. LA and New York are in a race to see who can crater their economies faster. At least LA is protecting essential business… like Hollywood. Somehow the Hollywood lobby was able to score an exemption and be declared an essential business. I wonder how that happened? The little taco shop around the corner? Not so essential. I guess it’s a worry, if we’re locked down and there’s nothing new to watch on Netflix what are we to do?
  • We have a local produce place that bakes amazing pies. Family is in town for the holidays (A.K.A. superspreader event). I’ve eaten a lot of pie. There’s no point to this other than I’m still wearing the fat pants and haven’t been able to get out and ski. This scenario is not moving in the right direction. Fortunately the storm window looks to be open the next few weeks and the pie is almost gone. There’s hope.
  • This is horrifying. A couple is kicked off a flight and left stranded with no luggage or car seat because they couldn’t get their two year old to wear a mask. Is this really what we want?
  • Struggling to find something good today. We’ll go with a dog who stole a GoPro and filmed his chase.

Song of the day: Bobby McFerrin – Don’t Worry Be Happy