Written for but not published on Facebook*:
I just learned that a few years ago Germany’s Merkel had asked Facebook’s Zuckerberg how he was working on suppressing dissent from her immigration policies.
This is the nature of government, and of “the left” today. Center-leftists are the new conservatives, suppressing and molding thought and discussion to bolster their policies in the name of their values, not the values of an open society, much less the principles of free speech.
And I know, I listen to my left-leaning friends here* on Facebook: on the whole, you folks (oh, ye of much faith … in government) don’t dissent from the suppression of free thought and the expression of ideas and values and policies you do not like. Indeed, you cannot imagine someone having a different thought from you on obviously controversial policies (such as what you think of as the obviously correct and quite simple implementation of anti-racist and anti-sexist agendas) and that they could possibly be valid.
This doesn’t make you “edgy,” it makes you conservative. Retro. Reactionary. Sure, your policies are not associated with “conservative” “principles,” but your methods are conservative. You are shoring up Progressive Era institutions, and trying to extend them. But you do not want to upset the establishment. You are the establishment.
And believe me: you are just as overbearing as conservatives seemed when I was young.
For the record, I find your ideas, analyses and regular outbursts of moral umbrage to be, for the most part, ridiculous.
Sure, the nominal conservatives “on the right” are ridiculous, too. But they are obvious goofballs and cretins. You folks still pretend to yourselves — and manage to pull off in public — a farded-up public face that still almost passes for sophistication.
But your mascara is running, and your imperial clothing is being pointed out to be non-existent. Soon, three-quarters of the world will be laughing at you.
No wonder you are desperate. And no wonder your desperation is showing.
twv
* I chickened out. I did not see the point in insulting half of my friends and family. Though they deserve it, sure.
Wirkman Comment 