A Real Free Speech Platform

 

So Facebook and X inform us that they have seen the light and will now be the free speech platforms they always pretended to be. No, no they will not. Don't fall for it Charlie Brown, don't believe Lucy when she says she won't pull the football away at the last second. The billionaires of social media say, “Trust us this time, because now we are sincere.”

How many times are we going to fall for this lie, because FB and X and all the others will never abandon their business priorities, which are to make money. That means data collection, profiling and shadow banning, at least to some degree, will never end. Those non free speech aspects are baked into those social media cakes. What's more, even if some benevolent billionaire did appear on the scene, sincerely trying to give us the means to overthrow their own oligarchy,(like that is really going to happen) what ever they give us would not be, could not ever be, the free marketplace of ideas that we so desperately need.

There are two reasons social media can never fill that role, regardless of the good intentions of some oligarch. For one thing, even if the social media platform is exempt from liability, there are still libel and slander laws that can and will be applied to individuals using the platform. Those kinds of laws will prevent the platform from ever becoming a truly free marketplace of ideas. Simply saying that some major corporation is ripping everyone off, or proposing an idea that might threaten billions of their dollars, would likely trigger a lawsuit. Given the bias in our courts toward those who can pay the fanciest lawyers, the original poster would probably lose in court, even if telling the truth. Thus many good ideas and legitimate complaints will never really be heard. Without some kind of exemption from such corporate lawfare, any “free speech” platform is a charade at best.

What's more, social media is more a popularity contest than a forum for discussing truth. Influencers are paid for generating engagement, so they are reluctant to boost some bright new voice which might woo away followers. Furthermore, social media provides no credible way of ascertaining what the general public really feels and thinks about an idea, rather it merely shows us how adept some folks are at playing the engagement game.

Nonetheless, our self governing republic is still vitally in need of said free marketplace of idea, We haven't had one for more than a hundred years, and as was noted in the 1920's, if we don't have a free marketplace of ideas, especially in the electronic media, it puts our entire way of life in jeopardy. We are more than a century down that path and our way of life IS in serious jeopardy. The decay is so far advanced that most folks don't even know what a truly free marketplace of ideas might look like. Thus, we eagerly embrace the weak counterfeits offered by our rulers.

There is a much better alternative, one we can adapt from the Ancient Greeks, and which has historically proven to greatly benefit society, being, in fact, the catalyst of an actual Golden Age. We can, by using our powers as citizens, establish a truly free public forum, ala Pericles, which will be unfettered by libel laws, and which will provide us a valid way of discerning the mind of the citizenry. It is called the Open Media. We can and should establish it by way of a constitutional amendment.

The Open Media Amendment

is a proposal to establish, via constitutional amendment, a national public forum on electronic media; The Open Media. No laws will be enacted on this forum, and no one will be elected to any office. The only purpose of this true public forum is that the voice of every person can be heard, and that the public gets to decide who gets more opportunities to be heard.

Two aspects of The Open Media ensure that it will be a true public forum. First of all, everyone will have an equal opportunity to participate (be heard and seen) on an unedited, uncontrolled live webstream forum. Second, everyone who is a part of the audience in that area gets to vote on the participants, and those participants who receive a majority vote get another opportunity to appear on the local forum.

The national forum structure will resemble the structure of some mythical national high school basketball tournament. Local forums would have winners and losers. The losers go back in line to await another turn while the winners get another chance on the live forum, with another vote each time. The one getting the most votes locally goes on to the state forum.

On the state forum the same rules hold. Winners get another chance, losers don't, and the one receiving the most votes goes to the national forum.

The national forum is where this could get truly revolutionary. Live, unedited and uncontrolled citizens, having already won the approval of millions of people in their home states, addressing the entire nation, with the people as a whole freely deciding who gets more time on the forum. Abusive oligarchs, corrupt politicians and many stripes of evil doers will tremble when this gets going.

That's the basic concept.

Obviously, it has to be established by ratifying a new amendment to our Constitution.

That would first of all be the way to pay for it, which would not have to be exorbitant. Web sites for each locale with boilerplate software with which to administer the forums. The real cost would be the servers, but that would still be minimal in this age of exploding information capabilities.

The other reason The Open Media must be established by constitutional amendment is to provide an exemption, for those speaking on the forum, from libel and slander laws. This would be much like the exemptions members of congress have when they are speaking on the floor of the legislature. Such exemptions will ensure that the discussion is completely free, and therefore truth seeking. In this way we can prevent the wealthy from using lawfare to silence our voices.

In the end this is absolutely the best way we could use our information technology. Ironically, even though folks might have to get dragged to it initially, overcoming their long nurtured apathy, the national forum will likely become the most popular show in history. Think of it. Kind of like American Idol and similar shows, only with serious political and cultural issues. The idea is really quite simple:

===============

Amplify the free voice of the American people, and let the

free mind of the American people decide whose voice is further amplified.

This kind of ordered liberty is in the finest American tradition, and will do more than just provide a way to hear every voice. Since we would finally have a credible means of discerning what the citizenry actually thinks, (giving the public a real hand in forming public opinion) it could become an objective cultural touchstone which could then enable us to find our way back to some form of national consensus. Then we would no longer be subject to our present debilitating national cacophony of confusion.

There are many details to be worked out and obvious objections to be overcome with this proposal, most of which are addressed in this much longer blog article.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-open-media-amendment.html

The best way to proceed in organizing this movement, in the opinion of one who does not know how to organize a drinking contest at a frat party, is to respond by commenting on this blog, or the linked blog, or send an email to

ComradeAmerica2@yahoo.com

please include an email or other contact information

Any suggestions for further organization will be welcomed and considered

Enslaving America

 

American society is increasingly coming under the domination of a foreign power, to be named shortly, which is using a complex yet subtle scheme to colonize and eventually enslave us. This innovative, complex scheme has one glaring weakness, which should give us hope, in that this scheme requires the unwitting cooperation of the American people in their own demise. Let's take a close look at what's going on because the media, which should protect us by providing this analysis, has long since abandoned their role as watchdogs for we the people.

First, let's look at the historical schemes that have been used to enslave and colonize other nations. The most well known of these old schemes was the trans Atlantic slave trade triangle of the 16^th through 19^th centuries.

That triangle of trade started with acquiring slaves in Africa, buying them from the local rulers for rum and guns. Those slaves were transported to slave markets in the New World, usually in the West Indies. The owners of those ships, now empty of slaves, would use their profits from selling slaves to purchase sugar, which had been produced by slaves on the sugar plantations in the islands. The ships would then go to New England and sell the sugar for another profit. The owners would then use some of their profits to purchase rum (made in New England from the sugar) and guns. Then the ships would sail back to Africa's Slave Coast and trade for another shipload of slaves., That was the trans Atlantic slave trade scheme in a nutshell.

In similar fashion, many nations had colonization schemes, schemes which survived the end of formal colonization and became the basis of Neo-colonialism. These schemes involved the colonized nation sending raw materials (cotton, minerals from mines, grains, etc) back to the home country, and then the home country selling finished goods back to the colonized nation. In the time of formal colonies, the mother country appointed a viceroy, or governor (with an armed force at their command) to keep the laws favoring the mother country in place and enforced.

In our Neo-colonial times, the mother countries allow nominal independence, but through force of arms ensure there is always a cooperative ruler in place who keeps the Neo-colonial scheme operating efficiently. These schemes are still operating profitably worldwide, with China being added to the list of colonizer nations, especially with its use of debt trap loans to developing nations.

Speaking of China, that is the foreign power which has set up the sophisticated scheme to colonize and ultimately enslave America. Their scheme involves some of that tried and true Neo-colonial stuff, with them selling us finished goods in exchange for our raw materials, but it goes way beyond that simple arrangement. First of all, that aspect of the scheme works only because they have gotten (bribed?) many of our officials to not enforce the trade agreements we made with China, such as allowing our companies access to their markets in the same way we allow their companies to access our markets. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) simply makes it impossible for most American companies to trade there, and those that are allowed to can do so only after surrendering technological secrets to the CCP. So they sell us finished goods, and we sell them raw materials and trade secrets. This is colonizing in action, but it gets worse.

That basic Neo-colonial setup has an added layer. Once those Chinese businessmen have all those profits, they like to store their wealth in what is considered the safest place on Earth, the highly inflated American housing market. That's right, they use their ill gotten gains to buy houses and lands in America.

Disregarding the security concerns of this trend, consider how well this use of profits serves their long term economic interests. With some very expensive houses in their hands, they lobby, through paid agents, to secure that wealth by preventing the building of low cost housing. They lobby zoning boards (with wealthy and middle class Americans fighting along side them), always emphasizing the importance of maintaining high property values.

Thus, just like the cooperative rulers of Neo-colonial states, or the rulers of slave trading African nations, many middle class Americans unwittingly betray their people's best interests by working to ensure property values stay excessively high. That is how we are participating in our own colonization, because it is those excessively high property values, resulting in ridiculously high rent and mortgage payments that is making it impossible for American workers to live on a wage that is competitive with Chinese workers.

Chinese companies continue to get the manufacturing jobs, ensuring they get the profits and the wealth. They then recycle that wealth back to America in a way that ensures America will never be able to compete with them in manufacturing. That is the part that resembles, and in fact improves on, the traditional Neo-colonial mercantilism of the past century

But it gets much worse, because our national degradation and eventual enslavement is the ultimate goal. Consider how the ridiculously high cost of housing effects our culture beyond the fact that it renders us noncompetitive in the international manufacturing economy. Young people are finding it almost impossible to ever own a house in many parts of the nation. In California and other states, if you are middle class and don't inherit a house, you have no chance of ever buying one, of ever getting out from under excessive rent.

Because of the resulting economic strain, many exceptional young people, seeking to eventually become responsible parents, put off both marriage and conceiving children until much later in life than nature intended. Typically, the elite among modern women and men want to get high dollar careers going first. Then that first child is scheduled for the late twenties to early thirties. Scheduled !?!!

That delayed and sublimated drive to reproduce often leads to promiscuous premarital sexual activity, and that commonly results in developing deviant sexual appetites,(not to mention legitimizing abortion). This twisting of the reproductive drive into deviant sexual lifestyles results in an ugly symbiosis with socialism. Those given over to various expressions of sexual deviance will likely never produce healthy families and thus they will become supporters of big government socialism. That is because government, not family, will become the financial pillar they depend on as they grow older.

A similar decline into sexual deviance and moral depravity seems to afflict many of the less exceptional young people, those who might, in other times, have lived on low wage jobs. Those jobs are not, these days, widely available due to offshoring of jobs and large scale illegal immigration. These are the fellow Americans we see living homeless on our streets, often given over to levels of degradation never before witnessed. Sadly, they sometimes seem like true zombies.

Worse, so many of the “good” people don't see them as deserving of any sympathy or support, but rather consider them just another example of how contemptible we Americans have become. Such degraded people also become both dependents and supporters of big socialism. The looming possibility of enslavement should be obvious in this scenario. Certainly, many, if not all, socialist nations have shown a willingness to engage in slave labor and thereby punish those they deem “social parasites.”

Meanwhile, Boomers, and many others, have blindly prioritized the monetary value of their property over the well being of fellow humans. They seem loath to do anything which might revive the empty life possibilities of the young. Neither do they do anything to revive the eroding work ethic in our populace. Mostly they just complain about that.

For their part, many of the young have come to see the American dream as a cynical joke they will never share, and to quietly contemplate geriatricide (new word- means killing the elderly) when the time comes after the economy has gone bad. The sentiment to allow the elderly to simply die of neglect when resources get scarce is going to be hard to resist given the indifference the elderly have shown to the plight of the young.

Thus our greed, our blinding obsession with property values, has caused us to allow our industrial base to collapse, our birth rates to decline past sustainability, huge numbers of our populace to suffer intense degradation, our generations to become hate filled toward each other, and millions of us to be attracted to the dubious charms of big socialism. We have thus become ripe for conquest and enslavement.

Greed, the main driving cause of our moral and social decline (there are other lesser causes, such as lust, debauchery, substance abuse, turning from the Gospel, etc) remains ignored by us and weaponized against us by the greatest enemy we have ever faced. We can easily beat the Mandarin class of China, the CCP, at this game, but it will require a change of heart on the part of our national winners, those who have achieved the so called American dream. It would require them to care more about living breathing Americans than they do about their 401-k's, their stock portfolios and especially the value of their real estate holdings.

The odds against that change of heart actually happening are akin to the odds against a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Maybe what we really need is some good old fashioned teaching, preaching and prayer about this. Sincerely turning to the whole Gospel, not just the comfortable parts. Good luck with that though, with so many Elmer Gantry clones in the pulpits of our churches.

Finally then, the bottom line hope and prayer must be that the church in America will once again become the representation of Jesus Christ on this Earth, and fervently seek a just and righteous society. It will probably take a major crisis to get to that point, akin to the kind faced by Israel in the time of Nehemiah 5:1-13. Read it to understand. That is indeed a slim hope, but it is still hope.

May God save America. Please.