It is often said, that the only thing we have to fear is fear — fear itself.
That the only thing certain in this life, the only thing that remains unchanged, is change itself.
I found myself at a crossroads recently, and it opened my eyes. I’d spent a very long time trying to figure out all this confusion in society. All this violence, and open hostility. These critics on all sides, pointing the fingers, like a cacophony of angry scarecrows and hollow-hearted tinmen, who in their inexorable internal logic, marched like wind up toys to the destruction of civil society itself. And I despaired of all things good. The future would be a mob.
What happened next was the most unexpected turn of events. With all the rampaging in the streets, the angry voices online, there could be no good outcome. Surely the tide would be red and the strife written in the bones of society.
Yet what happened next startled me. It came all at once, as I was writing an angry reply to another person. A small tingle in my scalp. Like low electricity, And then, the dam broke. I realized, startled, as if waking and sitting up in bed from a bad dream, it was all a lie. It was all poison. This hatred, wasn’t mine, it had been — introduced unexpectedly, from some prior date, many weeks or months ago. Maybe it had been a television program or an angry reply to me or a screed on twitter from someone out of the blue, unprovoked, and unexplained, incendiary, leaving you with only their anger and more questions.
And I begin to wake to a horrible realization, the inkling of something bigger, as if a picture was starting to form, from all these pieces that prior almost fit, but didn’t quite join together, as if something had been missing. A dawning, awful realization. This had been done to us, this public madness, this collective loss of reason. It had not simply been the left, or the right. No. Labels were too easy. And even as I typed this I felt some of you, out there, reaching out, your own primordial rage lashing out to point, to yell your fury across the gulf of the internet, but what about so and so! Look at what the other did! Look at what this one person said! They’re to blame! They’re at fault! How dare you!
No, by careful plots, by carefully managed media broadcasts, by social media manipulation, it had come to unfold, to where we inexorably are now. The chess board prepared. The pieces set. For a fight no one could comprehend.
And this rage, which was not ours, but like a cursed object, left at our doorstep in the middle of night haunted by the disquiet malaise of national sentiment, had been injected like subtle destroying spores into the national consciousness, taking root and blossoming into a cancerous and consuming disease. A single strain of thought kept racing through my head. Holy shit! We’re sick! America’s sick!
Then the questions came, like a flood, spiraling down to a single horrible riddle. Who? Who did this to us? Who?
They say that at a moment of crisis, if you don’t bend, you will break.
And as I sat at my desk, 4 am, the sixth of November, in the cold of the night, I realized who. Who had done this. So slowly, so slowly that like a black widow, they had crept up on the western public — so slowly, no one noticed. No one at all.
It was about one thing.
Censorship.
This happened, all of this, as we were distracted, busily living our lives, caught in the cycle of anger “so and so shot one of our side!”, “did you see what happened last night, its an outrage!”, “this politician said something, its unacceptable!”, “doxx this commentator!”, “find out where they live and protest outside there house!”
Oh I’m sure it was easy. The desire to live comfortably. Safely. To not have to question. But the truth is something has gone horribly wrong in this country.
Like a torrent of political bile, that one scene from the shining flashes through my mind. The elevator opens to a raging river of red hot blood, frothing as it pours upon american society.
Despite the unseasonably warm air here in the suburbs of my hometown here in Ohio, a cold chill crept down my spine.
And one thought would not stop playing on repeat in my mind, like a vinyl full of scratches and noise:
The establishment, the u.s. government wanted this. It wants all of this! All this outrage in the streets. This is the plan, and it is right. in. front. of. our. eyes.
And while we slept, while we watched, while cities burned, and the tv programming played, the media cycle, the social media stories, unfolded, they allowed it all. It was why, despite having months and years to prepare, both parties came down to court-determined elections so close they’d guarantee street fighting. It was why social media accounts were allowed to call for violence unimpeded, while one half of the electorate was censored. It was to create a grievance narrative. It didn’t matter which side was censored. They just needed ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’!
It was why they ordered authorities to stand down in the face of arson and riots from one side of the aisle, while the other side talked tough and didn’t stop it. Politicians. It was why no one questioned police abuses, among the ranks. Politicians. Some of those there were there to instigate. Politicians. It was why instigators showed up to peaceful protests, to provoke the police and protesters into fighting.
It was why all of this was happening.
They had created a tinder pile, like the fires currently burning all along the west coast. They had set the stage for a conflagration. And having realized this, I shuddered even as I broke free of the left-right illusion, jarred by the collision of reality, like a car crash victim coming to.
And why?
The old order is dying.
Liberal democracy, represented in the u.s. at least, by the facade of the GOP and DNC party divide, had in its elite universities, and architecture, failed to account for the free flow of information in society. People had tuned out the media. They questioned it. Where a politician could before lie, or act a hypocrite, or bend the truth, now, regardless of party, anyone could, in the span of five minutes, criticize and tear down an entire narrative. The vaunted likes of FRD, who once celebrated, would today be torched by public scrutiny today.
No, the DC front, which for so long was the top-down shield of those who actually ran the u.s., power brokers, wall street banks,NGOs,defense contractors, industrial corporations like Dow? Theyhad lost the ability to control the story.
What came next with the development of the internet and technology was a new phase of society, something totally unexpected: Participatory Democracy.
The real kind, where networks held the levers of power, rather than top down institutions, ossified into bureaucratic dictatorships of incompetent and paltering yes-men whos mandarin-like answers to public scrutiny, by the year, or even month, grew more and more inconsistent, and more and more obvious as what they were: vicious lies and corrupt self interest. The ship of *formal* state was sinking.
So they came up with a clever, and hair raising plot. None other than blood shed in american streets and mass arson. Political fights that bordered on skirmishes between two sides irreconcilably reduced to bands of warring madmen who could see only enemies, on the warpath and subsumed by an intoxicating and all-encompassing fog of war and lies.
Now comes the object of the New Tyrant. The Modern Billionaire: the power in the *new era* is to decide, not what the *narrative* is, but
who can even participate, in spreading ideas,
debating, and sharing their opinions on that
narrative, and more broadly, who is even allowed
to participate in society itself.
The u.s. and west wants the chinese model of
control in america. You are part of a network, a
collective, through services and software, and
you can be shut off from *society* itself at
the drop of a pin.
The only way they get that is by creating a crisis,
outright fighting in the streets. Thats why
people keep being released after committing serious
fucking crimes. It's why the DOJ and FBI are
intent on letting both sides people walk away from fights, arsons, murder, fraud, election interference, everything.
They want *us*, the american people, at each others literal throat,
calling for each other's blood. All so they
can step back and then step in the middle when
the chorus for change cries out loud enough.
And the answer will be from three of america’s most wealthy and influential men. Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Jack Dorsey.
1. regulated tech
2. a world of tighter, top down control.
3. the ability to shut someone off from any service on a dime, literally locking them out of society.
4. new hatespeech laws that will bite *all* sides in the ass.
5. the ability to shape the narrative of society by simply 'pruning' networks as they see fit, limiting the reach of individuals on all sides, who are problematic to the collective direction.
I was so caught up in the illusion of us-vs-them I didn't
see it before now. This is a monstrous power grab. It must be stopped. Nothing else matters. Not the elections. Not political issues.
And instead of focusing on a farce of election, where the party organizations involved are institutional facades for industrialists, we should be focusing on the real issue:
* Failure of law to do its job online, especially failures of slander and libel laws, failures of laws against conspiracy to commit crime or assault
* New laws that offer injunctive relief against censorship, now that tech really is the commons. Because whats worse than someone online whipping up a mob on either side, is someone who is innocent being *silenced* for disagreeing with something someone in authority said, or for questioning a politician, party, or corporation.
* Very serious felony level laws against doxxing and harassment on all sides, with retroactive application of said laws because theres a lot of people on all sides who won't be satisfied with the outcome until people who are guilty are brought to justice.
I am formally disavowing the elections, it's not worth hating half of America. It's not worth hating my fellow citizens any more.
It was none other than the people in DC and corporations in silicon valley who tried to pit us against each other and thought they'd actually get away with distracting us from this censorship based power grab.
B/c if this power grab that is now being attempted succeeds, billionaires will decide if you are even *allowed* to participate in society at all just like in china.
I will never allow that for my fellow citizens even if they yell in my face out of misplaced anger.
I Love you America. I love you Canada. I love you Britain. I love you France. Germany. Mexico. And so many more.
Do not come to me with "xyz did so and so!"
Do not come to me with election issues.
Do not come to me with "yes but they did this or said that!"
I will not listen to your anger.
Eat your heart out jack dorsey.
Now the real fight must begin. I reject censorship and division entirely. The real enemy is revealed. The Censor. Not the intolerant, or the bigot, or those labelled as such. Nor the ‘sjw’ or the radical. But the inability to *question* them. Those who would demand to censor not only them, but anyone that even engages each other. Those who would silence, first ‘hate speech’, then turn criticism of the state into hatespeech, then ‘intolerant speech’, then ‘disruptive speech’, then ‘speech which makes others uncomfortable’. Until at last all questions of authority, all attempts even to change the opinions of others, are seen as verboten, and anathema, and we arrive at last at history’s unmasqued end and the deafening and disturbing, total silence of the final dictatorship. Digital Feudalism.
You have the right to comply with the state and digital services, enthusiastically, or be unpersoned.
I will not comply.
dispersed in a selfish world
however savage, and unrighteous
defies gravity and brutality
a moral victory if it must fade
all at once, I fought the good fight
And will compromise with the devil
no more.
