Whole Lotta Censorin’ Goin’ On!
— Publications, TV/Radio Stations, YouTube Shows, Writers, Academics, Musicians, TV Personalities … Even Russian Cats!
MAY 7, 2022 UPDATE: https://consortiumnews.com/2022/05/06/listen-no-such-thing-as-dissent-in-the-age-of-big-tech/
I never dreamed I’d grow up to discover an America like this!
I always believed the great work of the American Civil Liberties Union, the debating rights of point/counterpoint academics, unions for workers and the endearing anti-war nature of The Fellowship for Peace & Reconciliation would forever reign supreme in my society … The War Resisters League would forever hold a spot of fair recognition in American society.
Not only this, that my own voice, my humble opinion, would also count and perhaps be heard by others. An early advocate of I.F. Stone, I’ve always believed my soap box would never be taken away, that a free press would always follow wherein life I went.
Hey, I grew up to believe in JFK’s Camelot … but he was a progressive who got shot! No other progressive has been elected since — it’s been all rightwing!
What kind of society is it where during the past 100 years we’ve had 18 presidents but only two have been progressive and one was moderate? The others all held a tilt to the right, if not extraordinarily rightwing. Indeed, I am saddened to have grown in America only to find my country on lots of lousy lists!
When you grow as a child, not only are you taught to share but one of the first things your parents will show you is the parade, what with all the firemen, police, soldiers, marching bands with each member marching in perfect formation, this with some cool cars and trucks, the cheerleaders, a Mickey Mouse and a few clowns mixed in. If you advanced into cub scouts or boy scouts, what with all those merit badges … then you too got to march in the parade!
Then there was pee wee football, late night hockey, little league, pony or American Legion baseball each enhancing the regimen of high school sports where we were coached to become higher-level competitors. But rare were we ever scouted for The Big Leagues. More likely it was Uncle Sam’s ROTC and local military recruiters who had their eye on you.
As the years moved forward the prospect of a college education became too hard if not impossible for too many. Many tried, many failed. For those who succeeded, they likely wound up in debt with grim job prospects in an always worsening economy. Meanwhile, CEO pay skyrocketed over 1,100% (with only an 18% increase for workers, but with increased productivity) since the Reagan-Bush Administration, the beginning of modern day oligarchy.
Oligarch America caused The American Dream to utterly collapse. It continues. The average US household debt is now over $150,000. More and more middle American families are locked into this debt. They’re paying impossible mortgages, absurdly high rents and exorbitant costs if trying to put their kids through college. To do this, they work multiple jobs of fewer benefits, scant health plans and most likely no pension.
Meanwhile, poor folk see little to no hope for breaking out of an underground economy where they face home evictions, court costs and few if any prospects for gainful employment. Living in the underground, for survival, you often need a drug deal gone good instead of bad, a lucky scratch ticket or a knack for winning the monthly meat raffle at a Legion, VFW, Elks or Moose club. Your position in line at the local food pantry — yes, there are good people in our world — is guaranteed!
Sure enough, it seems the only way to get ahead in America is to join America’s military which every year, thanks to pedigreed politicians, gets a fatter budget. Currently, it’s budgeted at over $780 billion.
Through a tragedy of trial and error, US soldiers are today less likely to get killed given the use of drone technology, private mercenary armies and foreign fighters who now conveniently fight our geopolitical proxy wars. Indeed, if you survive America’s military, perhaps then the GI Bill will get you through college, or you’ll luckily become a government employee, a postal clerk or work in a police or fire department.
You’ll certainly get an opportunity to march in one of America’s parades!
If you’ve got gung-ho energy, are sporting some courage and don’t mind the suffering, perhaps you could become a policeman or a prison guard (maybe both!). Spend the rest of your life fighting or caging people in America’s Drug War, maybe even grab some extra pay for joininf Metro Swat.
After all, is it not The American Way to put your family and friends in jail or on probation, maybe get ‘em wearing an ankle bracelet, blowing into a breathalyzer or constantly peeing in a cup so the relatives of the pedigreed politicians can make millions of dollars in side business or from investing in the stocks who upgrade the technology for doing all of this?
Just pause and think how many supposedly free Americans, against their will, had to suffer the indignity of peeing in a cup and passing that specimen on to who knows who! Indeed, Only in America!
So the politicians who live by pedigree do the bidding of the oligarchs and they get richer and richer. Meanwhile, America’s media keeps everyone in check. This has become easy now since only five corporations control 90% of all US media. I long for the days back before Reagan when there were 50 major news corps and the news was covered rather than controlled.
I also never dreamed they’d tamper with world and national history in order to fit an agenda. If anything, I always thought the understanding and presentation of history would deepen, would improve and that more folks would become taught wonderful attributes. That we’d all become smarter instead of dumber! What a fool I was to really believe my society would become better educated, not less educated.
So folks. All in all? Seriously. Think about this:
You’ve been taken!!!
While you were looking the other way and thinkin’ on somethin’ else, they moved right in on ya. Increasingly, they are taking away your freedom of speech. They’ve got well-funded corporate think-tanks now studying who individually or organizationally should get the boot from participating in social media, society’s modern day soapbox. It’s bad enough they’ve already privately funded prisons and probations departments. Now, the privately-funded algorithms are playing an increasing role with policing.
Yes, they’re after your voice. For many, they’ve already taken away individual freedom. Note the opening paragraph of Half in Ten and The Sentencing Project Americans with Criminal Records section:
The United States is the global leader in incarceration. Today, more than 1.5 million Americans are incarcerated in state and federal prisons, a figure that has quintupled since 1980. Adding in jails, the number of Americans who are behind bars rises to 2.2 million. One in three U.S. adults has been arrested by age 23. Communities of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals; and people with histories of abuse or mental illness are disproportionately affected. As a result, between 70 million and 100 million — or as many as one in three Americans — have some type of criminal record. Having even a minor criminal record, such as a misdemeanor or even an arrest without conviction, can create an array of lifelong barriers that stand in the way of successful re-entry. This has broad implications for individuals’ and families’ economic security, as well as for our national economy. Mass incarceration and hyper-criminalization serve as major drivers of poverty; having a criminal record can present obstacles to employment, housing, public assistance, education, family reunification, building good credit, and more.
Why I Wrote This
Oh yeah! I just remembered why I began writing this article. Earlier today I tried to reference a site I’ve been referencing for two decades. I’ve been using this reference since back when I created the very first substantive anti-war debate ever on the Internet.
Back when GOPwingers Bush & Cheney — and public relations specialists — bagged us for fools on WMD and The War on Iraq, names like Curveball and Baghdad Bob came into every day prominence. These personalities were used to help propagate the fear and complacency. Sort of like today’s Ghost of Kiev and 11 Ukrainian Snake Island Defenders. This kind of propaganda is always used, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Syria, Venezuela …the list is large and goes on.
In 2003. I did my level best to fight back against the US-induced propaganda. On SiliconInvestor.com — a stock investment forum that was FB & Twitter before FB & Twitter even came close to existing — I created two discussion forums that spawned a tremendous debate involving tends of thousands of posting messages. The two SI sites were called: DON’T START THE WAR and Stop The War. I hosted them under the moniker PartyTime.
“PartyTime.” Right! Me! Forever, the optimist — lol!
Anyway, this was back when Netscape and Metacrawler were the big search engines of the day. Throughout the years to present, I’d search-seek “America Friendly Dictator Trading Cards,” a site that very well-described 36 dictators whose governments the US consistently propped up. The US used these dictators in order to extract mineral resources for profiteering while using slave labor; to smuggle weapons while using illicit air, land and sea drug smuggling routes; and to prop up Third World drug gangs to help keep the useful dictatorial governments in power.
This is all still going on. Nothing has changed, except information about this now becomes censored.
On the internet I’ve probably used this particular site as an intellectual reference more than 100 times over the years. It was developed by FRIENDLY DICTATORS TRADING CARDS, Text © 1990 Dennis Bernstein & Laura Sydell. Art © 1990 Bill Sienkiewicz, Eclipse Enterprises in California. Bravo to them, they did a very great job!
In today’s world of censorship I tried to Google it so as to copy and paste to send to someone else. I wanted to use it as a reference as I have have done for over 20 years. But today’s Censor Gods now provide the following message:
>>>Primus Home — Sorry the personal web site for this customer has been suspended.<<<
http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Cards_Index.html
But having been around the internet block a few times I went to The WayBack Machine, an archival site, to see if I could revive my long-used intellectual reference. I was successful — here ‘tis!
