Bill Collier- Angry mobs and talking heads inspired by clickbait rage content demand absolute fidelity to their party line on pain of banishment. That’s not a partisan problem and it is a reflection of a deeper battle within the culture against any and all forms of authoritarianism.
Authoritarianism is the enforcement of strict obedience to authorities, often with a loss of personal freedom, and often at the expense of the victims themselves. This expense is exacted through taxes, regulations, exploitation, and consumer fraud through the monopolization of the economy by a coterie of the top 100 corporations.
The ability of people in authority to show tolerance for and deference to the citizen in their opinion or interests is being eroded. Defy the “conservatoria”, the galaxy of leading conservative influencers and thought leaders, and you will get ramrodded into oblivion for your lack of purity. Likewise on the left, whether or not your opposition comes from the right, the left, or the middle.
This cultural devolution has now seeped into the masses, well, especially those keyboard warriors who occupy every space online. Often, any criticism of their side, or any of their heroes, will earn instant negative reactions that are usually angry outbursts that seem disconnected from what you have actually presented.
The average netizen who is ready to pounce rarely goes beyond a headline and a shallow, knee-jerk reaction. What is more, they often speak in the most intolerance language. We would provide examples, but most everyone knows of examples or has experienced these reactions.
The now abandoned saying about freedom used to read: I may not agree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it. Now we might worry about divisive language, hate speech, extremism, misinformation, and fake news and think, “there oughtta be a law!”
Is the next exit some form of dictatorship in the shape of a “hive minded” two-party duopoly and corporate monopolies all dancing to the same drums whose tune is called by the same people?
This is a cultural problem, not a political problem. We do not impart logic, tolerance, civil discourse, love of freedom, or any of these virtues. Instead we fight a winner-takes-all battle without mercy until all signs of opposition are gone.
A society bounded by the four core ideals of our spiritual constitution as a new and free civilization is capable of handling divisive language, hate speech, extremism, misinformation, and fake news without resorting to dictating and controlling speech problems reducing individual freedom.
These core ideals need a balanced application and our understanding of them cannot be separated from the historic moral and ethical orthodoxy of a Judeo-Christian worldview. We have Unity in diversity, Popular sovereignty, Democratic equality, and Rule of law.
Within belaboring this, let’s stipulate that what we have in mind for each is this:
Unity in diversity means a free and pluralistic society of equals before God and our fellow humans, bounded by the shared values and a shared identity based on those values so that most decisions which effect most people are made through freewill participation and local civic participation.
Popular sovereignty is the spiritual sovereignty of each person actualized mostly through freewill participation and through an accountability of those who hold public office and any public trust to those they serve and profit from as well as the right and ability to exercise and preserve our own concept and convictions about culture and society with people we freely associate with.
Democratic equality represents the true and perfect democracy of free exchange through mutual profit (the free market bounded by justice and fairness is the only true democracy) and an equitable meritocracy that ensures equality of opportunity and treatment for all, for the benefit of each person and society at large.
Rule of law is the shared consensus as to the truth and standards of righteousness and justice which comport with the laws of the universe wherein the law is made by all, consented to by all, beneficial to all, and equally, fairly, and redemptively applied to all.
When we explore these ideals from their Judeo-Christian roots, when we apply them at the level of interpersonal relationships instead of mere politics, and when how we view and apply each harmonizes with all the the others, we form the basis of a cultural shift away from the top-down, centralized systems of influence and control. These systems lord it over us and also infect us with the same spirit of intolerance and imposition by manipulation, legerdemain, and even force.
We ourselves are learning from the people and corporate/government entities that are lording it over us to despise and seek to punish all those who do not agree with us. We are the problem!
But if we are the problem, perhaps we are the cure. If we examine these core ideals for a “commomwealth of freedom” built on the voluntary pursuit of civic and moral virtue, liberty in our persons and free associations, and both ideational and material independence, we can craft a cultural shift away from the petty tyrants and toward a free, prosperous, and pluralistic society of equals.
Bill Collier- On this fourth of July, it seems fitting to post an article from back in 2009 about the man we consider to be essential to American independence.
What did Sam know that we do not know?
Sam knew that when your opponent does wrong this is not the time to despair, it is the time to use their wrong by exposing it and rallying the People against them. Sam knew that it was always best to provoke your opponent into doing wrong by forcing them in the open than to despair of ever being able to effect their decisions.
When the Sugar Act was initially announced in Boston, placing a tax on many items including sugar, most of the colonists were not concerned, the taxes were not that great, the cost was buried in the price of the items, and the total price was still reasonable. Samuel Adams saw in this tax the seeds of something much more sinister. Adams saw in this the seeds of endless taxation and of endless violations of the original charter from 1690 which granted autonomy for the Massachusetts Colony, which in one form or another all 13 colonies had enjoyed, and he was appalled at the apathy of the People.
In April of 1764 the Sugar Act was passed and what could a man like Sam do? Sam had nothing to recommend himself as a political player: he was a failed businessman, he was a tax collector who was in arrears because he was loath to force people to pay their taxes, he knew nobody in the Court, in the House of Commons, or in the House of Lords over in London, he was merely a committee member for various committees assigned by the Town Meeting (all Freeholders attended, there was no city council or mayor) and of some political clubs called Caucuses.
He was, essentially, a nobody, and while he was fairly well known in Boston, he had little political power in his Colony, he had no connections to London, and the people in his own town were apathetic to the extreme: they just did not care very much.
Have you ever seen an act by government that alarms you or have you ever felt alarmed at a certain candidate’s election to office but had a hard time rallying people to your cause?
Sam knew how to rouse the people and, by the way, at the end of our story you will see that Sam was able to force the British to back down on the Sugar Act but beyond this, Sam was able to single handedly spark the fires of independence in America. As early as 1743, when he wrote a college thesis asking whether it was prudent to resist the authorities when it seemed that this was the only way to preserve the commonwealth (he had concluded that it WAS prudent).
Rather than weigh his odds and focus on what he lacked, he chose to focus on what he had. In the movie “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” Queen Elizabeth is shown saying that while she understands what is possible, the impossible is much more interesting and Will and Ariel Durant once wrote, and I am paraphrasing, that the occurrence of unlikely and impossible things was one of the “humors of history.” On that score, Sam was an interesting humor of history and he has shown us how to make the impossible possible by starting with what you have.
What did Sam have?
Adams knew that he could control his own elected members of the House, who as delegates received instructions from the Town Meeting that had elected them. He knew that he could control what instructions they received. He knew he had the means of getting his information out through newspapers he was friendly with. He knew he could speak directly to the People at the next Town Meeting.
His basic strategy was to put his opponents in the wrong and keep them there.
How did he do this?
He exposed the reasoning behind their acts an the logical possibilities that their acts envisioned (if they could tax sugar without your consent, could they not also your land, your personal income, etc.). He took measures to force his opponents out into the open, for instance sending petitions he knew would be ignored or would be refused, going to court, knowing he would lose but forcing the court to show whose side it was on. He knew that using peaceful acts of civil disobedience would force his opponents to behave badly.
Sam knew that you had to identify your opponent, identify the logic and possible intentions behind their acts, and identify the possible logical conclusions or results of their acts. He knew how to expose their wrongness and keep them in the wrong. Sam knew how to use whatever resources he had to reach an audience and rally them around his cause against the opposition.
In the case of the Sugar Act, Sam identified the weak spot in the enemy’s armor. He could not go and lobby London for repeal of the Sugar Act but he knew how to create an army of lobbyists for his cause by hitting them where it hurts. You see, the London Merchants were America’s source of manufactured goods because American colonies were not allowed to manufacture their own goods. Sam decided that he would instigate a Boycott of all impost from England: Americans would be asked, in Boston first, to make do without these goods, to make what they needed or repair what they had, and to especially refrain from buying luxury goods and non-necessities.
How did he rally his people?
What Sam needed was to unify the 13 colonies behind this boycott (the word did not exist and Sam was the FIRST person in human history to use such a strategy on a systematic basis for political ends) but even this would be difficult, it had NEVER been done before.
Sam started with what he had and he built on that, he did not wait until things were more favorable or focus on what he lacked.
At the Town Meeting, Sam used his oratory skills, which he had learned listening to great preachers like John Edwards and many others who passed through his church, and like a fire and brimstone preacher he laid out his argument. He argued that their freedom rested on the autonomy of their colony, he argued that self taxing and self governing were the vital ingredients of that freedom, and that if an outside power could lay direct taxes on the people, without them having any say, then what else other than sugar could be taxed? Sure, these taxes were not that heavy and hard to bear, and indeed if the Massachusetts Assembly had passed such taxes this would not be an issue.
The issue was not the cost of the tax but the ideas behind it: the idea that the original Charter was now to be ignored in this area, the idea that Parliament had unlimited power over the colony, and the idea that the wishes of the People were irrelevant. If the tax on Sugar was not resisted then, in short order, the whole colony would be reduced to a miserable state.
He also spoke to the English themselves. One of the ideas behind the taxes was that during the late 7 Year’s War the English had accrued a national debt of 140 Pounds Sterling and they wished to recoup part of this cost from the Colonies, arguing that the colonies must bear part of the cost of their own defense. Of course the colonies had born the cost in manpower and money, in the millions, and the fact was that the war itself was an English war against a European power and would not have been fought in America at all if America was not part of Britain.
Sam told the English merchants that the true value of the colonies was not taxes they might pay, which would never be that much of a benefit to the English treasury, but the amount of trade: the colonies purchased hundreds of millions of pounds sterling in English goods every year. Why would the English jeopardize this trade with such taxes?
Sam was the first person, presaging Adams Smith by 12 years, to posit the idea that higher taxes would actually decrease revenue and cause a decrease in trade, something that the economists and political leaders of the day were completely ignorant of.
Now Sam turned his quill to the people of his city, and to the colonies, in addressing them.
Could the people go to the Admiralty Courts, the highest courts in the land, and appeal to them? Sure, they could do this, but these Courts were themselves a violation of the rights of self government because they did not answer in any way to the People and were completely beholden to the Crown.
No, the People would have to take other measures.
The People would have participate in a non-importation agreement and forego all English goods until the Stamp Act was passed and until Parliament disavowed its claim to be have the authority to tax the colonies directly.
Sam invoked a principle that was embodies in the Magna Charta but that was ignored and not much mentioned in his day, that there could be no taxation without representation and that it was impossible for the colonies to be represented in Parliament by reason of the distance (how could they instruct their delegates, as was their custom in their own colonial assemblies, from such a distance?) The idea of virtual representation was also refuted: the English believed that their Parliament represented all Englishmen in a “virtual” way even though not all could participate in election.
Sam exposed these ideas as nonsense, he invoked the principle of no taxation without representation, he exposed the logic behind the Act, that Parliament could tax the colonies at will, and he exposed the possible intentions or results of the Act, that if a small tax on a few items could be levied then taxes on things the colonists deemed un-taxable, their lands, their homes, the tools of their trade, and their personal income, would soon follow.
Sam used his voice in rallying his own Town Meeting, he used what outlets to the people he had, the newspapers, and he was able to get the Town Meeting to approve instructions to their delegates to urge the passage of a resolution by the House that would call for all 13 colonies to adopt a common, united plan to resist these unjust taxes in a lawful and peaceful manner, namely his non-importation agreement.
There were many machinations and tricks by the other side, for instance governors adjourning legislators to prevent them from passing any resolutions in agreement with this call for a non-importation agreement. he instructions he had given to the delegates from Boston, which were passed, went out to the colonies and one man, Patrick Henry from Virginia, was thereby inspired to join the cause of the rights of the Colonists.
Words well spoken and well written inspire people when they are actually placed in front of them.
Sam knew that you had to use what you had, you had to build on that to control whatever you could control by your words, you had to put your opponent in the wrong and keep them by exposing the ideas behind their acts and the possible results of those acts, by overcoming your own weakness, and that you could overcome apathy by making an appeal based on real needs, fears, and concerns and by presenting the best possible approach to defeating the opponent, namely finding the weak link in their chain and going after it.
In the case of the Sugar Act, Sam had the ability to control his own delegates, he had the power to get his message into the public through newspapers and speaking, he could build on that by winning the day in the colonial legislator, he exposed the fact that these Acts violated the principle of no taxation without representation and the idea that Parliament now thought it could tax anything, he exposed the potential for the Parliament to tax everything, he identified the disunity of the colonies as their weakness and proposed a a unified plan of action, the non-importation agreement, and he identified the English merchants as the weak link and therefore a non-importation agreement as a unified act of peaceful protest as the best form of resistance.
He did not stop there. He started the boycott, again the word was not in use at the time (it was invented in 1880 in Ireland when tenants boycotted an “Estate Agent” named Charles Boycott), in Boston first, even as he was working to get the colonies to participate in the boycott, which they began to do all over New England. He was active in going to all the political clubs and merchant’s clubs and urging them to each endorse his plan and help to enforce it. These clubs would provide people who would go to all the stores in Boston and look for any goods that had been imported, these people would observe ships brining goods and spy on where they were going, and the newspapers they controlled would actually print the NAMES of those merchants who were violating the agreement urging readers to not patronize those merchants.
A boycott does not work if it cannot be supported. Sam knew that he had to show the rest of the colonies that this non-importation agreement could be maintained and enforced. True, a boycott by the people of Boston may have little effect on the British by itself, but a boycott that was enforceable there could be used as proof of concept.
The Sugar Act was followed by the Stamp Act, which required stamps to be used for printing and various kinds of business or to be stamped onto goods for the sake of getting more revenue from the taxes. Initially, it seemed that Sam was failing, while he was getting support all over the colonies, the process was being hindered by the governors who were suspending legislators in order to prevent them from moving on the call for a congress. Clearly, the enemy then, as now, was seeking to divide and conquer.
The congress did eventually convene as The Stamp Act Congress and both the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act were repealed, although Parliament still claimed the RIGHT to tax the colonies and still clung to their idea of virtual representation.
During the next 10 years, from 1765 to 1775, Sam was to go through many ups and downs, many successes and failures, and often he found himself as a lone voice. When in 1772 he was trying to launch his idea of the Committees of Correspondence, which is the root idea behind our own “Information Committees”, he was again met with apathy.
To say that Samuel Adams dragged the country kicking and screaming into the path of Independence is a most accurate statement.
Sam knew what many did not know, he knew what all these new British policies were intending, that eventually the colonies would be reduced to total serfdom, but rather than complaining about the apathy, he sought to overcome it.
In the case of the Committees of Correspondence, which he saw as a way of getting around the Royal governors who constantly suspended legislatures whenever they opposed the King’s policy, Sam decided to make his opponent demonstrate the NEED that the people did not currently see, for some means by which the People could directly communicate with one another to plan united actions for peaceful resistance.
Sam went back to his Town Meeting and asked them to vote to approve a petition to the Governor to call the legislature into session. In the past, under the Charter of 1690, the Governor would receive the petition from a Town for calling the legislature in session and would generally agree to the petition or respond by offering a different time or, at least, he might request more information.
The Governor would not, back when the Charter was followed, before the new policies of the past 20 years, deny that Town Meetings had a right to ask for such a session, indeed part of the inherent power of Town Meetings was their ability to make such a petition.
Sam knew that the present governor would not be so amenable, that the petition he had seemingly innocently had the Town Meeting pass, would be treated with contempt. It would, in short, fail.
Why did Sam push for this petition knowing that it would be denied, knowing that it would thereby fail?
Same knew that if you want to keep your opponent in the wrong, you had to force them to do wrong publicly. If your opponent had a certain belief, force them to act in a public ways that will make it clear to all what their beliefs are.
The Governor did respond by denying the petition and saying that Town Meetings had no authority at all to make such a request but only the Governor and the King.
Sam knew this was the only possible response and when he had it published far and wide he explained, ever so patiently, even gleefully, that the Governor had just demonstrated what Samuel Adams had long said was true but that too few had understood, that the British and their appointed officials in America were hell bent on eliminating all forms of representative government and reducing the colonists to mere “subjects” who would be powerless before the might of the British Empire.
It was time for the People to create new agencies for communication and united action, it was time to institute a means by which local people could list grievances, compare notes with other communities, and communicate between communities to devise united plans of resistance.
The Town Meeting, aroused by the Governor’s letter, passed the proposal and a 21 member Committee of Correspondence was created. This Committee sent letters to other towns in the Colony and asked them to set up their own Committees to communicate regularly with Boston and other towns. These committees soon spread all over the 13 colonies, sharing information, comparing notes, sharing strategies, maintaining a line of communication that was independent of the Royal authorities, and devising unified actions at the regional level, on the level of the Colony, amongst groups of Colonies, and throughout the whole united 13 colonies.
Sam knew that when the people do not see the need for independent organizations that can serve as an alternative to organizations controlled by the opposition you have to force the opposition to demonstrate how those existing organizations cannot be trusted or used.
Sam was the original blogger, he and a group of friends formed what we would call an information committee and started a newspaper, the Public Advertiser, which was the first, in 1748, to publicly talk about the need to resist the Royal authorities while calling on united actions by all 13 colonies.
Sam knew that time was on his side: his opponents would act in ways that would prove the validity of his suspicions, while most Americans were appeasers, wanting just to get along, they had limits to their tolerance and they would stand up and fight when it became clear that the other side was never going to be satisfied with anything other than abject surrender, and he knew that he could get the truth out, that he could start with just a few people, and eventually, even if it took time, the people were with him in spirit and would eventually follow his warnings and his advice.
The Soviet state was all about “protecting” people from “misinformation” because it was counter-revolutionary. The revolution was all good and everything not of the revolution was all bad and needed to be punished or banished, or exterminated. People who weren’t OK with all this were reactionaries, extremists, and traitors and all had to be canceled, as it were, from any place of good standing, sent to re-education camps, or eliminated.
What is disinformation? It’s whatever the rulers deem it to be. If they say a theory about the origins of a certain ailment plaguing society is misinformation, then you get canceled or banished for saying it. If later that misinformation proves to be accurate, they memory hole their first reaction and move on to the next things they deem misinformation.
Folks, welcome to Misinformation Is Counter-Revolutionary 2.0, where the Soviet state’s role is now played by the government and mega corporate monopolies, all working hand-in-hand to protect us poor slobs from anything that doesn’t support the ruling class.
If you are on social media platforms you have likely encountered this or you know someone who has. The effort to shun, shame, and bully people into towing the party line, or to banish those who won’t, is real. Unless you are slavishly devoted to the Party, a novel form of authoritarianism we can best desribe as corporate “woke communism”, you find the screws are turning against you.
The digital space is mostly governed by and for the benefit and advancement of the woke communists, by whatever name they call themselves. The end goal seems clear enough-suppress or remove any voices that conflict with their corporate aims, which also happen to be quite compatible with the woke communists.
But it’s not the digital space alone that is being impacted by this new breed of authoritarianism. The latest new US strategic vision for counterterrorism is to focus on the white supremacy bogeyman, and of course the definition for this domestic terrorism is essentially anyone who isn’t a woke communist or one of its corporate backers. Vague commitments to respect free speech are laughable. The ruling class desire more control and the woke communist ideology, ill defined and not at all identical to historic state-communism, is a convenient path to power. This new strategic vision for counterterrorism appear to hinge on terrorizing the dissenters.
The necessity of finding gaps for freedom, which are legal and technology-based solutions that make you more independent financially and materially, is becoming stronger. If you maintain dependency on the predominant structures, like social media or big finance, the corporate farm, and the such, it is likely your opportunity to be a free and spiritually sovereign person will shrink.
Fortunately, so far, the woke communists of our day aren’t yet taking to literally rounding people up on a mass scale and tossing them all into gulags. They are attempting to slow walk their revolution, every day showing new and more insidious, but not necessarily government imposed, restrictions aimed at “misinformation.”
It is true, there is a misinformation problem, and some of it isn’t the government and the corporate behemoths themselves. But most of it is coming from the very entities that spend the most time trying to find new ways to banish those they accuse of spreading this counter-revolutionary misinformation! The platforms acting as gatekeepers at the behest of the Democratic Party and the government really may fancy themselves as guardians against the hobgoblin of misinformation, but they are really just new Soviets and don’t even know it.
We must continue to work toward the emergence of new ways to connect and share information outside the control of the woke communist corporate backers. It is clear, their desire to control absolutely everything in the service of their authoritarianism is becoming greater. The woke communists, many of whom do not consider their view of the world to fit that description, have increasingly little tolerance for anyone who dares to spread what they call misinformation but what is really just opinions or facts that don’t support the Party Line.
Our response in part is this digital publication, The Freedomist, and our future platform, The Virtual Commonwealth of Upadaria, among other projects. We will build the digital gaps for freedom and we will use the existing platforms and digital space as best we can to draw an audience and present a path of freedom and prosperity.
We recognize that the woke communists are not all-powerful, many don’t even realize what spirit they are of, and that there remains many untapped gaps for freedom we can use to create and invent our way around their influence and control.
The myriad of federal and state laws and regulations individuals, let alone major corporate entities, have to follow mean it is impossible to follow them all unless you are a perfect human being. Basically this means we are all counted as suspects and if some prosecutor decides they want to take us down, they need only spend a few years and million of dollars to manufacture charges against us.
Based on the chicken-scratch “crimes” of not counting benefits properly and therefore not paying taxes on them, a New York political hack prosecutor has ginned up indictments against Trump Organization members and the corporate entity itself. The goal is to roast the victims until they offer something juicy to eventually put Trump in chains.
This is blatant abuse and this exposes how the massive, inarticulate, and confusing tax code, plus all the other codes, are not used to protect us but to hamstring us and make it easy to take us down when some hack gets a hankering for our hides.
To the right, as in to anyone on the right who becomes a vocal critic of the left, it’s all political prosecutions based on the smallest violations of laws and regulations none of us can possibly follow. But, to the left, even when laws are blatantly violated, as in Hilary Clinton’s illegal private server, the cover-up is in force, officials and prosecutors seek only to make it all no big deal.
One wonders how all this will play out, whether the intended victims, anyone to the right of Marx it seems, will take this lying down. If indeed a former President and billionaire can be taken down on some petty and inconsequential charges, when the likelihood every lefty billionaire is doing MUCH WORSE every day, then who is safe?
The need to destroy Trump is really a desire to put the rest of us in our place.
Moses told Pharoah, “let my people go!” His demand, prior to the Exodus itself, was simple: let the children of Israel worship (and, by extension, serve and live for) their God in peace. This demand did not necessitate losing the Hebrews as a work force or expelling them from Egypt.
In the realpolitik and reality of power of ancient Egypt, the children of Israel were slaves under the bondage of what was then one of the great superpowers of its day. Not only were the children of Israel exploited for their labor, but not even their basic religious sentiments and values were respected.
In the realpolitik and reality of power in America nothing looms larger as a cudgel aimed in hateful violence toward the heart of historic Christian moral and religious orthodoxy than the rainbow authoritarianism that demands silence of opponents and even willful participation as a sign of wokeness. Fascism has a new banner, a rainbow banner that must be worshipped on pain of banishment!
(Special note: we separate the rainbow fascists from the actual LGBTQ community who are, overwhelmingly, tolerant and decent people. Of course, the rainbow fascists will equate push-back against their blatant totalitarian intolerance to hatred of LGBTQ individuals, which is a patently absurd libel.)
Hatred against the faithful for their adherence to historic Christian orthodoxy out of a sincere desire to worship, serve, and live for their God in peace is pretty much the heart of the rainbow authoritarian agenda. The aim has never been to elevate some downtrodden class, it has always been to downgrade others and force the majority view into the closet.
We will always say, come what may, “an advanced culture is based on a man and women married for life raising their own biological or adopted children within the maternal enclosure of a nurturing extended family and larger community of trust. ” The gender-bent rainbow authoritarian culture (which is NOT representative of the LGBTQ individual) is a dystopian, savage, and barbaric throwback to primitivism and debauchery, in the eyes of advanced culture.
It remains true, that though we accept, not just tolerate, all people as spiritually sovereign individuals made in the image of their Creator, and though we ourselves would never countenance censoring or inerfering with the basic right of freewill participation by others, based on whatever their sociocultural values are, it will never be enough.
The rainbow authoritarians hate the faithful and yet do not love the people and communities they claim to represent. In fact many of the people in whose name these totalitarians act are among the first to disavow such anti-freedom bigotry. Rainbow fascism, as it is emerging, is more about hatred for those who adhere to historic Judeo-Christian orthodoxy than anything else.
People who are secure in their convictions and whose rights are respected have no need to impose on or punish anyone for merely disagreeing and for choosing their own way of life through their acts of individual conviction and freewill participation.
The punishment of speech that the rainbow fascists don’t like, because it is based on embracing advanced culture rather than what we may see as primitive self-indulgence (knowing of course not everyone agrees), is intolerance itself which we cannot abide and will never submit to.
It doesn’t matter that we have a live and let live attitude or that we don’t feel our concept and practice of what we see as advanced culture needs the coercive power of thr state to force compliance. It does not matter if we genuinely respect others who beliefs, values, and convictions differ. Unless we both applaud the rainbow culture and even participate happily, we are bigots and targets for cancelation.
The average person who may identify with some form of LGBTQ or etc (letters keep getting added), probably wants nothing to do with the rainbow woke cancel culture and its gross and intolerable authoritarianism. They literally do not care if someone disagrees with them as long as their rights are respected and they certainly don’t think a refusal to participate in their way of life is a sign of bigotry.
We who hold that advanced culture rests on marriage between one man and one woman who, unless they are not fertile*, raise their own biological or adopted children within an extended family and larger community of trust do not think people who disagree are bad or inferior or don’t have the same rights as we do. But, as noted, that’s not good enough for the rainbow fascists.
(*Marriage is not solely about children, it is a union between a man and woman that depicts the union between Christ and the Church and is, therefore, Holy in and of itself. Couples do not simply get married to raise children. The focus here is that children have a right and deserve to experience a loving home wherein a marriage mother and father, whether biological or adopted, raise them.)
You don’t agree with our view on the basis of advanced culture? So be it. We embrace the concept of a free and pluralistic society of equals, therefore you and whatever you deem a marriage or a family are free to proceed as you wish. You are not free to censor our beliefs on what constitutes advanced culture and your friendship with us should not be based on our agreement in this vital, but private, aspect of your life.
We do not agree with intolerance or bigotry. But the loose definitions of those terms, which are now crimes in the eyes of some, has become weaponized against mostly the Judeo-Christian who holds to historic orthodoxy. It is beyond the pale, it is a gross injustice, and is the very picture of what bigotry and intolerance look like.
If your views and beliefs are so weak that they cannot sustain refutation or refusal to participate, then you are the problem. This is true whether one is demanding adherence to the historical orthodoxy of the Judeo-Christian tradition or the new unorthodoxy of the rainbow culture.
But today, at this hour, it is not the Judeo-Christian faithful who have any power to impose their sociocultural norms and it is not this community that is seeking cultural hegemony by brute force. The rainbow fascists hate the faithful, that is why they continue to devise new ways to force people between bowing to the new rainbow culture or refusing to compromise their convictions and being canceled out of society, as if banished.
The rainbow fascists are not the LGBTQ folks, who mostly just don’t care about who agrees with them or not. The rainbow fascists are ideological extremists for whom the LGBTQ community is a perfect excuse for their totalitarianism.
The endless wars abroad, in which young Americans suffer and die battling enemies of the global oligarchy, are ramping up as Bomber Biden gets into his stride.
In the latest round of bombings, US troops set within a foreign land were set upon by angry, Iran-backed, local militias. The predictable outcome was a series of bombings by the US against bases held by these militias. While it is certainly true these militia thugs, backed by Iran, are bad people with bad ideas, it may not be true the US has any parochial interest ourselves in fighting them.
As for our country, suffering under growing inflation, a weird job crisis, and this internal sociocultural crisis launched by radicals who represent Biden’s core base, there is nothing the American people csn gain from choosing sides in Syria or Iraq.
Credit where credit is due, one Goerge Bush (the elder) began this adventurist wars in mostly Islamic lands debacle with the first Gulf War. The US fought and bled to liberate Kuwait after Iraq invaded in reason to Kuwait blatantly stealing millions upon millions of barrels of oil from Iraq through cross-drilling.
Perhaps letting a former CIA bigwig become President wasn’t the smartest thing the US ever did.
After 911 the US had every right to put a massive hurting to all those powers that either backed or otherwise enabled Al Qeuda and their Wahabist ideology. Backing the Afghanistanis who wanted to overthrow the Taliban, letting them do the fighting on the ground for their own freedom, was certainly within the scope of legitimate responses. But so also would severing ties with Saudi Arabia unless they abandoned their global effort to impart the Wahabist ideology, a key component of which was violent jihad.
As it stands now, after George the younger finished the destabilizing work his father started, which may itself have been the “justification” the Wahabist terrorists needed to gain recruits and funding, the entire scene became a quagmire. From Egypt to Afghanistan, the spector of Islamic Jihad and the destabilization of the entire Islamic world, set on fire mostly through “Western intervention”, has cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and hasn’t improved a thing.
Enter now one Joe “The Bomber”, Biden, or “Bomber Biden” for short. His war plan seems to be the same as Biden the elder, Clinton, Bush the younger, and Obama. Only Trump tried, somewhat, to steer a different course but our woke coterie of globalist generals blocked him at every turn.
Truly, the United States of America in all our economic and military power has become nothing more than a giant cudgel to browbeat the world into submission to a band of globalist oligarchs whose interests do not align with our country’s parochial interests.
This thirst for imperialist dominion over all things and all people for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many is what drives Biden’s War Plan. It is calculated by the needs and interests of this global oligarchy and their planned “reset”, which amounts to modern feudalism.
It it is no wonder that Biden threatens Americans who refuse to abide his wacko interpretation of the Bill of Rights as a permission slip to deny the right of self-preservation even as he bombs bad guys whose success or failure is of no real concern to America’s parochial interests.
His militarism, imperialism, and authoritarianism are precisely what his oligarch overlords demand of him!
Donald Trump joined the alt tech platform, Rumble, a YouTube competitor launched in 2013, soaring past 175k channel subscribers in 24 hours. With this we may say the battle between alt tech and big tech truly begins, albeit with alt tech starting very far behind big tech in every metric.
The move comes after much speculation the deplatformed former President would join multiple other platforms, including Twitter-like alt tech platform Parler. But some consider Rumble both a more stable and long-lived platform that isn’t as prone to crashes as the other platforms.
Expectations that many more users will flock to Rumble and that Trump’s account there will eventually eclipse his Twitter following may be premature as Trump had 88.9 million followers on Twitter. However, if in fact one saw anything approaching that on Rumble, it could disrupt the digital landscape as entities seeking to reach that audience would be forced to take Rumble into account for their advertising.
It remains to be seen whether this will significantly boost Rumble’s user base and make this platform a bit competitive with YouTube or even whether Trump’s presence there would be long-lived as this platform may have massive pressures from the corporate and media establishment to remove him. It is probable, however, that this will in fact double or triple Rumble’s user base over the next few months.
One flaw with the platform is that it is a digital platform and is less interactive than, say, Parler or Gab, unless you are producing video content. For non-producers it is more an entertainment platform they access than a platform they use to express themselves. People can watch video content on Trump’s account without subscribing to the platform.
As for President Trump, just how this enables him to connect to his user base and the world remains to be seen. Early promises of a Trump social media platform resulted in a solo micro blog that was abandoned and nothing more. It is not known if this move constitutes his final decision as to how he will approach having a social media presence, but the fact he has an account on Rumble may not necessarily mean his plans to create a new social media platform have been abandoned.
Our own effort to create a new social media platform, called “Upadaria”, as an e-learning, e-commerce, and social networking platform using gamification and a fictional future history, has shown the complexity in creating even a basic platform targeting tens of thousands of niche users. In our case, we are targeting more cosmopolitan but socially conservative Christians who enjoy gamification and immersive learning experiences and who desire to excell at life.
This audience is perhaps a few million people in the US and a few million abroad, especially considering this is a paid subscription based, not a free, platform. Creating a platform to reach the kinds of numbers Trump needs to make it viable is of a much higher magnitude in complexity. Our platform has absolutely no delusions we can become some form of alternative to big tech platforms or a minor competitor, but Trump will aim precisely at that goal and higher.
The work to build a platform that might be competitive with a major platform would be immense and simply having a lot funding would not necessarily shorten the development time. Trump’s platform, if it comes to pass, must be far more robust than our “Upadaria” platform because his target audience is at least 50 million people. The building of the features and user interface, security, hosting, and data infrastructure for such a task, not to mention the moderation and governance tools and manpower, may prove the biggest hurdles for Trump’s team.
We would not discount the notion a Trump social media platform is coming but its development may take more time than perhaps Trump’s digital team have estimated. It may also be far more expensive than projected with little in the way of a funding model to make it financially self-sustaining within even a few years. However, it is possible this new platform will have free and paid membership levels and, with Trump at the helm and all the personalities that would follow, it may be financially viable.
So far, the move to Rumble is perhaps a small opening salvo in the battle between alt tech and big tech for dominance of the digital space. Alt tech is not merely a David to a Goliath, however, it is a fly versus an elephant at this stage. Trump’s move to Rumble may actually, but it remains to be seen, make alt tech more like a David versus a Goliath within a few years.
