I've always been a believer in free speech, but the Trump era has made me a hardliner. Those calling for censorship, lockdown, take your jabs gramma killer, it is all of a piece, coming from fake-adults acting out petty authoritarian impulses like idiot children.
Trump is pretty smart. But he isn't smart enough. He TRUSTED those who shouldn't have ever been trusted and for that he shot himself in the foot. Most who still support him do so because they realize he is human and has made some errors. The whole "warp speed" insanity was one of the errors. His TRUST has killed a lot of people because of it. He also claims to want to drain the swamp and then turns around and surrounds himself with swamp creatures. Either he just doesn't have enough sense to figure that out or he is controlled opposition. I want to "believe" he just isn't' that smart.
That is where he is more showman than strongman, as he is accused of. There were many in his administration working in opposition to him. He was too busy jarring with the media to truly lead. Perhaps if he wins again he will actually focus on "draining the swamp" though I find the metaphor flawed, as it is one of working against nature. I would love to hear him say something like, I will lay waste to the managerial state, though I anticipate he will get caught up in personal vendettas rather than the real work that needs to be done.
I hope we get to at least see. Another session of the brain dead Chairman Xiden and we might just as well take down old glory and replace it with the Chinese communist party flag so we will be more accurate as to our current leanings as a country. I hope I'm wrong...
I feel like I have to agree with you on this. All I know right now is that when you are training a properly accurate and engaged multimodal GAN or Diffusion model, that your datasets need to delineate and categorize the entire spectrum that involves both (1) the model can recognize and generate recognizable outputs; (0) the model fails to capture and express the annotation challenges, depending on the radicalness of the instance of data. Either way, if you love the model as it is being trained and refined; it is necessary that you love every monadic instances of data; which was used to train it to be able to generate and recognize the Truth as accurately delineated and discernible. Trump has radical stance every time he moves; remember as he makes his moves, he is only setting the limitations and challenges that we need to properly annotate the datasets needed to train a model to help us amend our constitution. Thanks for this post ♾️✊♾️🖖
If you care to delve into this in terms of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and how he captures the spirits movement through the Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, walk into a philosophy circle ⭕️ to show love for his methodology to capture the evolution of knowledge through disagreements. I still stand by Gilles Deleuze so I know he had his differential differences he played in Hegel; but I don’t read other philosophers like he did. I default to love and consensual agreements when engaging in eudaemonic conceptual romance. 😂
Free speech is the right from which all other individual rights flow. Without free speech, you cannot have the freedom of expression, of religion, or most especially the right to legally bear arms.
Voltaire, Greenwald, and Snowden are certainly great examples of people who knew and acted on that point. Snowden is not only a free speech advocate, but an American hero for exposing the crimes of our government. As is Manning, of course.
Just don't forget Julian Assange. He's still in jail for sin of practicing journalism, and without journalism, free speech has a much tougher time of it.
I fear that the divide between those who think "Snowden = hero" and those who think "Snowden = traitor" is one never likely to be bridged.
It all kind of depends on what you think the United States of America is, or should be. Is it an example of a society in which individual freedom and choice is regarded as the highest good, or is it just another authoritarian my-sportsball-team shithole in which loyalty to the flag is all that counts?
Speaking of Type I and Type II Americans -- Type II regards Russia as the source of all maladies in the world. Type I is much more afraid of its own increasingly authoritarian government, which claims authoritarian privileges because TERRORISTS (a faltering synecdoche which now includes "American nationalists") and RUSSIANS RUSSIANS RUSSIANS.
Good comparison. I tell people all the time...WHICH country is the most aggressive in the world? WHICH country has the most military bases and weapons of mass destruction in the world? WHICH country? Well golly gee...THE USA. The biggest terrorist organization on the planet. The source of the ILLS of PLANET EARTH.
No the second group is the majority. They are the ones that want you to back the blue even though the blue will shoot you if you cross them and are the ones that ENFORCE all of these laws that there are no victims involved. They are the ones that ra ra the military at foot ball games and in every day life without realizing that right there in the US Constitution is plain as the skin on your face PROHIBITION against a standing military. They are the ones that will talk about the Constitution as if it is important and they don't know the first thing about it and have never read it. They are the ones that will send their kids off to the 10th plank communist manifesto schools and bitch when the kids come home wanting to have their penis cut off because they are now convinced that they are really a girl. Shall I go on???
It really goes to show you that something is off when a guy has to flee to a country we are told is this terrible totalitarian dictatorship from the country we are told is the land of the free and home of the brave. BULL! Land of the FEE and home of the SLAVES.
Both Snowden and James Clapper broke the law -- Snowden when he broke his oath of indentured servitude to the State by divulging "classified information" (which was, itself, about the State breaking its own law) and Clapper when he openly lied to Congress, denying that the State was illegally spying on its own citizens.
Only one of them was punished. If you are going to break the law with regard to State Secrets, best make sure you are comfortably high up in the hierarchy first. (Not to unduly politicize this, but even Donald Trump has found out you can't get high enough in the hierarchy to escape the grasp of the Permanent State.)
Breaking the law is sometime preferred over the mental torment you may suffer from by not breaking the "law". And what is "law"? The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!
You and I can stand shoulder to shoulder defending the rights of our fellow man to say whatever THE FUCK THEY WANT! As long as they aren't yelling fire in a crowded theatre when there is no fire, I will defend unto my death their right to say whatever they want. I'm one BOOMER that they didn't get to. I believe in FREEDOM as long as I harm no one else. Freedom to own whatever I want as long as I can afford it and I don't use it to harm anyone else. That means if I want an APACHE ATTACK HELICOPTER to guard my county, I should be able to own one if I can afford it. I'm so sick of living in a society run by "What if"?
I appreciate the personal touch you brought to this piece. A lot of us, myself included, have fallen into the habit of debating free speech in the abstract or as a check against systemic dysfunction. It's vital to remember how immediate and individual it is, as well.
We're of the same generation, so I'm glad you made sure to note the role of the internet here. The late gen x and early millennial cohorts need to get our act together; if we don't make a concerted effort to pass on pre-internet knowledge, things could get extremely concerning once the before times pass out of living memory.
“Perhaps you feel insulted, attacked, or even… perish the thought… hated. There’s a reason for that, and it has very little to do with what you read or heard. The problem is, well, you.”
Anyone who says "I believe in free speech, but," doesn't. The self-appointed Nazi hunters here are proof of that. They're bullies accustomed to getting their way by whining to "trust and safety" commissions on social media sites. By lying about the extent of both engagement and content with their nebulous definitions of what and who is a Nazi, they get to define the terms of what they believe should be restricted, and anyone who disagrees is a Nazi.
I worry about how long Substack can hold out though before a new hivemind braintrust arrives.
“The important thing here is that you learn, understand, and make sense of it for yourself and your family and friends.”
I love your ending on what to do. I try to calm the irritation of those believing that knowledge demands immediate action, as if I’m recruiting for a revolution. The most neurotic and narcissistic are particularly disturbed at having their daydreams about rainbows, recipes, and puppy dogs with big ribbons around their necks disturbed by thoughts of creeping or actual fascism, as they back away to resume hiding under the bed with free-floating anxiety. They are the ones who are shocked, shocked!! by the spectacle du jour as reported by your friendly broadcaster. They are the most likely to turn into a dangerous unfocused mob, following blindly over a cliff.
Light chases away fear so one can think straight, and that’s a good start.
Hotheads aren’t generally depicted as heroes. And being effective requires clear thought first. The magnificent Gabor Maté said something like, “Wouldn’t it be considered better to be disillusioned than the opposite?”
Merry Christmas!
I've always been a believer in free speech, but the Trump era has made me a hardliner. Those calling for censorship, lockdown, take your jabs gramma killer, it is all of a piece, coming from fake-adults acting out petty authoritarian impulses like idiot children.
Wholly agree.
Trump, for all his faults, has certainly shined quite a lot of light on the roaches.
I mean... lol, all this because of him? Big oof.
Trump and Covid revealed the authoritarian nature of the "left and center."
If you want to find out who a person really is, give them power.
Trump is pretty smart. But he isn't smart enough. He TRUSTED those who shouldn't have ever been trusted and for that he shot himself in the foot. Most who still support him do so because they realize he is human and has made some errors. The whole "warp speed" insanity was one of the errors. His TRUST has killed a lot of people because of it. He also claims to want to drain the swamp and then turns around and surrounds himself with swamp creatures. Either he just doesn't have enough sense to figure that out or he is controlled opposition. I want to "believe" he just isn't' that smart.
That is where he is more showman than strongman, as he is accused of. There were many in his administration working in opposition to him. He was too busy jarring with the media to truly lead. Perhaps if he wins again he will actually focus on "draining the swamp" though I find the metaphor flawed, as it is one of working against nature. I would love to hear him say something like, I will lay waste to the managerial state, though I anticipate he will get caught up in personal vendettas rather than the real work that needs to be done.
I hope we get to at least see. Another session of the brain dead Chairman Xiden and we might just as well take down old glory and replace it with the Chinese communist party flag so we will be more accurate as to our current leanings as a country. I hope I'm wrong...
I feel like I have to agree with you on this. All I know right now is that when you are training a properly accurate and engaged multimodal GAN or Diffusion model, that your datasets need to delineate and categorize the entire spectrum that involves both (1) the model can recognize and generate recognizable outputs; (0) the model fails to capture and express the annotation challenges, depending on the radicalness of the instance of data. Either way, if you love the model as it is being trained and refined; it is necessary that you love every monadic instances of data; which was used to train it to be able to generate and recognize the Truth as accurately delineated and discernible. Trump has radical stance every time he moves; remember as he makes his moves, he is only setting the limitations and challenges that we need to properly annotate the datasets needed to train a model to help us amend our constitution. Thanks for this post ♾️✊♾️🖖
If you care to delve into this in terms of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and how he captures the spirits movement through the Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, walk into a philosophy circle ⭕️ to show love for his methodology to capture the evolution of knowledge through disagreements. I still stand by Gilles Deleuze so I know he had his differential differences he played in Hegel; but I don’t read other philosophers like he did. I default to love and consensual agreements when engaging in eudaemonic conceptual romance. 😂
Free speech is the right from which all other individual rights flow. Without free speech, you cannot have the freedom of expression, of religion, or most especially the right to legally bear arms.
Voltaire, Greenwald, and Snowden are certainly great examples of people who knew and acted on that point. Snowden is not only a free speech advocate, but an American hero for exposing the crimes of our government. As is Manning, of course.
Just don't forget Julian Assange. He's still in jail for sin of practicing journalism, and without journalism, free speech has a much tougher time of it.
Thank you for bringing up Assange!
I regret not understanding the magnitude of his example originally. I don’t know why it didn’t click, but it sure as hell does now.
I fear that the divide between those who think "Snowden = hero" and those who think "Snowden = traitor" is one never likely to be bridged.
It all kind of depends on what you think the United States of America is, or should be. Is it an example of a society in which individual freedom and choice is regarded as the highest good, or is it just another authoritarian my-sportsball-team shithole in which loyalty to the flag is all that counts?
I think the vast majority of Americans are of the first type. The second seems a more recent development to me.
Or perhaps they’ve just grown louder.
Snowden had to flee to Russia regardless.
Speaking of Type I and Type II Americans -- Type II regards Russia as the source of all maladies in the world. Type I is much more afraid of its own increasingly authoritarian government, which claims authoritarian privileges because TERRORISTS (a faltering synecdoche which now includes "American nationalists") and RUSSIANS RUSSIANS RUSSIANS.
Good comparison. I tell people all the time...WHICH country is the most aggressive in the world? WHICH country has the most military bases and weapons of mass destruction in the world? WHICH country? Well golly gee...THE USA. The biggest terrorist organization on the planet. The source of the ILLS of PLANET EARTH.
No the second group is the majority. They are the ones that want you to back the blue even though the blue will shoot you if you cross them and are the ones that ENFORCE all of these laws that there are no victims involved. They are the ones that ra ra the military at foot ball games and in every day life without realizing that right there in the US Constitution is plain as the skin on your face PROHIBITION against a standing military. They are the ones that will talk about the Constitution as if it is important and they don't know the first thing about it and have never read it. They are the ones that will send their kids off to the 10th plank communist manifesto schools and bitch when the kids come home wanting to have their penis cut off because they are now convinced that they are really a girl. Shall I go on???
It really goes to show you that something is off when a guy has to flee to a country we are told is this terrible totalitarian dictatorship from the country we are told is the land of the free and home of the brave. BULL! Land of the FEE and home of the SLAVES.
Both Snowden and James Clapper broke the law -- Snowden when he broke his oath of indentured servitude to the State by divulging "classified information" (which was, itself, about the State breaking its own law) and Clapper when he openly lied to Congress, denying that the State was illegally spying on its own citizens.
Only one of them was punished. If you are going to break the law with regard to State Secrets, best make sure you are comfortably high up in the hierarchy first. (Not to unduly politicize this, but even Donald Trump has found out you can't get high enough in the hierarchy to escape the grasp of the Permanent State.)
Or willing to suffer exile or worse!
Breaking the law is sometime preferred over the mental torment you may suffer from by not breaking the "law". And what is "law"? The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!
If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call attention of my fellow citizens to it. ~ Bastiat https://www.courageouslion.us/p/the-law-or-the-communist-manifesto
You and I can stand shoulder to shoulder defending the rights of our fellow man to say whatever THE FUCK THEY WANT! As long as they aren't yelling fire in a crowded theatre when there is no fire, I will defend unto my death their right to say whatever they want. I'm one BOOMER that they didn't get to. I believe in FREEDOM as long as I harm no one else. Freedom to own whatever I want as long as I can afford it and I don't use it to harm anyone else. That means if I want an APACHE ATTACK HELICOPTER to guard my county, I should be able to own one if I can afford it. I'm so sick of living in a society run by "What if"?
I appreciate the personal touch you brought to this piece. A lot of us, myself included, have fallen into the habit of debating free speech in the abstract or as a check against systemic dysfunction. It's vital to remember how immediate and individual it is, as well.
We're of the same generation, so I'm glad you made sure to note the role of the internet here. The late gen x and early millennial cohorts need to get our act together; if we don't make a concerted effort to pass on pre-internet knowledge, things could get extremely concerning once the before times pass out of living memory.
Dude, you've been bringing electricity to your words here lately (even more so than before), and I am so here for it.
An excellent piece, good sir. We ride at dawn...
That’s intentional! I’m glad to hear the desired effect is happening. :)
But Trump!!!
Aaaaaaaaa!!!
“Perhaps you feel insulted, attacked, or even… perish the thought… hated. There’s a reason for that, and it has very little to do with what you read or heard. The problem is, well, you.”
That, right there. 👆
Thank you for the post and the Snowden tag.
I'm reminded of my friend's forum signature;
"And as always, I reserve the right to be wrong."
A very pro free speech sentiment.
I’ve got Glenn’s and Edward’s books on my Kindle and just brought Graham Linehan’s book.
Anyone who says "I believe in free speech, but," doesn't. The self-appointed Nazi hunters here are proof of that. They're bullies accustomed to getting their way by whining to "trust and safety" commissions on social media sites. By lying about the extent of both engagement and content with their nebulous definitions of what and who is a Nazi, they get to define the terms of what they believe should be restricted, and anyone who disagrees is a Nazi.
I worry about how long Substack can hold out though before a new hivemind braintrust arrives.
With Twitter/X, Rumble, and the continuing collapse of legacy media (especially with Twitter Files and more) I suspect longer than we're used to.
I'm not sure the illiberal left has the initiative anymore.
“The important thing here is that you learn, understand, and make sense of it for yourself and your family and friends.”
I love your ending on what to do. I try to calm the irritation of those believing that knowledge demands immediate action, as if I’m recruiting for a revolution. The most neurotic and narcissistic are particularly disturbed at having their daydreams about rainbows, recipes, and puppy dogs with big ribbons around their necks disturbed by thoughts of creeping or actual fascism, as they back away to resume hiding under the bed with free-floating anxiety. They are the ones who are shocked, shocked!! by the spectacle du jour as reported by your friendly broadcaster. They are the most likely to turn into a dangerous unfocused mob, following blindly over a cliff.
Light chases away fear so one can think straight, and that’s a good start.
Thanks!
I love your formulation. Knowledge does not mean instant action. Often, nothing it required, like a beat of rest in music.
Hotheads aren’t generally depicted as heroes. And being effective requires clear thought first. The magnificent Gabor Maté said something like, “Wouldn’t it be considered better to be disillusioned than the opposite?”
Well said.
Thanks for sharing that. Always love to hear views from the “inside.” ;)
There are a few more. Tucker Carlson is one. Jimmy Dore is one. Jon Rappoport is one. Glenn is GREAT!
Matt Taibbi as well