"After alcohol and drugs and organized religion, the cheapest form of anti-anxiety medication is being told by someone with a microphone that you are right" https://t.co/2Zz60X2h8O
— John DeVore (@JohnDeVore) January 30, 2022
For your reading pleasure. Ran across this on Kilgore Trout’s twitter feed:
… Hey, I believe in open debate. Sure. Absolutely. Your anti-vaccine newsletter sucks. That guy on TV telling grandparents to be afraid of everything? He’s a vain asshole. The popular podcast dude who gets off beating up on trans people just for fun? I mean, he’s a moron who regularly fucks up Google searches.
I’d have more respect for conservative bloggers and talking heads and fussy millionaire comedians if they just said what they were thinking: fuck the old and the sick and anyone, really, who catches COVID-19 because I want to go to brunch. Fancy brunch.
I’d have more respect if they were honest and didn’t hide behind falsehoods. I would still think they were pieces of shit, though.
Feel free to disagree with me. It’s your right. I have the right to say or print whatever I want without interference from Johnny Law. So do you, and you, and yes, even you. This is why I can publish the following sentence: selling paid subscriptions to newsletters that knowingly peddle the low-hanging fruit of misinformation is immoral. Sure, to write is to manipulate a reader, sometimes for a paycheck or pleasure or to educate, and sometimes for political gain. That’s the game.
But there are too many right-wing political opportunists with giant bullhorns who have decided there is nothing but upside in telling whoever will listen that 2 + 2 equals whatever they tell you that day. Even if 2+2 equals die in an ICU with a tube down your throat because some evil jabroni told you to trust him about the COVID-19 vaccine…
… No one’s inalienable rights are compromised by little ol’ me pointing out that it is fucked-up to publish dishonest information that hurts people, even if that strategy is lucrative. You are not a free speech hero if you knowingly go into business with people who are either unfathomably cynical or simply out of thair minds and give them a platform from which they can announce that vaccines are dangerous, despite centuries of evidence to the contrary. That’s not free speech. It’s snake oil for the brain…
The freedom for free speech martyrs to shout “freedom!” is one of this country’s greatest pleasures. In a truly totalitarian regime, free speech martyrs don’t make any noises, except for whimpering in dungeon cells. I will never say “it can’t happen here” but not only can it happen here, it has also happened here, and it can happen again. But until such a tragic moment, the USA remains the home of the brave and the habitual whiner. Complain all you want, it’s your right. You’re not a victim, nor a martyr. You’re just an average Joe, making millions.