While there are a lot of people trying to shut down freedom of speech and freedom of
expression, and they're of course, trying to shovel the idea that they are some how
doing a good thing straight from the back end of the bull into...well down your throat.
YUK!!!!
The fact that you're reading to this right now means they haven't succeeded completely.
One of the biggest issues with censorship is that you legally mandate that people lie,
and I know the actual intent is probably to really force them to hold certain things in
their belief systems and their minds and their hearts that they don't believe.
The thing is, the person who believes what you want them to believe, and is saying what
you want them to say, even though they are free to say something else, they are the
person who you can have a reasonable expectation, believes what they are saying.
The person who is saying, I can't legally say X, Y and Z, and I'm mandated to say A, B
and C, that person is going to lie to survive, because they're not going to have a choice.
One of the problems with this, aside from just the fact that last I checked at least three
major world religions and probably more religions than that explicitly forbid lying
is, do you really know where you stand with these people?
If that doesn't bother you, it absolutely should. Just in one context, where I
had been watching some YouTube channels by Canadian YouTubers who I thought they
really did a good job with their topics. They had some really good tips, but
they also were going off on tangents, on some things I truthfully did not agree
with, and I definitely did not appreciate them going off on. When this happened
one too many times, I first severely curtailed my watching of their channels, and
then eventually I stopped altogether.
However, one of the things that really bothered me very quickly after having made
those decisions, was was I actually turning off these channels because I was hearing
things these people who were creating these videos did believe or things they didn't?
Now, while I would have ended up turning off their channels either way, because I
don't want to hear it anymore about that one topic, I will say that in this case,
it's a good illustration as far as being able to trust people goes. It's really
easy to assume that because somebody says something, they believe it, but the
reality of it is, when you start getting into the question of, these people not
having the free speech protections that exist here in the United States, and would
their business be punished by some kind of governmental policy or from a platform's
policy if they didn't express certain views? It becomes worth asking the question:
Are they saying things they believe because they are mandated to, in order to:
1)Make a living or
2)Just simply not get in trouble with the government
Either way, the fact that this is even worth asking a question about is a really serious problem.
And let's say you're the person who you would have watched those same videos, and you would have been
cheering every word they said. You not only would not have turned off those videos, you would have
been binge watching them 20 times, and you will have your set phone to do some kind of spammy thing
just so they could make the money because you believe so strongly in what they were saying.
Please don't do that, by the way (not for anybody). But if you are that person, I want you to seriously
consider, even if you love what you were hearing, because those people are in an area where they don't
have free speech the way we do in the United States. Do you believe they believe what they're saying?
Or did you ever stop to consider that maybe they are saying what they're saying because they are concerned
about losing search result rankings or losing likes or views on social media of any type?
Yes, I'm including YouTube under that heading.
And they might also be concerned about government entities saying because “you haven't shown
enough support for this thing or that, it's not enough that you don't oppose this agenda. You
actually have to show support for this agenda” even if you believe that it's immoral and
wrong, because put simply, you are dealing with a situation where not only has the
government tried to mandate that you do not believe anything else.
But also they have gone so far as to punish businesses that don't toe those lines.
Look every person who's been to high school, college, I think even middle school has happened
in where they've been required to write some kind of paper or essay, saying that this is what
needs to happen and this is what needs to change. But they're being told the topic you are
required to write about is in favor of something that you know is wrong.
In that instance, all you did was you either took a hit on your grade or you maybe got into a little
trouble with the school, and I was the person who, at one point, I even wrote out a disclaimer
saying that the words I was writing on the paper were only due to a mandate for that school
assignment, and I knew full well that they were nothing short of an out and out lie.
It's bad enough to get put in that situation when you are a school kid being told, essentially,
you can't make the grade without lying. Now imagine being the person who is trying to make a
living, and being told you can't make a living without lying, and I'm sorry, but there are people
who are saying that to businesses, and the stakes are a whole lot higher than being the kid in
the classroom who has a grade that took a hit.
Even in high school, I would go so far as to say I have to question how many of those students
really believe what they were writing on that paper.
The difference between me and them is they were willing to write those words for that grade.
Imagine, if people are willing to do that for a grade imagine what they're going to do, when they
are looking at difference between whether or not they can afford groceries, or a roof over their
head, or to be able to keep their car on the road.
The point is, absolutely nobody should ever be in favor of curtailing or censoring or otherwise
removing free speech.
The greatest protection against lies is for the truth to be able to come to the surface organically,
and the truth eventually will come to the surface no matter what people try to do to stop it. No
amount of repeating any lie will ever make it the truth, and no policy from any company or industry
or government can ever change that.
What repeating those lies often enough can do is cause them to function as a curse on
the people who spoke them, initially, on the people who repeated them, and on the
people who believed them.
Those who are trying to stop or curtail free speech, they may, in fact, believe
that if they repeat a lie enough times, it will somehow become a truthful
statement. The problem is, it's their loss that they believe that lie, and
they shouldn't be making it your loss, or my loss, or anybody else's loss.
For that matter, any government official that ever talks about wanting to build a
consensus so that they can govern by means of censorship, removal of free speech,
or curtailing in any way, shape or form of free speech, you can rest assured that
is a government official that is looking more than likely to just simply force
their opinions on everyone else. They don't care what the will of the people
actually is. In fact, they would like to do remove the will of the people. And
if they are saying that they're doing it for your own good, they're lying
to you. Plain and simple.
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