Happy Independence Day! Now Shut Up

If there’s one thing on which Republicans and Democrats can agree, it’s that free speech is a great and noble thing – as long as they like what someone has to say and it’s not something negative about them.

When properly viewed within this context, many things which might otherwise seem hypocritical are rendered entirely reasonable, even constructive. For example, it’s perfectly consistent for the President of the United States to issue an executive order designed to prevent online censorship, while his campaign simultaneously sues local TV channels for airing political attack ads, because in both cases, the President is attacking expression he doesn’t like.

With respect to social media, Trump is letting Twitter know he doesn’t appreciate the platform labeling his tweets “misleading” or “hateful” or a “glorification of violence” or “the kind of thing only an imbecile with a lifelong glue-sniffing habit would believe to be true.”

Where the news stations are concerned, Trump is letting them know that ads which include snippets of him saying stupid things are completely unfair, because if you listened to the context in which he said those stupid things, it’s clear he meant something other than what he said. And even if he did mean what he said, he certainly didn’t mean for it to be used in an attack ad against him!

Former Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard, meanwhile, sued Google for violating her free speech rights, which the court found amusing, given that Google and the U.S. government aren’t remotely the same thing. For good measure, Gabbard also sued Hillary Clinton, for indirectly alleging Gabbard is some sort of Russian asset, or maybe a Ukrainian one, or maybe a former handmaiden to Jeffrey Epstein, or some stupid shit like that.

Gabbard has since withdrawn her lawsuit – but not because it lacked a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving a motion to dismiss, mind you! Nay, her lawyers said she dropped the case despite its merit, so Tulsi and her team could “focus their time and attention on other priorities, including defeating Donald Trump in 2020, rather than righting the wrongs here.”

And then there’s Devin Nunes, who has sued… well, seemingly everyone, including a pretend cow on Twitter. (While the lawsuits themselves seem to be entirely meritless, at least the cow one has helped bring about some fantastic headlines, like “Devin Nunes can’t sue Twitter over statements by fake cow, judge rules.”)

Between all these insanely stupid lawsuits, a likely dead-end of an executive order and bipartisan agreement that they need to do something drastic to narrow the loophole provided by Section 230 of the CDA, it sure seems like the two major political parties have a dilemma on their hands: How can they protect the speech they like and stifle the speech they don’t at the same time when these pesky judges keep insisting that what they’re trying to do violates the First Amendment?

Clearly, the only solution here is to repeal the First Amendment. Just get rid of that old thing! What good has it done us lately, after all?

Here we are in the middle of a major pandemic (or maybe a massive hoax perpetrated by Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Barrack Obama and/or the Reptilians in Congress?) and emotionally vulnerable elected officials can’t make journalists, pundits, each other, or even the average American social media user shut his pie hole when he’s hurting their feelings? Unacceptable!

The good news is that while the government may be lacking in its options to shut us up, entities like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have lots of silencing methods at their disposal. They can suspend our accounts, delete or quarantine our posts, or put us in permanent social media jail on their platforms.

Plus, with social media platforms, the average Joe can exert way more influence than he can with the government. For example, if your neighbor says something offensive (but not so threatening that it would rise to being a crime), the cops will just shrug at you if you report it to them. If that same neighbor posts an offensive video on Youtube in which he says the very same things, however, there’s a good chance if you flag that shit you can get his video removed, or at least made temporarily inaccessible. Awesome, right?

As you watch the fireworks this weekend, thank your lucky stars you live in America, where Congress has been told it “shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech” – but where we good citizens can eagerly heckle each other into silence, all the while pretending to be staunchly in support of the right to freedom of expression. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Fireworks photo by designecologist from Pexels