Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”

Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”

God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”

God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but

The next time you see me comin’ you better run”

Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”

God says, “Out on Highway 61.”

Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited 

Washington Revisited

In March, the U.S. Congress summoned; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai to appear before them. (3rd time in 5 months) A House committee and two subcommittees badgered the tech CEOs, repeatedly demanding that they censor more political content from their platforms and vowing legislative retaliation if they fail to comply.

Zuckerberg and Pichai appeared eager to comply with the Congressional demands. Zuckerberg managed to meekly push back when he suggested that excessive content moderation can cripple free political discourse. However, Dorsey expressed a more open impatience for Twitter to do more to remove disinformation. He stated: “I don’t think we should be the arbiters of truth and I don’t think the government should be either.”

Not to worry, he too will comply because it is a good trade-off. The tech three giants get to maintain their Silicon Valley monopoly power in exchange for being the unofficial Congress and Executive Branch censorship police. 

It is appalling that arrogant government officials, for hours, can publicly demand censorship of political speech and then threaten punishment for failures to obey. It’s despotic!  

The public has become accustomed to governmental bullying. We allow political leaders to demand that social media companies censor the internet in accordance with their whims. Why do we allow these authoritarians are allowed to get away with this?

Where are journalists? Do they have something to say? No, because the corporate journalist is too busy, they have a different Congressional initiative to follow. Their mission it searches, destroy or deplatform all outlets that express an anti-establishment ideology. 

Today, the mainstream journalists have become a bunch of tattlers, a citizen surveillance corp. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations of those that go over to the dark side. They censor independent journalists they cannot control and police the unfettered discussions on the new conversation apps. 

Their tactics work to intimidated many into silence and conformity. They know if they attempt to express their views, the agents will destroy their reputation. So they remain silent or pliant out of necessity. The result of their tactics is the repression of honest and open discourse.

The repression of rival thought has empowered them to control the flow of information. The corporate media does it for the hubris of an ideology. They believe their worldview is so indisputably that all dissent is inherently dangerous disinformation. They enroll for fun and vindictiveness because it appears they get aroused by destroying reputations and lives, no matter how powerless. 

The U.S. journalist is no longer the defender of free speech because their actions are destroying it. Whether they enroll for power, hubris, or just for fun, the journalist in our corporate media are the primary activists against a free and open internet and the core values of free thought. 

There are a few journalists that have remained free and true to their profession. They need to become more vocal and use what is left of their influence and power to expose these abuses of power, in Washington and in corporate media.