Positively Not Orwellian

I walk around these days with a curious calm and lighthearted feeling, and I ask, what is that sound? That's the sound of Trump Not Tweeting. Goddamn, that's beautiful. So this is what it's like to not have an evil, crazy person yelling in your head everyday. I could get used to this.

But, no, it must not last, this cannot stand, scream the Trumpists! This is censorship! This is positively Orwellian! Right? (Silence) Right? No.

First of all, as we know, when it comes to private companies, there's no such thing as first amendment rights. Conservatism 101. They have usage policies, which, amazingly, don't allow for inciting violence. But let's just back up a bit and look this whole free speech thing in more detail. Let's suppose that the violence didn't happen. The fact that Trump intentionally lied at top volume about a free and fair election being stolen by Democrats many times a day for months is just fine with conservatives, since "it's free speech." As if the president, the most powerful person in the world, is just another blowhard at the end of the bar who, though he is batshit crazy, mean-spirited, and known to be a royal pain in the ass, "has a right to his opinion." 

This is how far we have fallen. This is the Republican argument. You've heard it. Trump has a right to his opinion and he's simply sticking up for himself, they say. Heck, the man is a fighter. Okay, fine. But, humor me: Might it be that the frickin' President of the United States should meet a higher standard? Just saying. "Free speech" will be the angle Dershowitz (who else) takes when he defends Trump during the Senate impeachment hearing. Regardless of how things go then, the fact that Republicans think it's fine for the president to spread deranged conspiracy theories and intentionally mislead people in order to subvert an election, in order to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power, reveals that we are a very bad place.

As for the Orwellian part. Big Brother was adept at hypnotizing people to not believe the evidence in front of their faces. Trump uses Twitter to do this. The Orwellian nightmare is that people have been so victimized and corrupted by propaganda emanating from government authorities that they will believe 2 plus 2 equals 5. No, shouts Trump on Twitter, don't believe all those Republican state election officials that certified Biden's victory. Don't pay any attention to the 60 court cases he lost, quite often in rulings from judges he appointed. Disregard that his handpicked henchman/attorney general William Barr said there was no significant fraud, and that his own appointed head of cyber security said the same. And then there is the Trump-heavy Supreme Court confirming that the fraud claims are baseless. This means nothing since Trump says 2 plus 2 equals 5. Stop the steal.

I have observed on this blog that people get cancelled on the left for deviating from "anti-racist" orthodoxies, while people on the right get cancelled for contradicting one man, Trump. I love how recent Medal of Freedom winner Jim Jordan (yes, I know, sigh) played the "cancel" card last week. Impeachment is just another example of liberal cancel culture, he cried! As if -- here's another as if -- the most powerful person in the world, the man with more power to cancel than any other person on the planet, is a lowly adjunct professor at Youngstown State who got canned from his 2300 dollars per semester gig teaching freshman composition after he took exception to the mandated "diversity" training there. 

So. I guess I don't think that free speech is a category that even applies to a president. Certainly morally this is the case, and possibly legally, too. We'll see. Maybe there will come a time when Trump gets his Twitter platform back. Maybe that's what should happen in a "free country." I don't know. But, for now, I do know that I awaken each day and begin my activities, only to realize -- rather like a man who suddenly discovers 90 minutes into his day that the back pain that had plagued him for years is miraculously gone -- that I like how a world without Trump on Twitter feels.