HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE YOU WILLING TO GET KILLED FOR THE "FIRST AMENDMENT?" I don't mean on the battlefield allegedly in defense of "The Constitution," I mean on the killing fields, the overrun hospitals, waiting in hallways, waiting rooms, parking lots, unable to get an ambulance for a non-Covid emergency, unable to get life saving surgery and treatment because the hospitals are filled up, infected by those who believe what they read on Facebook and hear on FOX of from some sub-FOX radio hate-jock or some asshole of a spoiled brat rapper who was pissed off that she couldn't go to the big party because she wouldn't be vaccinated so she lied up a story about her cousin's friends balls blowing up? And that's only where some of the deaths have already and likely will come from.
At least in the absolutist formulation of it followed by courts since the Warren Court and with the holes blasted through the truth by them in the early 1960s, the truth and even the protection of American democracy from gangsters foreign, as well as domestic by the Rehnquist and Roberts courts. That got so bad that eventually some of those in the leadership of the ACLU in earlier years warned that things were getting dangerous a while ago, there is disagreement within it as lawyers protecting equal rights for those in danger from fascism disagree that a pseudo-liberal organization should be enabling fascists and Nazis and corporations that kill people. It's so bad that it recently had the great gray drab Susan Collins "concerned" that the group that got it the "right" to lie with impunity might not be so rock-headed solid on that absolutism in the face of what happens when the truth is destroyed and tens and scores of millions buy into the media lies with violent enthusiasm. That's the New York Times that used its "right" to lie about Hillary Clinton and so did more than its share in producing the Trump regime. The gray whore is worried that some of the ACLU's new staff, bought with all of the money people freaked out over Trump stupidly sent that organization are less enthusiastic about her and Lenny Bruce's right to blather than they are the real rights of real people being destroyed by the NYT helping to put Republican-fascists in power.
In case you might not think so, that first question was entirely serious. How many people are you willing to see die for that daffy, media-welcomed "right to lie," what "The First Amendment" means in an dangerously frequent use of that phrase today, as they take horse wormer for Covid, as they swamp schoolboard meetings across the country to get school children killed for their "freedom." As the same side lied about school children in the earliest years being murdered for "the Second Amendment" it's no great shock that they're willing to get even more killed for "the first amendment." Nor is it a shock that the media is so blase about that because they really aren't that removed from the post-Trumpian Republican-fascists.We passed the statistical milestone of one in five-hundred Americans having died from Covid-19, a very large part of that people being killed because of the "freedom of the press" to lie them into not only stupidity for themselves and their unfortunate families and co-workers but into a public health emergency for literally everyone. We are supposed to allow this to stay the same, that Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and the others in the Vaccine Passport protected FOX offices in New York can lie school children into their grave, their teachers, their school staffs, etc. And, before you know, those who use their Second Amendment "rights" to gun down school board members, administrators, etc. on the basis of what they hear in the media.
And that doesn't get us to the Facebook scum, Zuckerberg, et al. The Tic-Tok, Instagram, etc. front in this war of The First Amendment vs. The American People. And others. The American fascist war against Americans has been exported to Canada, Britain, elsewhere. I'm old enough so I remember when we used to ship vaccines and medical care abroad, now we far more efficiently send anti-vaxx and anti-medical care propaganda.
If we don't radically change the "first amendment" orthodoxy to protect ourselves from the FOX-Facebook-etc. fascists so as to shut them down we will soon find ourselves not only dying in even larger numbers, we will see the fascists use the power that they have gained by "freedom of the press" to make telling the truth not only illegal but dangerous. They're already making telling the truth and acting on it dangerous for school boards and schools even as they make telling lies dangerous for them, as well. That is what the theory of free speech-press that refuses on the basis of enlightenment withholding of moral judgement to distinguish between the right to tell the truth and the privilege that they and the courts have given to liars to lie us into perdition.
I'll tell you right now that I don't think any discussion of the
media and "The First Amendment" that leaves out the financial motives of
the commercial media and its employees in their absolutist support for
the current theory of "free speech-press" is going to be honest. I
distrust any media figure who takes that position because from the worst
to the best of them, allowing the media to lie with impunity is
profitable to them and those who hire them and maintain their careers. I
don't trust the media to tell the truth about that.
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