No longer would it speak truth to power, but it would speak lies on behalf of the powerful and psychologically justify that shift by trying to convince themselves they were doing so for the right and proper good of the nation and the world when in fact they were doing so for base and selfish reasons.
For nearly 50 years, the quintessential New York Times reporter, Donald G McNeil, Jr. “did it all:” from copy boy to foreign correspondent to science reporter; ultimately to global health linchpin: his career successes symbiotically intertwined with his most frequently quoted domain experts, former NIAID- and CDC- chiefs, Drs. Anthony Fauci and Tom Frieden; trading access for placement. Then came Covid.
Free speech is more than a slogan. It must be an operational reality for everyone. It can be closed down by forces other than edicts from government. It can be suppressed also by arbitrary private actions that reflect regime priorities. Ever more workers and especially intellectuals today work in an environment of fear that leads to self-censorship.
Anthony Fauci’s legacy is one of narcissism and power. The glorification of his massive ego trumped any scientific or medical data. His policies were giveaways to the pharmaceutical industry, which helped burnish his image and crush dissent. He saw his opportunity for the spotlight and seized it. Now, rather than admit mistakes, Fauci is intent on revising history. Unfortunately for his legacy, we’re all living with the consequences of his hubris, and they are impossible to overlook.
He won’t let go of the memory of an America in which children were safe at school and parents decided what happened to their children. I, many, share this baseline value and are terrified that it is under attack. And he insists on patriotism, in a time of relentless propaganda and the bribery of elites that urges us all to drop national identities, cultures, borders, and even allegiances.
The excuse that we had to lock down because of freezer trucks does not hold water. The lockdown edict was issued on March 16, 2020, following the declaration of emergency on March 13, three days after Trump’s advisers convinced him to issue the lockdown. In that time, the funeral parlors and morgues closed too, as did most all medical services. The country was also in panic, which is not generally good for public health.
In 2020, rather than encourage the very wealth creation that has long been the biggest foe of death and disease (by far), panicky politicians quite literally chose economic contraction as a virus mitigation strategy. Historians will marvel at the abject stupidity of the U.S. political class, but not the Post’s editorialists or the authors of a report that the editorialists remarkably find insightful.
No, Washington Post, the Experts Were the Whole Problem Read More
The European Commission announced its first list of designated Very Large Online Platforms – or VLOPs – that will be subject to “content moderation” requirements and obligations to combat “disinformation” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). As VLOPs, the designated services will be required “to assess and mitigate their systemic risks and to provide robust content moderation tools.”
Meet the VLOPs! The EU Extends its Censorship Powers Read More
Big Media and Big Tech fell completely out of sync with material reality, smearing criticism that had previously been normal, and explicitly banning topics from social media such as discussion of a possible lab leak, or vaccines not stopping viral transmission. Polite society agreed with such bans, stayed silent, or even, as in the case of the Virality Project and its partners, led the censoring. A cadre of North American and European anti-disinformation elites meanwhile had been slowly convincing NGOs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that their biggest problem was not too little but too much online freedom, the solution to which was more corporate and government control in order to protect human rights and democracy.
The Washington Post’s Editorial Board just published a big article looking back at America’s Covid response. The editorial’s authors use a report from a team of “seasoned experts” to frame what America’s leaders did right and wrong in said response.
The Washington Post Whitewashes the Covid Response Read More
For all that the logic of raison du monde is predicated on the discovery of global problems and a proliferation of global solutions unconstrained by law or natural right (or democracy, while we’re at it), the drivers at the personal level are much baser: suckling at the teat of governments and charities and extracting a nice living that way for as long as possible – usually while persuading oneself that one is doing something terribly worthwhile.
Carlson attacked the news media for taking “hundreds of millions of dollars from Big Pharma companies” and promoting “their sketchy products on the air and as they did that, they maligned anyone who was skeptical of those products.” The facts demonstrate a chilling indication that legacy media remains beholden to Big Pharma, and their programming requires the approval of the figures that they are supposed to hold accountable.
The Tucker Carlson Departure From Fox and the Power of Big Pharma Read More
