“ If totalitarianism did not exploit [archetypes], which are deep inside us all and rooted deep in all religions, it could never attract so many people, especially during the early phases of its existence. Once the dream of paradise starts to turn into reality, however, here and there people begin to crop up who stand in its way, and so the rulers of paradise must build a little gulag on the side of Eden. In the course of time this gulag grows ever bigger and more perfect, while the adjoining paradise gets even smaller and poorer.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Utopias by their nature have only two options if they’re to survive. They must lean into totalitarianism or collapse. We’re now at the moment when the Democrats, with complete control of the legacy media, nearly all major institutions of power — including those run by the government — are slowly adopting totalitarian practices to shut out speech they don’t like.
What they want is more power to preserve their utopian vision for a new America. But there are powerful dissidents in this country who continue to stand in their way, like Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger. What are the utopians to do?
Well, for starters, they’d like to find a good reason to shut down Carlson and destroy Fox News. That will keep their utopia alive for a little longer, stave off collapse, and allow them to eradicate even more dissent. Dissent is dangerous. Dissent is a threat to Democracy.
In just two short weeks we’ve seen Senator Chuck Schumer bark at Fox News and Rupert Murdoch demanding they silence and censor their top-rated cable news host. We’ve seen a panel of Democratic members of Congress beclown themselves in one of the most embarrassing spectacles in the history of the party.
The Congressional hearing on the Twitter Files made it abundantly clear that Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger weren’t the targets. Elon Musk was the target. They couldn’t give the Twitter Files any oxygen lest they help Musk succeed in his ongoing pursuit to help free the truth from their desire to keep it locked away.
Carlson is the one who has them really nervous. Surely there must be a way they can shut him up permanently. Schumer is ready with threats and hysteria to do just that, and he has a willing army of true believers who back him up every step of the way.
What were they so afraid of anyway? Why not show us what was in those tapes? Because it embarrassed the Democrats and their obedient press who, for years now, have defamed and smeared Jacob Chansley as the face of the “White supremacist armed insurrection” to overthrow the US government and install the second Confederacy.
That was a lie.
Almost everything they said happened at the Capitol that day didn’t happen the way they said it did. We’ve never gotten the full story. We got their narrative, the one that was useful to them, the one they believe would stop Trump and MAGA or at least give them permission to wage war against their own citizens.
The footage, according to Carlson, is mostly uneventful. But showing Chansley walking calmly through the hallways with two police officers by his side paints a very different picture than the one they’ve been selling.
I already knew that their version of Chansley, like their version of Trump, was wrong. I knew because I had listened to an interview with him from prison last year. I knew if I said anything I would be in real trouble so I filed away in the place I keep things I know will matter one day.
Chansley is a vegan, the kind of guy you’d see at Burning Man because it was the cool place to be. Like most Trump supporters, he hovers on the fringes of our society, at the opposite end of the spectrum of the do-gooders and eggheads that dominate our culture now.
If you know anything about Q’anon — I mean the real Q’anon and not the media version, you know they’re mostly yoga-oriented granola crunchers who, like so many of us on the Left from the old days, grew up not trusting the government. I felt bad for Chansley because he, like so many of them, had no advocates in government, in civil rights law, or in the press.
But rather than look into it, or demand answers from the powerful, the media did what they always do - they covered for the Democrats.
Oh, how the machine whirred to life to do damage control.
They have to side with the official story or they will be severely punished on Twitter. It might not seem like a big deal but your entire reputation, your status - all of it could go up in smoke in minutes if you dared contradict the party line, which is all over Twitter long before the headlines roll out. It’s the job of every citizen on the Left to go along with it. Anyone who doesn’t will be given the boot — out of our utopia, you must go.
Musk, of course, continues to taunt them with all sorts of thought crimes on a daily basis. They can’t really go after him, at least not yet. But they’re making ongoing efforts to destroy his business and discredit Twitter as a well-run company.
If there is one thing I’ve learned about Trump supporters in the past three years I’ve spent time in that world it’s that they pride themselves on being non-violent. You have to understand what it means to be a patriot. They see themselves as protectors of Democracy, of America. They weren’t trying to overthrow the government or attempt a coup. They were doing the opposite. They believed they were saving the country from the Democrats.
Tucker Carlson is one of the few people who understands what Trump supporters are actually like, as opposed to the cartoon versions of them the media has been selling.
Charges would stick if Trump had done what they said he did. But he didn’t want a violent riot. Why would he have bothered convincing senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to debate the election in the Senate? All the riot did was hand absolute power to the Democrats. It seemed to me on that day that there were two heads involved. One was Trump and the other is yet to be identified.
Two So-Called Journalists Go to Washington
I already knew going in that the Twitter Files had been a blank for much of the media. To the Left, Trump is the new Musk and is a BAD MAN so Twitter is BAD now. If Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, or Bari Weiss were chosen by Musk, as opposed to, say, Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, then nothing they say is to be taken seriously.
What was most surprising about the hearing of the Twitter files, though, was that it exposed in the plain light of day just how cut off from reality the Democratic Party has become. While this was obviously true of Rep Sylvia Garcia who had never heard of Substack and seemed to be in over her head, it was also true of the entire panel.
What an odd way to approach two soft-spoken journalists who aren’t in this for any other reason than to do their jobs by uncovering what is obviously Big Tech overreach at the hands of the Democratic Party and the administrative state.
I’ve been online for 28 years, half of my life, and I know it well enough to be able to see how things changed after 2020. January 6th was the pretext for full-blown authoritarian control that required no explanation. They treated it like 9/11 where they gifted themselves with unlimited power to monitor and police speech online.
“It’s a private company,” they chirp. Well, not when government agencies are involved. It remains shocking how few mainstream journalists understand fully what happened here. Maybe you have to be a very online person to really get it. Maybe you have to remember the initial commitment by those of us early internet pioneers that speech, like information, wants to be free. I could tell and said many times that it was obvious to me that the government was using Twitter as a filter to violate the First Amendment.
Before Musk bought Twitter, the alignment of the media, the blue-check army and the Democratic Party was unprecedented in its ability to manufacture a chosen narrative and foist it on the people. It wasn’t until Musk bought Twitter that the level of government overreach was finally exposed and dissent was allowed back in the public square.
But of course, the Democrats no longer care about free speech if it isn’t in full compliance with their version of events.
Here is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of all people, showing us how little she cares about what may or may not have been in the Twitter files. No doubt the blue-checks on Twitter celebrated this, as I would have if I was still inside the bubble.
It doesn’t seem to occur to them that attacking journalists on live television might be a bad look for the side that has traditionally fought for free speech. But to them, they know no matter what they say, the obedient press corps will back them up, defend them, and explain their nonsensical reaction in the hearing.
The Twitter Files, like the January 6th footage, threaten their narrative. That’s why they needed full control of Twitter and why they’re throwing temper tantrums now that it’s been wrested from them. If their narrative is vulnerable, so are they.
By now they’ve built a risky house of cards, a Ponzi scheme with only two options. Keep it going or watch the whole thing collapse.
How did I know they were lying about January 6th? Because I used to do it too. I was one of them. I know the game. I lied right alongside them because to us it wasn’t lying. It was winning.
They’re still lying about January 6th. They’re lying that it was rooted in racism and “white supremacy.” They’re lying that Trump ordered it or inspired it or instigated it. They’re lying that the violence was planned by the MAGA movement. They’re lying about “seditious conspiracy,” and the biggest lie of all is that it was an “armed insurrection” against the government.
None of that was true then and none of it is true today.
The January 6th protesters deserved a government that cared about them, not one that would turn them into “domestic terrorists,” ruin their lives, convict them in the court of public opinion and use them as pawns to grow their power. But they have one person brave enough to tell their stories and that’s Julie Kelly:
No matter what else Jacon Chansley did that day, Carlson showed up the legacy media for the frauds they are just by showing what they would not. And that exposes them as liars.
That Fox went ahead with it, taking a big risk amid a massive lawsuit, is reminiscent of the moment Senator Joseph McCarthy went after Edward R. Murrow. Under extraordinary pressure, Murrow called him out on national television, which ended the reign of terror of McCarthyism.
And Schumer, like McCarthy, has already gone too far. Even though their propaganda press will continue to cover for him and likely write the legacy he wants rather than the one he deserves, I have to believe that history will not be kind.
I have to believe that people still care about the truth. I have to believe it will find its way through the storm of deception. I have to believe that this is still a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and not a country in the grips of totalitarian rule that looks out for the aristocracy and the administrative state.
Edward R. Murrow was a person of wealth and power, but imagine what it must feel like to be a Trump supporter with nothing in your bank account, debts to be paid, and living in a town that’s been hollowed out by trade policies, and riddled with fentanyl sales, protesting and fighting for the only person in government who had your back, the only guy who saw you at all.
To have watched for months the government mostly sympathetic and supportive of the protesters in the Summer of 2020 now turn on you, throw you into solitary confinement, and ruin your reputation for life — and all for what? Power. Control. Utopia.
The Democrats and the legacy media are in too deep to turn back now. They have no choice but to double down on the gaslighting, the deception, the manipulation, and the lies. Most people on the Left believe that their reality is the only reality, their truth is the only truth.
I used to believe that too. But for me, the truth was like a low flame that never went out but only got bigger over time. Before long, I couldn’t ignore it. And now I know the old cliche is right, the truth shall set you free. And so it has.
How I Knew The Democrats and The Media Were Lying About January 6th