Thanks again to Kelley Vlahos for having me on her podcast last week. Here are a couple brief excerpts of my riffs (transcript below):
Part of what fascinates me with this election cycle is to try to figure out how many Americans still give a damn about freedom.
Because to see the ease with which the government can overtly crush free speech, to see how easy it was for federal contractors to crush and censor muzzle people who are making jokes about COVID vaccine mandates, to see how many people were happy to see, any, doubts about mandatory masks or vaccine passports, to see how people were so happy to see those critics shut down, It doesn’t seem like the same kind of America that you and I might have known in the 1980s and 90s, when there was robust free speech, when people were proud to oppose the government, but now it’s like so many people have been frightened into submission , and I’m wondering how much worse we’ll get after the election.
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The unspoken premise of the war on disinformation and misinformation here – It’s almost like from Hegel that you’re presuming that government is truth personified. And that as long as government says something is true That’s all that matters.
It’s more important than the facts And to see the level of deference and you talk about being having scorn for all history This whole notion that politicians are going to be honest starting now Oh As opposed to the last thousands of years. , going back to Aristophanes plays in ancient Athens.
People ridiculed politicians as pathological liars for thousands of years, and yet they’re supposed to be the Oracle of Delphi now.
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