Rush Limbaugh used to say that the right will always win in the arena of ideas. But if that arena has contests which forces a competitor to tie one hand tied behind his back, it’s not a fair fight. That’s how the left deals with speech. If people start being disagreeable, the left tries to stifle them by disabling them. They believe their cause is so holy and righteous they can only assume that someone with a differing viewpoint is a subversive and needs to be denounced. They rarely try to justify their position. Alternative viewpoints are seen as a threat to their mission.
Elon Musk’s Twitter venture has illustrated just how far-gone the left is when it comes to free speech. For years, they have enjoyed total dominance in the media, both social and the news. Their messaging, which was enthusiastically aided by Twitter, was able to percolate down through the huddled masses unimpeded. So, when someone came out of nowhere and tried to threaten their dominance they got indignant. They marshaled all their allies in the media and government (but then I repeat myself) and went on the attack. The Securities and Exchange Commission said it was investigating Musk for some questionable trades, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were sent out to tout the virtues of “content moderation"…that democracy just can’t handle too much free speech. And then, on cue, President Biden announced he was forming a “Disinformation Governance Board”…that will likely always be knows by its darker, more accurate moniker, “The Ministry of Truth”. And there you have it. Alternative viewpoints are no longer tolerated. Questioning the narrative will now place you under the specter of a law enforcement agency, Homeland Security.
Sounds bad, but it’s just a start. The left is trying to tighten the screws in your life by creating rating systems to reward good actors, and punish bad ones. We see it in business with the exploding presence of ESG (Environmental, Social, Corporate Responsibility). It’s a grading system that businesses are pressured to follow, to keep the wacko environmentalists, radical feminists and social justice warriors off their backs. They need to publish their good deeds in order to stay in good standing with a small but influential posse of corporate-crusading hall monitors. If you’re a public company and don’t adhere to these new standards you will be wracked with proxy battles and boycotts. Fat cat investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard won’t include your stocks in their mutual funds or exchange traded funds unless you toe the line. A small groups definition of morality and ethics has cowed most businesses into acquiescing. It’s an insidious system which hasn’t proven to increase shareholder value, but has increased the bank accounts of ESG and diversity/inclusion consulting firms.
What’s next is even more chilling. It’s being called the Social Credit System, and it’s coming our way. FICO has been around for a long time. Credit agencies are able to track our financial activity and come up with a grade as to our credit worthiness. If you’ve been responsible, you’ll get a loan. If you’ve missed a payment, or owe too much on your card you might not. We’ve tolerated the current system, because it has not been widely abused.
But imagine if, not only your routine financial transactions were tracked…but if you got a speeding ticket, played too many video games, smoked and drank too much. Currently China documents all of that information, on every citizen. It’s all tracked. If you don’t adhere to the goals and rules of the government, you might get your Internet speeds cut, you could be banned from flying commercial, your kids could be kept from the best schools. You could even get your dog taken away.
Italy has implemented a less ambitious scheme, based on rewards as incentives to be good citizens instead of punishments. But how long until that changes. In the US, pretty soon owning a gun, driving a gas guzzling Dodge Challenger or making a nasty post on social media could come back to haunt you, if our government implemented a Social Credit Score system. And it doesn’t take a vivid imagination to conjure more burdensome consequences if you don’t toe the line. You know the American left is watching this very closely and is just waiting for the right opportunity to spring it on a complaisant public.
How Will You Rank?