Fifteen days to slow the spread!
A phrase that shall live on in infamy. Three years ago this week the U.S. joined the entire planet in shutting down pretty much all of society as a virus spread from China across the globe. In those early days not much was known. We were already in the chaos of an election season and sadly we were in media chaos as well. The progressive media was already absorbed with giving Trump a hard time at every turn.
At a time when we needed clear and concise communication from our Commander-in-Chief, our corporate media was actively involved in obfuscating and censoring information coming directly from POTUS. Trump didn’t help matters with ill-advised recommendations to shelter in place and keeping in place a medical team that openly defied his instincts and direction.
Still, we went into what we now affectionately refer to as “lockdowns” with trepidation, fear, but also a hope that we could get back to regular life soon enough. We’d put in our time, do our part, slow that spread, and move on.
There is no need to rehash the past. We all know what happened next. Some of us knew it would happen all along. Some of us tried to warn the rest of America that if we cede this type of power to the government, our tyrannical woes would never end. Others of us thought we’d wait out our two weeks and then start screaming bloody murder if our governments didn’t end the lockdown as promised.
As it turns out, screaming bloody murder became damn near impossible…on purpose.
The naysayers and worrywarts were right. Once our local and federal governments got a taste of communistic-type powers, they could not release it. Like crack cocaine, that power began coursing through their veins and too many were helpless to resist. Suddenly they had the power to decide who gets to run a business, who gets to go to school, and who even gets to go to church. It became abundantly clear why the Founding Fathers went to such lengths to form a constitution that explicitly spelled out our human rights. They lived so close to tyranny, the taste was still in their mouths as they signed that great document.
It was worse than just shutting down small businesses and churches. The government shut down dissent. They shut down free speech, our most sacred right behind the right to life. They colluded with Big Tech to punish those who questioned the measures being taken, questioned the origin of the virus, and eventually questioned the efficacy of masks and an experimental vaccine that was suddenly mandated as a condition to participate in American life. We are only now seeing the extent to which that hellish partnership actually operated with the release of the Twitter Files.
It was a huge blessing, perhaps a gigantic turn in history, that Elon Musk purchased Twitter and released the Kraken on censorship, so to speak. While it doesn’t solve our larger problems in Big Tech, it was a gigantic step towards freedom and towards getting out truth that was being suppressed as “misinformation” by the left-wing tyrants of government and social media.
Our government found a way to nearly entirely squash any dissenting voices, and they almost got away with it.
In the opening days of the lockdowns and tense days following the J6 events, our publication had to do a lot of scrambling to stay visible. The crackdowns on conservative content were swift and punishing. There were moments when we and others wondered about our very future in the business. We had to pull back a bit and take a moment to reassess and figure out how to stay afloat in this new era of censorship. Our dissenting voices wouldn’t be much good if we allowed the left to make them disappear from public.
I’m proud to say, we weathered that storm and while it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses, it has been empowering. Conservative media is definitely stronger for having to push through the despotic instincts of the progressive political class. In fact, there is an argument to be made that the attempt to shut us up has only helped spread the conservative message.
Content creators began taking their messages directly to the customer through video and podcast platforms and paywalled content. Those paywalls aren’t always a fun adjustment, but they have allowed conservative media to free ourselves from the chains of Google and online ad revenue. Thankfully, our audiences have understood and we are now in the midst of a conservative media renaissance.
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As for this morbid anniversary, let us use it to remind ourselves just how easy it was for the freest citizens on earth in the greatest nation on earth to become subjects again, 250 years after a group of farmers and businessmen changed the course of the western world. And let us pledge to never go quietly into that quiet night again, to continue being loud and truthful and demanding.
Fifteen days to slow the spread turned into three years to slow free speech. It feels like we are finally pulling out of that spiral, even if it’s a bit slower than we would have anticipated so many months ago.
It’s been a rough road, but we’re still Americans. That hasn’t changed.
To hell with censorship…all the way straight to the pit of hell with it.
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