Intelligence and law enforcement, which is, I come from CIA and the charisma of CIA doesn’t work for me because I know it as a big bureaucracy, but the FBI, which is a law enforcement agency for Americans, the CIA doesn’t have any writ to investigate Americans except in very special circumstances. The personnel from FBI and Twitter just flitted back and forth, back and forth. And when you look at some of the people who were involved in, for example, de-platforming Trump, even though the Twitter executives themselves with their terms of service couldn’t find a reason for doing it, the strongest advocates were the former government people, the former FBI people.
Plus:
Honestly, I think it all goes back to 2016 and to Donald Trump and the elites who had managed this country, who thought of themselves as being not only wonderful in and of themselves, but beloved of the public suddenly realized that they were not, they were being held in contempt. And what’s the explanation? Well, it couldn’t be that they were contemptible. The explanation was these people are being lied to. And a whole host of organizations arose around the principle that disinformation is the poison that is destroying what they call our democracy. I love that term. It’s very possessive, right? Our democracy, it’s ours.
And so they fund these groups from the Atlantic Council to, they’re all kinds of names, and there are these people who pose as experts that tell you, oh, yes, yeah, my favorite one is Renee DiResta who says, disinformation is one of the existential threats of our time, so we have to do something about it. It would be irresponsible not to. So this is choir, this chorus, this Greek chorus of panic. We have to do something. We have to do something, and we are experts. We’re almost scientists in this field, so you have to listen to us. You don’t understand, the Russians are manipulating us. People who are against you taking the right medications for Covid are manipulating you, and we to save you from harm need to intervene.
And I have to say, the media, the press is right there. They are part of that chorus. Instead of doing what the media used to do, which is so point the finger at abuse of power, which is what Jim Jordan’s committee with his terrible name, weaponization of government, what they really mean is abuse of power by the government. The media is completely on the side of, no, the government needs to intervene. . . .
And they live in this bubble where it is very important for them politically to have that control. It’s all one-sided. It aimed at conservatives and Republicans, or somewhat less so at Maverick lefties and Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy. So they have come to the habit of basically believing that everything that’s good for them politically is good for our democracy, and they live in this bubble. And it never occurred to them if they said to the American public, we’re going to have this disinformation governors, it’s going to govern your information, that a lot of Americans are going to go, what are you talking about? And I think the response by the public and by the opposition, and many outlets, caught them by surprise. To them, it is just a self-evident good.
h/t Glenn