With 2020 in the rearview mirror, we still see the images of demon Viddy with his colorful tentacles lurking and leaping. We also see burnt-out hulks of buildings as a result of rampaging angry young folks hell-bent on lecturing about all things race and the evils of authority.
Then strolls in 2021 full of confidence and hope. Some folks, taking a cue from a battered and bruised President, decide to trample the capitol and protest what they believe the results of an unfair election. The outrage was immediate and deafening and roars to this day- much of it performative as illustrated by the made for TV impeachment soap opera. The cancel culture crowd immediately calls for heads to roll. The elites demand the social media fat cats turn off switches and de-platform groups and muzzle dissenting opinion.
Historians grow white from knowing that this has happened before. With eerie predictability, those seeking unlimited power always subdue the means of communications. Radio and TV stations are always taken over soon after coups by militaries and two-bit dictators as a way to control the masses. With control, there can become a single approved orthodoxy with all others banned. We were given hints of that in 2020 when the social media titans conspired to only allow 'approved' COVID-19 information. Many clapped their approval of censorship but those who took some time to understand the implications gave pause.
Author and historian, Victor Davis Hanson offers us his view.
Multimillionaire Michelle Obama, who seems seldom to allow a serious crisis to go to waste, was calling for the complete weaponization of social media and the permanent banning of Trump. A scared Mark Zuckerberg seemed to agree. The multibillionaire had infused $350 million of his own money into key preselected precincts to boost voting turnout in a way the Left in the old days would have called the dark money that undermines democracy.
Click here to read his essay.