Happy New Year, y’all.
“Disinformation” is the new vocabulary word used by the Dems, the left, the Deep State, the MSM, and social media to identify anything that:
1. criticizes them (talking to you, Director Wray of the FBI),
2. reveals their bad acts (Hunter Biden and the laptop story), or
3. with which they disagree.
[To make it easier for y’all: Pretty much anything a Rep or a conservative says is disinformation. Hope this helps.]
The left has now called to criminalize disinformation — meaning have Congress (a huuuuuge source of disinformation) pass laws to exact criminal penalties for advancing disinformation as they define it.
Isn’t that what Russia does, Big Red Car?
This may sound remarkably like the actions of the Russian President Putin and the Duma that have criminalized the use of the word “war” instead of “special military operation” as it pertains to Russian treachery and terrorism in Ukraine.
In Russia, you can get (and folks have gotten) fifteen years for using the word “war.” You can also get the same fifteen years for criticizing the president, the regime, the military, or the war itself.
China, similarly, frowns on and discountenances anything that is even mildly critical of the regime or Taiwan’s relationship to China.
Now, the left in the United States wants to follow suit.
Isn’t disinformation bad, Big Red Car?
Ahhh, grasshopper, therein lies the slippery slope, the minefield, the swamp — who defines disinformation?
In this instance, the Dems, the left, the Deep State, the media, and social media will shoulder that burden for all of us. Thank you.
The Dossier – disinformation?
Let’s take as an example the bloody famous Dossier. When it first came to light, it held the imprimatur of the then most respected law enforcement bunch in history — the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Senior FBI folks (talking to you Jimmy Comey and the infamous Tucker Carlson interview in which you shat in your mess kit with all the smarmy lies) attested to its truthfulness all the while knowing it was the work product of a known Russian goofball Igor Danchenko (great name for a Russian meathead, no?) and that it was paid for by the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign.
Imagine if James Comey had risen, looked into the cameras and said, “We’ve looked into this so-called Dossier and determined it was garden variety, dirty tricks, opposition research commissioned and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign; its source is a man the FBI has been investigating named Igor Danchenko, and we are unable to validate anything in it because it is a work of fiction. Thank you.”
Instead, James Comey and the FBI used the Dossier to create an orchestrated campaign of four years of unfounded investigations of a presidential candidate and a sitting President.
In that process, they used the knowingly false Dossier and even forged documents to obtain four FISA warrants of a fellow named Carter Page who had done nothing wrong.
The warrants produced . . . . . nothing.
The Department of Justice commissioned a Special Counsel named Mueller who spent hundreds of thousands of manhours and millions of dollars — all while the FBI knew the Dossier was bogus — looking for a specious Russian connection.
The New York Times printed leaks about the Dossier from the same weasels at the FBI.
So, who goes to jail for disinformation in this instance?
1. The “deniers” who were assailed by the media, the Dems, the left, and the FBI?
2. The folks who perpetrated this charade on the public?
The New York Post Hunter Biden story
Let’s take as an example the infamous Hunter Biden laptop New York Post story, shall we?
I think we shall, thank you.
1. FBI lies to Twitter and of its own volition a few weeks before the election and the New York Post story whispers, “Big bad disinformation story coming down the pike saying somebody has a laptop filled to overflowing with bad juju about crackhead Hunter Biden, candidate Biden’s son. Can’t have that. It is classic Russian disinformation. Please suppress the story.”
Halt: Don’t we have to find out who invented that canard? Who made it up? Who from the FBI decided to proactively approach the media and social media with this fabricated tale?
Doesn’t that guy have some answering to do?
2. Twitter and others begin to ax the accounts of anybody who mentioned the laptop or the NY Post story. Boom!
The FBI asks for social media to dampen the story and to punish the storytellers all the while knowing the story is true.
The FBI had been sitting on the Hunter Biden laptop for a year and knows it isn’t Russian disinformation.
3. The Biden campaign — including candidate Joe Biden at a presidential debate — swears it is Russian disinformation and has 51 Intelligence Community “professionals” attest in writing to that opinion including former CIA Directors and Directors of National Intelligence.
The whole time the campaign and the FBI know the laptop is as genuine as the Atlantic Ocean is wet.
Who holds these 51 men and the Biden campaign accountable for having influenced the presidential election with these bald faced and gargantuan lies?
4. Turns out the NY Post story is A+++ accurate and truthful and that the FBI was lying and that Twitter acted like a debutante with a pimple on the end of her thin, aquiline nose and banned, shadow banned, and punished those who told the truth.
5. A couple of years later, the FBI and the usual suspects like the New York Times admit the laptop was genuine and the New York Post was correct.
Twitter — under the watchful eye of new owner Elon Musk — reveals the extent to which the FBI influenced Twitter to ban, shadow ban, and punish members of the Twitter community for telling the truth.
Has Musk not bought Twitter would any of this have come out? I think not.
Did this impact the election, you ask? Ahhh, yes.
The First Amendment
Alongside “disinformation” sits the pejorative “conspiracy” coupled with the innocent word “theory” to arrive at a new slur. I give you “conspiracy theory.”
Problem with this is we Americans are allowed and entitled to say almost anything we can dream up to say under something called The First Amendment to the US Constitution.
We do not need permission from the left, Twitter, or the FBI to have a “theory” about anything.
[Programming note: Theory is different than fake facts which we used to call lies. Focus on this.]
With very little real limitation, we can stand in the public square and raise our voices in conjecture of any kind we want.
This does not allow a speaker to defame a person.
1. Libel is written defamation.
2. Slander is oral defamation.
These sins require strict proofs.
Where does this go, Big Red Car?
Ahhh, now that is the question, isn’t it?
It goes to criminally punishing climate deniers, immigration critics, political voices, anti-vaxxers, school critics, gender skeptics, and pundits who say anything the regime does not agree with. Just like Russia and China.
We are not Russia nor China.
Bottom line it, Big Red Car
Ahhh, yes, the bottom line.
Fresh off a successful campaign of using the media and social media as cudgels to influence the election of 2020, the Dems, the left, and the Deep State propose to formally criminalize their successful tactic of using the term “disinformation” as a tool to stifle opposition, criticism, and opposing voices.
They broaden their twisted definition of disinformation to embrace conspiracy theories of all stripes even if they turn out to be true. Haha. You cannot make this stuff up.
The public square is for debate and the unfettered exercise of the First Amendment.
This is not Russia and you cannot criminalize the opposition even if the FBI is your partner.
Happy New Year, y’all.