Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Republicans hate America 10: Assault on Free Speech and the Nation of Laws

Faced with a never ending parade of news reports on the "legalized" bribery of Republican Supreme Court Justices, the Court has adopted a tepid Code of Ethics.  The most despicable aspect is rightwing Billionaires who seek to destroy the Nation and replace it with a simulacrum of a Democracy modeled on the electors and feudal government of the Holy Roman Empire know they don't need an explicit Quid Pro Quo with their SCOTUS pawns but simply give them gifts, trips, and millions in benefits with the unspoken understanding the Supremacist Court will rule in favor of Plutocracy and NeoFeudalism every time.

We've been dealing with disingenuous Republicans and Corporate Media efforts to rationalize and justify bad faith Republican propaganda for decades, that I don't believe there's any point in complaining about it in an attempt to change "journalists" minds anymore.  Journalism consists of very few prepositions but, amongst them are both sides are the same, both sides want what is best for the Nation writ large, both sides may disagree on policy but, Republican disagreement is from a sincere standpoint.  Any large scale journalists who may disagree with this find themselves in the oft repeated quote from Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

At this point the right has been stewing inside their own agitprop and farting and regurgitating each other's farts for so long that they've succeeded in alerting basic tenets of the American Democratic Republic going all the way back to John Adams dictum we are "a government of laws, and not of men." 

Because we aren't a Nation of Laws anymore, from SCOTUS on down, Republicans have made a mockery of law & order.  The Law is a human endeavor and a social construct, by conservative thinking has always gravitated towards the bullshit philosophical belief of Eternal Truths and immutable laws set down by a higher power (God, the Founding Fathers, biology, etc...) and the liberal ideology of a living constitution or changing times are thus a sacrilegious affront to eternal truth.

When you couple this with the religious fervor which justifies any crime under service to a "Higher power" well under this rubric there can be no violation of the Constitutional protections, legal rights, settled law, norms, principles because the righteous are right in the eyes of the lord.

So, Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters of America, for MediaMatters accurate reporting on his platform "X", former known as Twitter.  I hope everyone realizes Musk uses that X as a thinly-veiled Swastika stand-in.  Musk's lawsuit is of course, without merit but, in Republican America the only merit which matters is if the thing in question helps advance the Rightwing agenda of Oppression, Intolerance, and Adulation of the Rich.  Everything else is superfluous and immaterial.  

Stephen Miller let it be known there are numerous conservative Attorneys' General who would like to criminally prosecute a leftwing media group who commits the unpardonable sin of accurately reporting what Republicans say and do.

Because this is already the year Republicans have their sights set on using the awesome power of Government to stifle speech they don't like.  In Florida, State Senator Jason Broduer proposed a Blogger Registration Law (SB1316) which requiring "bloggers" to register with the state if they wrote about elected officials, failure to register would result in a fine per day per post.

In August, a small Kansas Police department lead by Chief Gideon Cody raided a newspaper.  It seems it was Cody was probably involved in a relationship with the local bar owner who made allegations agains the newspaper owner but, when it comes constitutional protections its' dependent on who you know. 

Certainly, marginalized individuals and groups know what Republicans legislatures, judges, and governors can do to them.  In Murfreesboro, Tennessee an "indecent behavior" ban is a weasel-worded ordinance allowing Police Officers to enforce the State and Local laws outlawing LGBTQ+ persons existence. 

And if you are one of those people clinging to the concept of Law & Order, or the checks and balances will save us, or Trump can't pardon himself, or believe your status as a person not normally targeted by rightwing anger then you are fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the Modern Republican Party.  It's pure Fascism and therefore the Law is what they say it is and your rights are nothing they need to respect.

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