I’m leftie, in general. I eat tofu. I haven’t really eaten tofu SUCCESSFULLY, but I have adopted it as a challenge, partially because I think, well, the meat industry isn’t awesome.
Am I the only person who is totally down for lab-grown meat? Like, why are we against that? Meat that could confer all the benefits, perhaps more, none of the drawbacks, AND nobody has to cut apart a cow to get it?
It’s because you guys are all scared of labs and stuff, right?
If that’s you, take my advice, visit a slaughterhouse. There’s nothing going on in a lab that is any more scary than that, believe me. And I don’t even mean on a moral level, I mean when you see that things are…kinda loose.
Does this look more like a downhome, farm-to-table, primitive living situation to you, or more like a lab?
Anyway, I’m lefty, but I guess only so lefty that I also consider purchasing and eating tofu an act of a lefty.
I’ve written a bit in the past about my disappointments when the left is, in my opinion, working against intellectual freedom.
Specifically, I wrote a short/long piece (depending on whether you’re used to TikTok explainers or Jon Krakauer) about a letter that appeared in Harper’s regarding cancel culture in 2020.
Look, some people made sourdough starters, some took up coloring. I wrote a booklet about intellectual freedom. It was a weird time.
I had things to say about it, and I’ll sum it up in the most basic way I can:
In general, I agreed that suppression of speech is bad. I find very few compelling cases for it.
Cut to 5 Years Later, My Brother Sent Me This Thing
Basically, an article about the signers of the letter in question, a “Where are they now?” but instead of a fun montage or an unfun montage like the one from Stand By Me where it’s like, “Oh, yeah, that dude got stabbed in the throat trying to deescalate a conflict,” it’s more of a follow-up to see whether signers of the letter have spoken out, by writing and publishing pieces, against the ways in which the Trump administration has fucked up open discourse and debate.
Kind of a, “You had a problem with lefties doing it, now what about the right?” sort of thing.
My Main Complaints About The Follow-Up
Signing a letter and writing your own piece are two different things. It’s easier to sign a letter, and when you sign a letter, knowing dozens of others are signing it, you’re one of many instead of being on your own.
Not having something published in an outlet the writer was able to find doesn’t equate to not writing something.
There are people who are listed as having written anti-Trump things, but perhaps haven’t talked specifically about speech, and instead are more focused on shit like, you know, horrific human rights violations. I mean, I’m a big speech guy, kids starving to death
People who haven’t published anything online are lumped in with people who are actively supporting Trump’s dumbassery, which seems unfair to me. I get it on an Ibram Kendi level, doing nothing isn’t great, but I still don’t generally see my way to saying that doing nothing and actively pushing in the wrong direction are the same. In basic terms, someone NOT helping me do the dishes is not the same as a person who is actively making the dishes dirtier. It’s a bad analogy in my house because I make all the dishes dirty, but you get the point.
…I think there’s a big, orange elephant in the room here. Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Gone. Paramount: Out $16 million dollars. The New York Times, ABC, Washington Post: all in the crosshairs. He’s threatened fucking Fox News! That’s…that’s just mind-boggling. Anyway, whether the signers of the letter have written things or not is one question, whether anyone is willing to publish those things, totally another.
What I Find
I’ve written things against the left, I’ve written things against the right, and maybe it’s true, maybe none of us can handle free speech and intellectual freedom. Maybe the only time people talk about it is when it benefits them, personally, and the only time they hide behind it is when they’re doing something they probably shouldn’t be.
Exhibit A:
Nice to meet you. Pleasure to meet you, sir. May lovely to meet you. So, I would say that with Trump being anti-constitution, I don't really care to be quite frankly because in regards to the Constitution, the Constitution is a document that should seek to serve us. And when it fails to seek to serve us, that can be amended. Laws can be changed. And quite frankly, the fact is we're defending things in this country that shouldn't be defended. The First Amendment should not defend pornography and making children and women be victimized. making women and children be victimized as a result of that. I think things like blasphemy shouldn't be allowed per the first amendment. I think that quite frankly there are a lot of legal processes that are enabling criminals and bad people to fully enact their will in this country in the name of the constitution or following the constitution. So quite frankly, if Trump is anti-constitution, good. And I think he should go further.
Exhibit B:
I mean…
I’m not sure I believe that nobody really believes in the importance of free speech and intellectual freedom. But, hoo boy, these are challenging times for someone who thinks like I do.
Why I Haven’t Written On It Recently
Because the place we’re in now is a place so incredibly stupid, so asinine, so backwards, so the product of really, really dumb people, that I don’t really know what there is to say about it. I really did not anticipate that this is where we’d be.
The fact that people engaged in peaceful protest are people we’re attempting to deport, that’s straight-up the most direct, most clear, most outrageous violation of the First Amendment you can get. What’s a more core tenet of the First Amendment than allowing people to criticize government?
When we’ve got a President in office who sued a journalist for $5 billion dollars for saying he wasn’t as rich as he claimed, and when Trump took the stand and said he determined his financial worth partially based on “my own feelings.” I mean, how the fuck can anyone look at that and say accurate journalism, super protected speech, means a goddamn thing when a man’s personal feelings, um, trump hard facts?
When this fucking dipshit is saying he’s going to stop government scientists from publishing in JAMA, The Lancet, and other reputable places, and instead he’s going to make his own journals, take his ball and go home so he can jack off over pictures of measles lesions—well, okay, he said MOST of that, not the jerking off part, sorry, I’m getting all agitated—when this is where we’re at with freedom of information, things ain’t good.
When you fire someone for reporting that you’re doing a shitty job, using objective data and making no real commentary on it:
boy is that a problem.
I mean, we’re not even talking about speech that’s dicey, we’re not even talking about an opinion. We’re talking about a reporting of naked facts. IT’S BARELY EVEN SPEECH! It’s a spreadsheet!
Exhibits at The Smithsonian: Altered. I mean, it’s a historical fact, AN historical fact, as some are fond of saying, that the man was impeached. True things are not fit for museums?
When We’re Arguing About Reality Itself
For me, not writing about this stuff, it’s because I don’t know what to say without using a bunch of “fucks” and “shits” that probably don’t help.
When it came to talking about the letter, even though I’m not a fan of the letter’s teardown, I can make arguments for it. Yeah, you as a single bookstore have the right to not stock a title. Sure, I can see where some forms of speech are hurtful and probably not necessary, not something that I think is forwarding democracy. I mean, you have the RIGHT to be an asshole, but that doesn’t mean you have to be one.
I can’t make one argument in favor of punishing protestors, stopping someone from vacationing in the U.S. because they have JD Vance memes on their phone, demanding that the Washington football team call themselves the Redskins again. I honestly don’t get it. Like, at all. I can’t make a single cogent argument for one bit of it.
I don’t know how to talk to people who are in favor of this stuff. I don’t think I have anything compelling to say to them or about them.
People who find these things acceptable are, in my opinion, so far gone that I don’t know if reaching them is a reasonable thing to attempt.
What I’ll Say About My Previous Writings, Knowing What I Know Now
There’s an obsession among folks about showing people, “Hey, when you wrote that thing talking about cancel culture, you were wrong! That wasn’t anywhere NEAR the biggest threat to free speech and intellectual freedom.”
And, you know what? I agree. It turns out, it wasn’t Because as much as people argued on that one, they were willing to argue about it. They were not just trying to remove information from the world.
That being said, I stand by what I said.
This being a worse time for intellectual freedom, and make no mistake, it is, doesn’t mean that every lesser infringement on intellectual freedom is fine.
And what I stand by, more than anything, is the idea that intellectual freedom cannot be up for grabs. That if we are willing to curtail it to fit our needs, the same thing will be done against us.
Alright, What’s the Answer
Let’s revisit our goosesteppin’ buddy here.
Ehhh, okay, maybe that’s TOO friendly an image.
Alright, that feels a little more fair.
Hey, buddy. Hi.
For starters, I know the First Amendment doesn’t protect your job…and one of my sometimes-heinous beliefs is that people should not be fire-able for things they say off the clock, not representing their workplace.
I know, it’s complicated, but I don’t think people really have free expression if they can lose their jobs, so long as we live in a country where your access to food, medical care, and shelter is tied to your ability to work.
I think the First Amendment doesn’t go far ENOUGH. Because I think your right to expression, outside of a work context, should be protected.
Sir, you do not make this an easy position to hold. When you advocate for the stripping away of Constitutional rights, you’re definitely digging your own grave. When people like you (and I’m guessing here, but it seems like it aligns with your belief system) advocate for bakers to be able to turn down gay customers, well, now you can see how giving businesses and non-government organizations those kinds of rights can be a problem for individuals expressing their beliefs.
What I see, between the letter and where we are now, is that the people who are in charge, the people who have the heaviest ability to affect culture, will tailor intellectual freedom. Free speech, free expression, and the right to access information is not a civil right. It’s a right that’s directly tied to your ability to weather economic storms created by people who disagree with you.
Intellectual freedom, I fear, isn’t for everyone. It’s for the powerful.
This has probably always been true. It’s just become more obvious now.
And maybe that’s the message I want to send to you all:
You’re fucking it up. Not today, perhaps, but for your future.
If you try to reset the rules, and if you succeed, just know that in 4 years, 8 years, or somewhere not too far down the line, the resetting of the rules such that you don’t have any rights, that ain’t going to work out great for you, for me, or for anyone.
When you lose your job for expressing your political beliefs, nobody is going to come to your rescue. Because nobody with any power is going to care.
When your government halts the publication of scientific research that disagrees with a stupid idiot asshole who refuses to listen to the evidence about the safety of multi-dose vaccine additives and vaccine ingredients, it’s you and your loved ones who are going to be sick, and it’s you and your loved ones who are going to suffer as a result.
And I’m saying this to you, today, because your side holds a lot of power. It’s up to you to see that all this power is used to preserve your rights to intellectual freedom.
I’m not forcing you to change your political affiliation or belief system. Well, I guess I’m asking YOU to change yours because an autocracy, that’s not something I find acceptable.
But for your average righty, you don’t have to denounce Trump, you don’t have to open your stupid eyes and see that immigrants are working, paying into the system, and completely unable to access funds, meaning they are supporting social security without ever seeing a cent returned. None of that. You just have to demand that the standard for information be as simple as, “Hey, I understand how you feel about the information you’ve seen. I want to see it as well and determine for myself whether or not I think you’re right.”
It’s up to you, the people who hold the political power, to demand access to information. It’s up to you to demand that the people get to see information, even if the President doesn’t like it.
Because if we continue down this path, if we continue to chain information and hide it away, you won’t even have a way to know whether you like the President or not. You will have ZERO information to guide your voting decision. Did he do the things he said he would? Did he move things forward? Did he accomplish goals that I wanted him to? Is he a literal criminal?
All you’ll have to go on is what some fuckhead says he “feels” his value as President to be, much the way he apparently “felt” his net worth to be.
When information isn’t free, you’ll get only emotion. You’ll get whims. You’ll get cute little lines. You’ll get tweets that start, well, stupid for a few lines, but harmless, and that then go several paragraphs further and end up comparing a chick who put on a pair of goddamn jeans to a musician who put together the most profitable tour of all time representing over a decade of musical innovation (no offense, Sydney Sweeney, and let’s be real, doing a jeans ad ain’t no Eras Tour):
This is what you’ll get. This is all you’ll have.
And that, THAT, my friend, is not information.
Artificial meat is common; it is called chicken.