Last week, a federal appeals court confirmed that science cannot function without free speech. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya reflects on a victory for himself—and every American.
Thank you Dr Bhattacharya for everything you've been doing. Its concerning that there are government agencies that have a carve out to continue to carry on with this totalitarian behavior but perhaps we have to take our wins as they come, and this is certainly a win. The sooner this case can get to the Supreme Court the better.
This is certainly a win and God bless Dr. Bhattacharya and his colleagues for their courage and fortitude as well as Justice Doughty who rightly “compared the administration’s censorship infrastructure to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth”. Will it mean victory against an increasingly oppressive government willing and able to employ Orwellian measures such as declaring faux states of emergency, suspending democracy, further censoring opposition press and government critics, and ultimately throwing political opponents in jail? When at least two thirds of the populace doesn’t even know who George Orwell was, or recognize our current descent into the dystopian world he warned against, I’m not optimistic.
"When at least two thirds of the populace doesn’t even know who George Orwell was"
There should be citizenship exam for native born, just as there is for immigrants. If you haven't read 1984 you are not competent to be a voter. OK, if you flunk the exam you are still a legal resident (there's nowhere to deport you), but you are not a Citizen. Any nation that can tolerate the next election being between a senile, corrupt, woke mediocrity and a moronic, criminal opportunist is no longer worthy of democracy and deserves whichever execution it chooses.
Stalinist, political show trials do not a criminal make. We were free under Trump. Not so under the corrupt psychopath who was installed to replace him.
If you believe that Trump had your freedom as his goal then you are a good example of the sort of person I'm talking about. It is to weep that so many can be so blind. I try to make excuses -- any port in a storm, perhaps in their need to defeat the wokeies the right rally round the flag whoever it is that might be holding it -- even Trump. Sorta the way a desperate Germany turned to Hitler. Still it's very sad especially when there's some real talent in the GOP lineup. Honorable and competent people. But no, the neanderthals must have their orange moron.
"If you believe that Trump had your freedom as his goal. . ."
I believe that he did; one of his first acts as president was to get the states to clean out their registration rolls for clean voting; they balked; I believe that his attempts to secure the border was an attempt to secure our freedoms; when Trump separated minors from adults held in detention (and the Democrats screamed bloody murder--remember?) he was upholding the law, which the Democrats ignored and failed to tell their supporters that it was their own law, begun under Bill Clinton's administration to protect migrant minors; his politically brave and historic reversal of our approach to China, which had become our number one adversary in the world, and his attempt to bring manufacture home, were evidence that he had our freedom as his goal; his creation of Space Force, his support for a strong military and a strong NATO--all these were evidence that he had our freedom as his goal. He had to contend during during the campaign against a Hillary Clinton candidacy, with a corrupted FBI that lied to the FISA court (see Durham Report for evidence) as to the veracity of the dossier it presented as an excuse to gain the ability to spy on American citizens --including Trump's campaign people--illegally; he had to contend with an FBI that countenanced a lying attorney who altered FBI documents in order to insure that the FBI could spy on the Trump campaign--all this, all these noble fights to keep America strong, and I recall that when Mueller's team subpoenaed White House records, he turned every single one of them over, without redaction. There were zero attempts to control free speech; he supported it; there was no control over the FBI enouraging it to engage in demanding censorship by social media.
I myself don't believe in binary 'good guys' vs. 'bad guys'. There's lots of things Trump did right. There's lots of things Stalin, Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini did right, too. As to the left, we'd agree on the threat that they pose. The question is whether Trump is really the very best man for the job that the GOP can come up with.
Trump had an opportunity to become authoritarian during the pandemic. He could have declared a national emergency and seized all kinds of power, ruling by executive order. He did not do that. I fear that, now the Democrats have shown him the way, he might have those impulses in a second term. But Trump is not nearly the threat to freedom that Biden is.
I don't fear that at all, not one bit, in fact. The Democrat]s have not shown him the way; historically, hundreds of dictators have already paved that road.
I read that Trump wanted to declare a national emergency and seize voting machines in 2020 after the election he knew he lost, but was talked out of it. Not sure where I saw that, might have been the socialist media.
"Sorta the way a desperate Germany turned to Hitler."
That's the sort of low rent analogy that led to the "resistance" that started even before Trump took office and corrupted our entire government and social structure. If Trump had been "Hitler" Madonna, Griffin, Judd and the rest of the Hollywood dorks who luridly spoke of blowing up the White House would have been strung by piano wire in Gestapo HQ. But nothing of the sort happened. Stop your pearl clutching and deal with reality
I didn't make that comparison. I compared the USA to Germany in as much as both countries abandoned their democracies at a time of great social discohesion and turned to a 'savior'. Please don't bring leftie Hollywood types into it, we'd have about the same opinion of that kind of person. They are irrelevant to the question at hand which is why the GOP can't come up with a better candidate.
But while that is a lot of blather, you do not actually make a coherent argument refuting what Bruce just said. And once we read the last refuge of the refute-less--"orange"--we know you have been defeated in your heart. Summarizing as I have done elsewhere--at your request ("What propaganda have I been repeating?") you have shown yourself to be proficient at publishing a great deal from your stash of pejorative adjectives, but not so proficient at refuting good points made.
"you do not actually make a coherent argument refuting what Bruce just said."
I didn't need to refute it, I clarified that the only point of the comparison is that when nations are severely stressed they can turn to demagogues to 'save' them. Trump and Hitler (or any other demagogue) are comparable in that way.
"a great deal from your stash of pejorative adjectives"
I haven't even started. Here's a first effort:
Narcissist
Moron
Ignoramus
Egotist
Criminal
Chancer
Opportunist
Liar
Betrayer
Child trapped in a man's body
Traitor
Incompetent
Scammer
And he has lousy taste in whores (Stormy).
As for refutation, my only point is that Trump will have difficulty winning the next election, and since we agree that it would be catastrophic if the woke were to win, a candidate with a better chance should be selected. And you have not refuted my logic.
I would have to think that had Trump concealed six cases of highly classified docs living in a country ruled by Stalin, he probably would have been shot. With not even a blindfold. At least here in our now unfree country he gets a trial with the best lawyers still willing to work for him (albeit not many), and facing a somewhat friendly judge. What could go wrong?
I'm guessing you saw the documents? And that Trump gave them all to Putin?
The Stalinesqe crap is all being done by the psychopath in the Oval Office. Who also had boxes of classified stuff in his garage and offices at Penn But nevermind.....
What does it matter who Trump may have shown them to? He should not have had them in the first place. He didn’t want to give them back to his own government (!) when asked and went out of his way not to comply. So why would he do that? (Did he think he owned them? Is he an idiot?) There’s a law on the books which forbids that. I know Trump doesn’t like reading or understand history - but he has well paid lawyers to tell him exactly the law he’s transgressing. And they did. And he still fucked up. Be happy he’s in front of a judge he selected. I hope the jury will be kind - and gently convicts.
Amen. Are these two really the best we can come up with? In a country of 300+ million people two octogenarians (one a doddering fool and one an egotistical lying opportunist) are all we can come up with for president? Wake up America. Do your homework. Let’s put forth candidates that will actually govern.
As a non-partisan I simply look for sanity, competence, integrity and ability. Both parties have respectable people who might offer the country a functioning administration. Nuts, most of the GOP candidates strike me as competent people. Christie, Haley, Hutchinson ... several others -- these people are proven. On the other side, there are Dems who have not drunk the woke kool-aid and remain reasonable people. Shit, I'd even take RFK -- ok, he's a bit of a nut-bar but we all have our little insanities and he seems to have something like integrity. But no, it has to be the worst of both -- both parties put forth their very worst rather than their very best. Democracy can't survive much more of this.
You didn't mention the most proven of all, DeSantis. If you read his bio, he is the kind of person we could only hope to have as our president. I agree that the GOP has many very competent and proven leaders in its lineup...I hope we look to them rather than Trump who inspires so much division. He HAS been wronged but life isn't always fair and our nation is on the brink of chaos. We need a steady hand at the helm.
Yeah, DeSantis ... shoot, I'd vote for him just on the strength of his takeover of that university in Florida -- shut down DEI *entirely* cut out grievance studies *entirely* sent woke professors packing. But he makes these blunders over and over again.
I totally agree. I’d take anyone from the Republican debate the other night as our candidate. And I don’t mind RFK Jr either. At least his quirky beliefs are backed by years of investment doing environmental legal work. And he does seem to have integrity. Something sorely lacking in politicians from both sides of the aisle. I love Nikki Haley btw. So much common sense.
Yeah, Nikki looks good to me. Funny thing, I'm your prototype Patriarchal White Omniphobic Racist Oppressor ... and I like Nikki, I couldn't care less that she's brown and female, she seems to have what it takes. She'd have more good ideas in five minutes than Biden will have in the rest of his life.
Choosing the president, I think for the near future, will entail selecting the better of two bad candidates. THIS is the reason for smaller government -give either of them less influence and less to screw up or use for their own personal advantage - looking at you Joetato.
And, FWIW, I like The Bad Orange Man - as did the ENTIRE country when the Apprentice was on - it was only after he took on "withHer" - crooked Hillary, that the knives came out. BUT, perception is reality and I think his second term will be much like the first, obstruction all day every day from the PRO-crime democRATs.
Nicki Haley said in the debate we should immediately cut ourselves off from China. Did you agree? Did you not find this both alarming and ignorant of our deep dependence?
That's fine, the point is that there's some good people there. Dunno, I'm Canadian so judging at a distance -- CC *seems* competent to me, and he calls a spade a f'cking shovel when it comes to Trump, so I like that.
Democracy most certainly cannot survive much more of Wokeness, which amounts to a brazen attack on American traditional values that kept us strong, free, and prosperous, with an emphasis on protecting the individual againstthe power of the state. Today we see the long arm of the state interfering directly with that freedom. We see the Biden administration threatening social media to do its bidding (!); we see horrific unequal application of the law; we see refusal to enforce laws with which the Left disagrees; we see attacks on freedom of speech in much if not nealy all of academia, which has spread to corporations and many other aspects of American life; we see attacks on the right to own guns for self-defense even thought the Left has no answer as to how it would restrain criminals from owning and using guns; it certainly has indicated that not only can it not restrain the criminals from engaging in so much theft that chain stores are closing all over the country, but in some states the government itself has authorized theft up to $999, as if theft is not wrong. Individuals own stock in those corportions that are forced to close due to "shrinkage" and so do pension funds for individuals.
Agree. That's why failure should not be an option. It has to be stopped and that's why a candidate who can win is so important, and that means that the moderate and centrist vote *must* be courted. And that means that Trump should not be the candidate. But it's all pointless because he will be the candidate. But Biden will win so long as they can keep him from falling over and slurring his words. A senile, corrupt, woke-enslaved POTUS. That's what the Republicans are going to give the country. I myself wish there was a better plan.
I think back to Eisenhower. Everybody sorta new he was going to be president, but of course he had to pick a party. It hardly mattered which one tho. Either would be fine, both were respectable. His Republicans were to the (sane) left of today's Rats.
Eisenhower is my favorite post WW2 president. But, he made some key concessions; most critically putting Allen Dulles in charge of the CIA where he was responsible for the ousting of democratically elected prime minister of Iran and forming a coup in Guatemala to oust its President as a favor for United Fruit. After several failed assassination attempts by the CIA/Agents of Castro in Cuba and the failed Bay of Pigs, Kennedy got rid of him. Ironically, Dulles was feeding McCarthy bad information in the early 1950s to get rid of him because McCarthy was investigating the CIA for communist (this is actually kinda of funny) and Eisenhower was able to make a move against his fellow Republican several years later because of that bad info that was fed to him. Dulles also lied to Eisenhower about the U2 program, claiming that the Soviets couldn't shoot it down and having flights over Russia when Eisenhower told him not to. Of course the U2 was shot down over Russia causing a major incident that eventually led to Soviet attempt to put nuclear weapons in Cuba. That one mistake of putting Dulles in charge of the CIA is one of the greatest miscalculations in American History and has caused so many kickbacks and American pain. I do think, if my memory is correct Eisenhower was a non-voter while active military but voted Republican in 1950. He was basically drafted to become the nominee from Republicans trying to take advantage of his popularity.
"one a doddering fool and one an egotistical lying opportunist"
Correction: one a doddering fool AND a man who appears to be bought by our major adversaries working through his son and distributing millions through his son and to his family; it's called pay to play. I'd have to thus refer to HIM as a egotistical lying opportunist.
Susan, half of one party is in love with a craven politician who’s halfway to prison and the other is too afraid of saying their candidate is too old. We have the candidates but not decent political parties to put them in.
Agree, Susan; however, BOTH are narcissistic liars!
But sadly, the divide is so wide that I fear we will, once again see a Biden win. After all, “He is the most popular president in American history” and accomplished his major win from his basement! The few times he did hold rallies he was lucky if 81 people showed up - mostly made up of his handlers & the MSM. Impressive, yes! Uh, not to me.
My question is WHY will the DNC not allow anyone to run against Biden?? (See the latest on RFK Jr. and the DNC tactics against him.). No debates, but we all know why that is.
The Constitution provides that all born within the United States are citizens. No other requirements allowed. Some states used to require a literacy test in order to vote, but that was used just to exclude Black voters so the Supreme Court threw out those laws.
Well then the test should be required to be a *voting* citizen. Yeah, I know the idea is subject to abuse but the alternative is an electorate, most of whom can't name the three branches of government. Here's the test:
1) 2 + 2 = ____
2) The government can give us free stuff. (T/F)
3) Name three past presidents. ___ ___ ___
4) Name the two houses of Congress. ___ ___
5) Warm air rises. (T/F)
6) All Black failures are Whitey's fault. (T/F)
7) Mathematics is a system of oppression. (T/F)
8) Sacking the Capitol is valid protest. (T/F)
9) Men can get pregnant. (T/F)
10) What is the national debt to the nearest 10 trillion. ___
That's ok, but really, who that would flunk that exam should be voting? Anyway, I made it up then and there. Write a better one. Or maybe just the existing citizenship test for immigrants. No pass, no vote.
Well then they should see it, that's my point. Sad to think that -- so they say -- a huge majority of natural born citizens would not pass it. BTW the test is freely available online. I'd make you a bet if it were doable: match me, a Canadian, against some randomly chosen American, and I'll kick his butt.
Not only do few Americans know of George Orwell’s dystopian society, many supposedly intelligent and educated people actually support suppression of free speech they view as hateful or somehow dangerous. In a rather frightening recent survey of law school students at Harvard, most of these supposedly best and brightest deemed the Constitution dated and irrelevant.
Yes - and as a leftist myself (in Canada), I find it frightening that people just accept things 100% uncritically if it is coming from the left. In Canada, any questioning of the left is usually met by some whataboutism that includes Trump - or accusations of being a Trumper. I'm not even close to being a Trumper - always disliked him way before politics, I am not even on the right and still am not.
But these irrational, rigid, uncompromising positions coming from the left on quite a few issues - are NOT the path we should be on. But it's hard to watch grown, educated, "sophisticated" adults accept these positions with total obedience, believing any questions or concerns are marks of "right-wing-ignorance-extremism" and will simply parrot what they hear, and acquiese obediently. It IS Orwellian and it seems unreal to watch it happen and by PEOPLE you assumed at least had critical thinking skills and a tiny bit of courage.
So it's not just America - although it's even scarier to me that Americans, who I always thought of as bold and proud individuals, just sit back watching this happen.
Either they lack courage en masse, or the brainwashing has been really effective. What's scarier?
That comment terrifies me. So do the ones prior to it. Our young people are UNEDUCATED - on purpose. Western Countries have been taken over by the Marxists. The UNELECTED woman heading up the EU just declared her excitement over introducing a DIGITAL ID and Monetary (Tracking) system that will control your movement and money. They are selling it like the latest and greatest Smart Phone. Kids don’t know they MUST have one to get into their 15 minute Cubicle 150 SF home identical to all the others and if they don’t BEHAVE, they might be locked in for two days.
"Will it mean victory against an increasingly oppressive government willing and able to employ Orwellian measures such as declaring faux states of emergency, suspending democracy, further censoring opposition press and government critics, and ultimately throwing political opponents in jail?" My prediction: a renewed push by the Democrats to pack the court before this case is heard.
Evans! So I just released a podcast on the topic of "Menticide" which I don't think too many people are familiar with. When we talk about a totalitarian government, we have to really think and understand, "wait, is my country really out to get me?" And if we think "yes," what are we doing about that?
With today being 9/11, the podcast is on if the events of that day were a false flag attack, if we're experiencing menticism, and what could we do about it. Coming to the realization that our government just might be a totalitarian regime if like the first step:
We are indebted to Dr Bhattacharva and others for daring to have their voices heard and to the FREE PRESS for providing the means. If FREE SPEECH doesn’t prevail neither will the American Dream!
I well remember reading the Declaration when it came out. Shared it with my wife who’s reaction was that I had been “radicalized”. That was the very dark days of 2020-21. I shared it, along with other numerous articles about the failure of masks to stop the spread, with the principal of my daughter’s school to try and convince her to stop mandating masks. She didn’t listen. And on it went. As Jay points out all of what was in the declaration back in 2020 has held up. Our fundamental enemy is not our woke, totalitarian government, it’s the willful ignorance of our fellow citizens. I loved Julius Erving and marveled at his ability to levitate on the court, but Jay Bhattacharya is my “Dr. Jay” as he soars over a court of ignorance and censorship and plants a slam dunk for the truth!
*Is* it a win? Is anything going to change? Social media companies are more than willing to censor without the government telling them to; in fact YouTube just radically expanded its "medical misinformation policy" to basically mean that any natural or homeopathic medicine channel (and I guess all Christian Scientists) can be banned at any moment.
All this really means is the government isn't *supposed* to tell social media to censor stuff. It doesn't stop them from doing it on their own, and it doesn't stop the government from de-facto continuing to do it.
In the court disclosures, I hear a reference to govt threatening regulating the communications industry to coerce these media companies to censure. Could this threat be to revoke the 230 exemption from liability for publishing content? That liability pressures non-exempt, traditional media companies to consider the consequences of publishing content that violates pornography, hate speech or slander laws, and for profit companies running ads without support to verify claims.
Jay Battacharya, you are a rock star. I remember reading the Great Barrington Declaration when it was published in October 2020 in the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages. Since then, I’ve asked numerous people if they’d read it- and, no surprise, very few people had even heard of it! It is incredibly disheartening and frightening that our government would go to such lengths to suppress 3 brilliant minds. These are legitimate, well respected scientists - whose paper was supported by thousands of colleagues. I am thrilled that they have prevailed.
Yesterday was Chuck Todd's last day on Meet the Press, where he opined about how he spent the entire time on the show searching for the Truth. I don't recall him ever having Dr. Battacharya on the show to "inform the public." The corporate press and social media companies showed their faces and tilted the scales. The failure and wrongness of those who followed this policy show up in test scores for kids and the excess deaths of despair among adults. There must be a reckoning, and glad the Free Press is pursuing it.
Chuck Todd wouldn't know the truth if it jumped in his back pocket, and if you think he was bad, just wait for the new clown show production of Meet The Press hosted by Kristen Welker.
You didn't watch Chuck pass the torch to Kristen yesterday, it was so moving and inspirational. I watch that as a form of torture but also to see how they are marketing issues. Its disgusting but necessary.
He gave her an alarm clock with a battery back up that had him wake up for the show. That was a nice touch as I always try to find something nice in something awful
When Comcast CEO Brian Roberts went on a nervous Morning Joe and told them nothing would change with his acquisition, it explains the political agenda of Meet The Press. It’s what mogals get to do. And if 80% of media ownership is on one side of the political spectrum.....fill in the blank.
Despite the fact that I read news and social media online almost every day, I didn't hear about the Great Barrington Declaration until months after it was published. I remember an era when something that significant would have been reported on widely in the press, if only for people to denounce, debunk, or make fun of it. The fact that we now live in an era when opposing viewpoints are actively suppressed, with government involvement in that suppression, is deeply chilling.
You got me thinking...., how the heck did I know about the Great Barrington Declaration from Day One? And then I remembered: It's all because Dr. Joseph Mercola (I'm a subscriber) posted an essay from someone at the AIER (the American Institute for Economic Research) which I liked; so I began to subscribe to their newsletter. They were the initial sponsors of the Great Barrington Declaration. I no longer subscribe to the AIER, but I'm glad that, temporarily, I did. I sent the link to the Declaration "sign up page" to every scientist I knew in order to help them get signatures..... Go, Dr. Bhattacharya. You make me proud to be a human being!! : )
The studies about the political viewpoints of members of the press have made it clear that the Media is a collection of Leftist propaganda agencies. When I was in grad school in the early '00s, the youngest professors thought it was their moral duty to use their lecterns as bully pulpits to indoctrinate their students. (Oh yes, in far-Left circles, this has been a secular religion for a long time.) I'm quite sure that young journalists feel the same fervor toward their audience.
More and more people are beginning to discover that there is no American political there there. Likewise, the players on the nasty little screen attempting to control the American destiny have slipped squarely into the realm of the pathological. The Republican Party is MIA and the manufactured DNC/MSM/Davos/CCP narrative clearly doesn't come close to any legitimate recognizable American reality. In what free market/capitalism professing world does political and corporate leadership allow riots, looting and the burning of small business or open mass smash and grab theft on the scale we are witnessing. The capitalists have abandoned capitalism and America. "..we the people.." are on our on. (Which is where we've always been.)
Musk/Twitter/X aside, most major internet platforms need to be broken up and reduced to a utility level status. Claiming coercion or not, they more than willingly joined hands with the bureaucratic/surveillance state in the suppression of free speech, the exchange of ideas and the free flow of information. All totalitarian regimes build bureaucratic structures that thrive on the looting of peoples, tax dollars, labor, economies and natural resources. Here, they also employ a well paid cadre of entirely mercenary censorious poseur Marxists to hold vital American institutions hostage to an ideological utopianism neither they nor any other Americans actually believe in.
It's real and it's happening. We witness daily and are surrounded by the human damage and chaos these monsters create. The truth/fact based reality we are attempting here, the Republic and the Constitution are the only way forward.
(I hope you're catching the Kirn/Taibbi AMERICA THIS WEEK discussions each Friday/weekend. If you have the time MODERN WISDOM has a three hour interview with Eric Weinstein on YouTube. This is an entirely new age and requires an entirely new narrative.)
True. I remember the very esteemed Mike Wallace saying very earnestly that once educated you become liberal. I think that belief is where the wheels starting coming off the cart. No Mikey, everybody who believes in the Constitution is a liberal. Some have a conservative APPROACH thereto and others have a progressive approach thereto but we are all liberals. But to your point the progressive movement has infected all professions.
Celia, there was government suppression yes, but the social media platforms did not have to buy into it. They have First Amendment rights too, and I find that the thrust of this essay is too easy on the platforms that caved to the gov’t’s pressure. Google, Facebook, Twitter are among the largest corporations in the world. They could have easily faced down the government to continue to offer contrary opinions. They chose not to. They took the easy cost effective way out.
The fact that the Leftist-run social media companies caved easily to government pressure doesn't absolve the government of exerting that pressure. Indeed, it makes the decision-makers at those companies *complicit* in the government's crime of depriving people of free speech.
Governments have always exerted pressure. This is not new. Everybody’s going crazy here because its Biden. He’s an old guy but this predates him by more than a century. You know it, I know it. Everybody knows that. Every single Administration since 1800 has exerted pressure to not publish. It’s up to media organizations to resist. It is their First Amendment right. Think of the Pentagon Papers. Think of the Gulf of Tonkin. Think of Iran Contra. How about Watergate? Spiro Agnew? Clinton and his follies? They were all exposed by an alert free press. Every single US government has done this and will continue to do this until we’re all dead and buried. I have to laugh at the shock and indignity displayed by both the writer and so many commenters here. The horror!
Simply put, these behemoth companies caved because it suited them to do so. They did not want to die on that hill. But they could have fought. And they would have won. Just like the doctors did.
Until now, most Americans believed that it was WRONG for the government to exert that pressure and that it was the DUTY of the press to resist.
But now, nearly half of Americans believe that the government OUGHT to control the press. Now, the majority of the media are members of just one political party, enthusiastic zealots of a political ideology that deems those who disagree with the party's narrative "Nazis."
The fact that these companies readily complied and NO ONE ON THE LEFT CARES is a clear indicator that our system is broken, very probably beyond repair. A free press was meant to help reign in the misbehavior of government, not be complicit in helping tyrants to silence dissent.
So I’m not sure where you got the stats on almost half of Americans wanting to control the press. News to me - but I’m all ears. And as to the ‘complicit lefty’ social media - we all must keep in mind they succumbed to pressure. Had there been no pressure, they very well could have continued with the contrary tweets and ‘dangerous’ opinions and everything else the gov’t thought as misinformation. Why? Well, likes and views of course. In other words, money.
So why stop? Had they been truly progressive as you say they would have needed no prodding from Biden’s henchmen. They would have censored all on their own.
Why does lefty CNN rail and rail on Trump? They can’t stand him yet put him on the news feed every single night. Money and ads and views.
As I keep on repeating - no social media had to cave. They just did it to protect what they perceived to be in their best interest. Not their finest hour.
As you cogently point out - the problem is us. How many Americans sided with our bozo government and their lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates and demonization of anyone who dared question them?
I agree but I also think it is time to get to the bottom of how people have been adroitly manipulated. Rob Henderson had a good article last month on the power of movements. It was factual and I had a few aha moments related to our current circumstances. We know that there is some odd cultists behavior. How do we free the members?
The thing is, we are supposed to be able to trust institutions. That is the point of them. If you constantly have to question every institution, society will collapse. So it makes sense that people want to believe when these groups tell them stuff. 1) they have been conditioned to do so their whole lives and 2) They NEED to be able to believe them.
Guilty, for a bit. I was in a silo that started to crack just before COVID hit. And with a little extra time at home, I started to expand my reading/listening options and discovered a whole bunch of smart common-sense voices showing me we were being duped.
Same here. Read the Declaration the day it was published. To this day, so few people I ask have even heard of it. Hard to see that as anything but successful censorship. The left will argue it’s because it’s not a popular idea.
It made perfect sense to protect high risk people & keep the schools, businesses & society open. I was shocked when I tried to get friends & family members to read it & they refused on the grounds it “didn’t support what Dr. Fauci said & he was the one they trusted.” And guess what? They still trust him & think he’s being unfairly maligned. Thank you, Dr. B. for unwavering commitment to the truth.
They still trust Fauci, they still think Trump won in 2016 because the Russians interfered- hell, they still think the SCOTUS “stole” 2000 for Dubya. For people who have “progressed beyond religion,” the left sure clings to its dogma against all logic and reason.
1. They hate stories of people immigrating here with nothing and from a life of abject poverty and come to the US and make a smashing success of their lives. How can you be a victim if you work hard and become a success. Remember work is a four letter word to the left.
2. Like lemmings they believe anything that inept, corrupt, the ever senile Joe and his minions tell them and they hate anybody who contradicts the head of the Biden crime family and his corrupt administration.
In my 36 years as a practicing nurse working among all types of infectious disease, never had I witnessed such a bizarre response by health and government authorities as I did with COVID. The worst of it was how the government officials (politicians) would issue edicts using limited or biased information then never admit they were wrong or reverse course once the strength of scientific evidence was established and revealed. Thank you thank you, Dr Battacharya and your colleagues, for your work and having the courage and tenacity to take on this important fight.
Putting infected people in nursing homes was not only stupid, it was criminally negligent. But Cuomo and his ilk were lionized for their "courage" by the leftist press, whien they should have been tried under the penal law.
my fav response was the governments: you better stay home, wear a mask and get your shots because otherwise you'll kill grandma but if you want to protest the virus will magically disappear while you support BLM and burn everything down
I liked the cartoon. if I dont wear pants and you pee on me I will get covid. but if we both wear pants and pee in them we wont get covid but we will get soaked horrible pants..but even so called smart people shared that nonsense
My first thought, when I saw how the government was reacting after the initial 14 days, was "what happened to the old-school quarantine system?" It made no sense to shut down our economy and keep healthy people at home.
Fauci's initial objection to mask-wearing also baffled me. Although we know now that masks don't do much, initially it would have made a great deal more sense for people to mask up and carry on with their lives. I personally made over a hundred cloth masks for family and friends, since many of us had "essential" jobs, and masks were the only thing that could give us any sense of protection.
Exactly. But Fauci could not get his story straight. First, masks would not help. Then they were not just important, but vital.
I started in making cloth masks at the very beginning, having come to the conclusion that it might help (at least preventing against droplet spread) and wouldn't hurt. And almost everyone I know thought that, even back when Fauci was against masks.
But none of us wanted masks to be mandatory!
When Fauci flip-flopped on masks, suddenly it was political, not a personal choice. Masks were forced onto the faces of children, who were least at risk from the virus, but most at risk for social learning loss from not being able to see people's faces.
Most of the people I know who still wear masks in public do so largely because it soothes their fears (or the fears of someone close to them). Recently, my husband and I wore paper masks in public for a few days after recovering from our second bout of Covid, and that was certainly about droplet spread, since we couldn't predict when we might have to cough.
But the reality is that the strains going around are highly contagious. My father-in-law caught Covid for his second time (and NOT from me and my husband--we caught it from him!), despite being housebound, and despite the fact that only a handful of people had been in his room, none of them for more than about five minutes.
I'm glad that the coroner recognized, when Dad passed away, that Covid was only a contributing factor, not the primary cause. Dad had recovered from the acute infection, but he could not shake the pneumonia, and the strain was too much for his almost-90-year-old cardiopulmonary system.
Your perspective is refreshing Paula. Thank you for speaking out. You are one of few who will. I was shocked by the amount of highly educated people in your field who “rolled over” for the Fauci plan. Many lives could have been saved by pausing and changing course. I know that many caregivers were afraid of losing their jobs, but it failed me to see how so many could continue a course destined to fail. Thousands of years of medical research and reasoning and a highly trained group of scientists, doctors and nurses couldn’t collectively form some kind of resistance. There was Dr. Battacharya and a few others trying to help and he was censored and ignored by his own colleagues. I am still baffled and I no longer trust many so called “medical experts”.
The CDC's initial effort to provide support for masking was a 'study' of a couple hairstylists who got covid but masked and allegedly didn't pass it on to any of their clients.
And this we were supposed to view as 'science' propagated by people to be referred to as 'the science'.
Meanwhile even when kids were finally allowed back into schools, it was more as prisoners (silent lunch, masking, trapped in classrooms, no recess) than as students.
But no worries said 'the science', kids are resilient!
I despise every bureaucrat and elected official who caused and allowed this to continue past spring 2020, and (im)patiently await a day of reckoning.
“The worst of it was how the government officials (politicians) would issue edicts using limited or biased information then never admit they were wrong or reverse course once the strength of scientific evidence was established and revealed”
It was never about politicians being right or wrong about Covid. It was about CONTROL and they used that control to change election rules, rig the 2020 election with harvested ballots. and get a imbecilic puppet elected president.
I am a 69 year old physician who would like to thank Dr. Bhattacharya for his courageous stand. I signed the Great Barrington Declaration as soon as it was made public. I knew in my bones what the ongoing shutdowns were doing to the lives of individuals and that much of what we were being told was of weak to non-existent in terms of scientific evidence. The whole pandemic experience brought home to me the power of fear and how some will exploit that fear. All Americans should spend some time outside the US in 2nd or 3rd world countries; then they would value the freedom that our founders bequeathed to us.
Congrats on your courage, Doctor. We needed more of you, but like your profession, mine, (the law) is now in the hands of committed leftists and their dupes. And the only way to change that is to lop off the heads of the professional associations that impose such madness.
In Thailand people still wear masks all day and night, every day. You can see a single person driving in their car, wearing a mask. All the employees in every store wear masks. The govt. has created a frightened, unthinking population who do as they are told. I haven't worn a mask in several years and get some disparaging looks from the natives.
Regarding exploitation of fear, Rob Henderson had an outstanding article on movements last month that addressed use of fear. Very calm and dispassionate analysis.
I’ve had the honor of having met Dr. Battacharya through Hillsdale. To say he’s both humble and principled is an understatement. This essay reflects both qualities. Thank you FP for publishing it.
The fight isn’t over. The government still has virtually unassailable authority over scientific research in countless areas from human sexuality to energy. It starts in our public schools with kindergartners. Our administrators tout “complex thinking.” We should laugh in their general direction. What we’ve got is complexity within defined parameters of dogma. We need a lot more people like Dr Battacharya and institutions like Hillsdale to take this monolith down.
This "fight" is a fight with the Democratic Party over free speech, the integrity of our Constitutional rights, scientific freedom, sensible government policy, and liberty as a core bedrock of our society.
And it's not the Democrat voters, it's their leadership who established in 2015 that they can rig rules to keep themselves in power. They must be removed en masse to save the Party and the future of our country as a democracy.
I can only say thank God for brave, principled people such as Dr. Bhattacharya. His name should be inscribed with the likes of Nathan Hale, John Paul Jones and Abraham Lincoln.
Could not agree more. He and his colleagues are true American heroes, reflective of America at its very best. This also applies to Bari, Matt Taibi, Michael Shellenberger, Jordan Peterson and the others who shine a harsh light on the duplicity of those in power.
“But I can never go back to the uncomplicated faith and naive confidence I had in America when I was young.” That sentiment certainly applies to me and I expect to a, hopefully, growing segment of the population. At the same time, polls (for whatever they are worth ) show that it’s even money that the current regime that will be re-elected in 2024. That is truly horrifying.
Just as we can no longer trust many media sources and journalists to be truthful, I no longer trust any polls. The kind of corrupt manipulation these entities use to sway our minds is beyond anything I thought possible in this country. Critical thinking leads me to think that polls are corrupted as well. They don’t encourage or discourage me. I’m choosing to remain fearless.
Don’t be so excited. The government intentionally violated the essence of the First Amendment and they will intentionally do it again as much as they want because there is no deterrent here and there is no significant punishment here for this behavior. They don’t give two shits what the courts say. Symbolic victories are not victories. Victory can be declared when something significant enough happens to force compliance and change behavior. The Biden administration has no such constraints to change their behavior at all and they won’t!
What we CAN do is to resist their next mandates in every way possible. With lawsuits, massive public resistance and even force, if necessary. Our Founders gave us the Bill of Rights for a reason. But if we don't fight for it, it's a dead letter.
Perfectly TRUE! The courts may issue their opinions, but the government is under no pressure to comply. There is no mechanism for enforcing these decisions and no consequences for ignoring them. If a group of average citizens were to sue any branch of government the courts would declare that they had no "standing" to do so.
We are at the mercy of which ever party controls the levers of power. The only thing that we, the people, can do is to STOP voting with our hearts and begin using our brains when we fill out our ballots. Even THEN, it is still a crap shoot.
The only thing that will bring about that change is the election of a very strong president (executive) who will bring the bureaucrat dogs of the executive branch to heel. The courts can keep slapping them down but they are already attacking the courts. Congress could also impact things but Congress is useless. It cannot even address budgetary issues despite having the purse strings.
Sad but true. They never acknowledge any of the scams and hoaxes, from the WMD lies to the Trump/Russia election interference scheme. And they never will.
Sadly this may be true. Unless the people that violated the First Amendment are actually punished and held accountable this will just we a worthless slap on the wrist.
So true, and the DOJ has the deepest of the deep pockets. Humiliating that US citizens are funding the censorship and now the appeal. Horrible decisions were made and there's zero accountability.
You want a change in behavior, Wanderman? Then please get a decent candidate whose last name does not start with a T and vote him or her in. Number 45 wanted to call for a national emergency and seize voting machines three years ago, (slightly counter to the Constitution I’d say), enjoys having fake electors, listens to idiotic lawyers - and never understood that state votes once confirmed after numerous recounts cannot be changed. Sounds like a guy with no constraints who also doesn’t give a shit about what courts say. I have to admit, he is entertaining.
I am overcome with joyous emotion reading about your vindication. I have been following you since the beginning of the pandemic. In the beginning we were very nervous about the virus. It was hard to know who to believe. It was clear that politics played a heavy hand. But you, Marty Makary, and Vinay Prasad made the most sense to me. Stay in it! Preserve our America values. It’s interesting to me that those I trusted most are all immigrants to the USA.
The first pillar of medical ethics, respect for autonomy, without which the other 3 pillars (beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice) cannot stand, was violated repeatedly and systematically throughout the pandemic.
Brave physicians, including Dr. Battacharya and his colleagues, put their livelihoods at risk to fight for our patients and, as he says, all Americans. This suit and the suit against the FDA brought by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, who personally saved many of my patients during the Delta wave in 2021 by delivering efficient monoclonal antibodies to patients at risk of hospitalization (before the Biden administration turned off the spigot of this life-saving intervention to Texas and Florida), was successful with 2 other physicians in their suit against the FDA last week. She continues to be vilified in our community to this day. She knew, as all of us on the front lines knew, that the “fully vaccinated” were becoming ill with Covid in droves, while Birx et. al continued to gaslight the public with their silly 95% effective narrative.
Realizing my “democratic republic”, the US government, was behind this shocked me to my core.
They interfered with my ability to give TRUE informed consent to my patients in violation of every one of the pillars of medical ethics.
Nuremberg type tribunals should take place, not for retribution, but as a signal to medical professionals that this behavior is condemnable, and must NEVER happen again. Unfortunately, it continues even with this ruling, while Birx is back working for Pharma to pay for another vacation home. Orwellian dystopia meets good old-fashioned unethical and greedy behavior sanctioned by our own government right in front of our very eyes.
Dr, B, you are my hero is this dystopic mess. God bless you and Godspeed!
You said, "Realizing my “democratic republic”, the US government, was behind this shocked me to my core."
My question is WHY? I am a child of the 60's and lived through and experienced the lies and deceptions of the government regarding above ground nuclear testing as well as the Viet Nam war. NOTHING shocks or surprises me about this. One of the first rules of power is "consolidation of that power", which means that despite developments it is essential that they do NOTHING that may reduce that power. The later Trump admin, and then the Biden admin have confirmed this again, and again.
Which is why we all should be true conservatives. Not Republicans or Demicrats. Fight big government and the expansion of its powers at every turn. Big government has not been and never can be the answer. Once it has enough power to do a modicum of good, instead, it uses that power to gain more instead.
The truth can stand on its own. Only lies need to be forcefully upheld. I have lost so much trust in our institutions through the past few years, hopefully this is a step forward to more truth coming forward into the light.
The events surrounding the Great Barrington Declaration are still vivid in my mind. Our grade school children were wearing masks to school and had long stretches at home in radically subpar online learning environment. From August- October 2020 we were beginning to question what was actually going on. Weeks after the Declaration our entire family contracted covid, which for us meant loss of taste and stuffy noses. By the new year Vaccine For All was being included in the Ministry of Truth’s Newspeak regardless if you were young healthy and hd natural immunity. We experienced huge pressure during this time from our progressive PA community. Dr Bhattacharya was one of many who became a symbol of hope for us.
Even now, the facts emerge that the booster makes you twice as likely to contract Covid. But how many know that? Or will dispute it as "misinformation?"
Trumps? Hmmm. And speaking of he who's name shall not be mentioned.....Did Trump ever engaged in such Orwellian idiocy? No he did not. But the senile imbecile, inveterate grifter and Depends-wearing clown installed to rule us is Soviet to his core.
Trump allowed it to happen when the pandemic started. He was completely out of his depth at that point. I had been reluctantly pleased with his policy accomplishments up to that point, but his lack of leadership on Covid was shocking.
Think about that. Don't we want a President who was not a medical expert to defer to his CDC et al? How was he to know that Fauci was a compromised fraud. But recall that where Trump did have expertise, such as closing down travel from China he was excoriated as a racist. I well remember the idiot health officials in NYC and NY State extolling people to party in Chinatown for the Lunar New Year. Trump also did Warp Speed which gave Biden the vaccine that he grossly misused. Trump may not have been perfect but I blame Fauci, Birx, Collins for being stooges of China and grossly misleading our government.
I agree that they tried to play us. But people such as Drs. Battacharya, Risch, McCullough, Makary et al fought back. So did some lawyers. In Spring 2020, another lawyer and I separately sued CT governor Lamont over his lockdown efforts. Mine over his 5 person limit edict and my colleague over his mask mandates. Not everyone believed this nonsense and many - but not nearly enough - resisted and fought back.
I do remember that Trump's initial response (travel bans) was excoriated by the Media. Indeed, everything he said was twisted and decried by the Media. With the Leftist Media fighting him at every turn, he would have been better off telling people to do the opposite of what he thought they should do!
But yeah, it seems that too few people remember that Democrats were initially PROMOTING events that would cause the spread. Just as they later promoted the protests, as if Covid could magically tell who was a "righteous" protester and who wasn't.
Yes all those others are to blame very much, but you're being too generous to Trump. I don't recall the backlash over closing down travel being that much of a furor. He should've stuck to his gun on that anyhow. And ofc now we know the lab theory and all that is true now. But he just couldn't help himself and had to sound almost racist when he talked about China. Another normal politician would've done a better job presenting the case, and called for investigation seriously. But Trump being Trump he just couldn't help himself. His style stokes the Leftists with TDS and the rest of us suffer because nothing can function normally with the drama between him and that bunch. Still there was a sliver of hope when Jared got his friends together and tried to formulate a national crisis response. Now the response could've sucked or ended up benefitting all his cronies, or it could've given us a coherent and capable national policy to manage it. But we'll never know because Trump just decided to drop it and told the governors to deal with it, with the hope to see the blue state governors tank. The result was an utter chaos and incoherent managements based on politics, and even more division and polarization we didn't need. On top of that he, again Trump being Trump, said some crazy thing like telling people household cleaners can kill the virus. It's really too bad because in hindsight now we're finding he often said things that turned out to be true, because he did have inside information. But he also,said so many wild and crazy stuff, and sometimes sounding like he's racist when he's trying to be funny. It was his antics that got all the airtime and truthful things he said got lost in the midst.
I also find it disturbing that he didn't know Fauci was funding all those researches in Wuhan and the serious extent of the corruption. He may sound bombastic, but in reality he and his people are not very sophisticated working behind the scene. No one was even looking into the background of the guy? The Dems would've played dirty politics and dug up (and even made up) all sorts of dirt. He should at least subscribe to Glenn Greenwald who dug up a lot of sinister things Fauci did.
Celia is right, Trump was out of his depth and other people screwing up or doing horrible things whataboutism doesn't negate the fact that he was the president in charge and his handling of the pandemic was pretty poor. The only good thing one can arguably say is many governors handled it even worse.
Yes sir, Trump has/had some flaws and missteps, but he was very good at seeing what needed to be done. Too bad he trusted Covid response to those who were not worthy of same.
My view is that Trump is complicit with the DNC and installed as a 'bad cop' that they can continue to vilify but never catch. It creates hate on the liberal side and support on the GOP side. It locks up the presidency so anyone on the DNC side can run against Trump and it is expected that a win is reasonable.
Before Trump took office, I realized that there were two possibilities: 1) That he was an outsider and was going to clean up DC. 2) that he was a plant and nothing would happen.
Trump had many opportunities to take down the corruption in DC. Many will give the excuse that everyone was against him and how could he ever prevail against such rampant corruption. As head of the Excecutive branch there were many tools at his disposal and anyone questioning them would be taken down along with the other corrupt, but he never used them. State of the Union "I have issued arrest warrants for the following people:". He had Executive orders. He had Grand Jury's. He had control of the military and secret service. He could replace the heads of CIA, FBI, etc.
All of this corruption that was supposedly against him from day one, would have also been against him in the primary's. We watched Bernie, one of the most popular for two election cycles get replaced twice with worse candidates that the people didn't want. We watched Tulsi Gabbard get eliminated based on 'media polls' that were fixed and debates that were fixed. But we are supposed to believe that Trump was so clever he got past all of this control to become president then not do anything but be a punching bag for the next 4 years? Heck, they impeached Trump for Bidens crimes in Ukraine. After all the attacks on Trump, they still can't make is so he can't be on the ballot (all the while looking like they are trying but never successful).
Agree totally. In fact with Covid and George Floyd he was handed a gift. He could've played the great statesman and rise above the fray, and sailed onto a crushing win in the next election despite all his haterz foaming at their mouths. He really missed the mark by not taking charge with Covid, and then politicizing things even further.
Fauci and Birx told Trump that covid was a bio weapon designed by the Chinese in retaliation for his trade policies with China . They played him with partial truths( it was bioengineered in wuhan financed by Fauci). Trump prides himself on knowing people and when he’s being lied to . He blew it when he failed to detect Fauci as power hungry manipulator. Trump should have fired him. Dr Bhattarcharya was available to offer his opinions but was not asked. Same for the other authors and signatory of The Great Barrington Declaration. Ongoing disaster. Look what CDC and FDA and White house are doing right now by pushing the new booster on all including children . This time people are responsible to pay for this booster. That fact coupled with the more pervasive distrust will hopefully prevent most from taking the dangerous modified mrna “ vaccine” booster.
There were a lot of missteps made by Trump but you have to consider what he was up against. The entire MSM, FBI, DOJ, CIA, hell the entire government was against him. I think he is smarter now and admitted to not having the right people in the right positions. His is a fighter and we need him back in to correct all the things the leftist have damaged. I have seen the evil they are doing. If we are going to make America great again, and he is our nominated contender and you don’t like him, hold your nose and vote. I want to win no matter what it takes.
From the very start of his administration, it was clear that he was bad at choosing underlings and bad at managing them. The same flaw DeSantis has demonstrated with his mismanaged campaign.
I will not vote for Trump again. I only voted for him in 2020 because the Democrats had demonstrated how unhinged they are so abundantly from 2016 onwards. Trump is not a solution to the problem; he is just gasoline on the fire that Leftists want to use to burn the U.S. to the ground.
Mistake, no one is 100% on, but with all that was happening, who would figure BEFORE all this the corruption of so much of the government, e.g. DOJ, FBI. One, before this, would think the "science" arena would not be penetrated. I was involved with the Volen Center at Brandeis University for decades, and could not believe they would have DEI "presentation" for half of a graduate student day long program I was involved in funding. No longer support any of that University. BUT, just like the main article--he too was stunned could (and did) happen in the USA.
Way back in the early 00s, in grad school, I had already seen the way Leftists reacted to science that did not support their ideology. While I was dismayed by the capture of science institutions, I was not surprised.
I was responding to Celia- demagoguery is exactly the problem we have. We need more INDEPENDENT THOUGHT- not belief in one or the other point of view without adding reason and actual thought to the mix.
“But I can never go back to the uncomplicated faith and naive confidence I had in America when I was young.”
This makes two of us. While I’m grateful to you and others who have pushed back with success, I have concerns about departments, agencies, bureaus, institutions, Et al. The unelected controls the elected. Which has been an issue prior to covid. The pandemic pulled the curtain back.
I have followed this free speech hero for 3 years, and we all should be grateful for his steady and reasonable efforts to end this tyranny. I would like to see him take on Stanford’s own “Internet Observatory” next, where there has been and will likely be again, speech censorship work related to the elections. As a Stanford alum, this kind of program embarrasses me and does exactly what it accuses its conservative opponents of going - it interferes with the election by steering the discussion and debunks narratives that are not “approved”. I hope this case reaches the Supreme Court so that this administration can be exposed for its tyranny in the most visible way possible.
You are not alone in disbelief of how our country violated our free speech rights in the past few years. Many of us had our blinders ripped away and have been horrified and so disillusioned. The worst part for me is the number of our fellow citizens who supported this along with our government and painted anyone who disagreed as selfish or ignorant and actually wanted the dissenters imprisoned.
And first they will come for the Christians, who historically are skeptical (at minimum) of government. Look at what was discovered about the FBI going after “traditional” Catholics. No one will be immune who doesn’t bow down at the altar of government propaganda.
The thing that scared me was encouraging people to tell on their neighbors and friends and then people actually doing that. That is straight out of the Soviet playbook.
Thank you Dr Bhattacharya for everything you've been doing. Its concerning that there are government agencies that have a carve out to continue to carry on with this totalitarian behavior but perhaps we have to take our wins as they come, and this is certainly a win. The sooner this case can get to the Supreme Court the better.
“we have to take our wins as they come”
This is certainly a win and God bless Dr. Bhattacharya and his colleagues for their courage and fortitude as well as Justice Doughty who rightly “compared the administration’s censorship infrastructure to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth”. Will it mean victory against an increasingly oppressive government willing and able to employ Orwellian measures such as declaring faux states of emergency, suspending democracy, further censoring opposition press and government critics, and ultimately throwing political opponents in jail? When at least two thirds of the populace doesn’t even know who George Orwell was, or recognize our current descent into the dystopian world he warned against, I’m not optimistic.
"When at least two thirds of the populace doesn’t even know who George Orwell was"
There should be citizenship exam for native born, just as there is for immigrants. If you haven't read 1984 you are not competent to be a voter. OK, if you flunk the exam you are still a legal resident (there's nowhere to deport you), but you are not a Citizen. Any nation that can tolerate the next election being between a senile, corrupt, woke mediocrity and a moronic, criminal opportunist is no longer worthy of democracy and deserves whichever execution it chooses.
Stalinist, political show trials do not a criminal make. We were free under Trump. Not so under the corrupt psychopath who was installed to replace him.
If you believe that Trump had your freedom as his goal then you are a good example of the sort of person I'm talking about. It is to weep that so many can be so blind. I try to make excuses -- any port in a storm, perhaps in their need to defeat the wokeies the right rally round the flag whoever it is that might be holding it -- even Trump. Sorta the way a desperate Germany turned to Hitler. Still it's very sad especially when there's some real talent in the GOP lineup. Honorable and competent people. But no, the neanderthals must have their orange moron.
"If you believe that Trump had your freedom as his goal. . ."
I believe that he did; one of his first acts as president was to get the states to clean out their registration rolls for clean voting; they balked; I believe that his attempts to secure the border was an attempt to secure our freedoms; when Trump separated minors from adults held in detention (and the Democrats screamed bloody murder--remember?) he was upholding the law, which the Democrats ignored and failed to tell their supporters that it was their own law, begun under Bill Clinton's administration to protect migrant minors; his politically brave and historic reversal of our approach to China, which had become our number one adversary in the world, and his attempt to bring manufacture home, were evidence that he had our freedom as his goal; his creation of Space Force, his support for a strong military and a strong NATO--all these were evidence that he had our freedom as his goal. He had to contend during during the campaign against a Hillary Clinton candidacy, with a corrupted FBI that lied to the FISA court (see Durham Report for evidence) as to the veracity of the dossier it presented as an excuse to gain the ability to spy on American citizens --including Trump's campaign people--illegally; he had to contend with an FBI that countenanced a lying attorney who altered FBI documents in order to insure that the FBI could spy on the Trump campaign--all this, all these noble fights to keep America strong, and I recall that when Mueller's team subpoenaed White House records, he turned every single one of them over, without redaction. There were zero attempts to control free speech; he supported it; there was no control over the FBI enouraging it to engage in demanding censorship by social media.
I myself don't believe in binary 'good guys' vs. 'bad guys'. There's lots of things Trump did right. There's lots of things Stalin, Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini did right, too. As to the left, we'd agree on the threat that they pose. The question is whether Trump is really the very best man for the job that the GOP can come up with.
Spot on Mutterer!
Here's a link to an article exposing voter fraud in Michigan you might like to read:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/09/11/what_if_we_had_a_functional_mainstream_media_149732.html
Trump had an opportunity to become authoritarian during the pandemic. He could have declared a national emergency and seized all kinds of power, ruling by executive order. He did not do that. I fear that, now the Democrats have shown him the way, he might have those impulses in a second term. But Trump is not nearly the threat to freedom that Biden is.
I don't fear that at all, not one bit, in fact. The Democrat]s have not shown him the way; historically, hundreds of dictators have already paved that road.
Maybe. I like to think of the choice on offer as being asked to choose between execution by crucifixion or by burning at the stake.
I read that Trump wanted to declare a national emergency and seize voting machines in 2020 after the election he knew he lost, but was talked out of it. Not sure where I saw that, might have been the socialist media.
Don't blame the Democrats for Trump's fascist impulses. Look at the world leaders he admires most, and wake up!
"Sorta the way a desperate Germany turned to Hitler."
That's the sort of low rent analogy that led to the "resistance" that started even before Trump took office and corrupted our entire government and social structure. If Trump had been "Hitler" Madonna, Griffin, Judd and the rest of the Hollywood dorks who luridly spoke of blowing up the White House would have been strung by piano wire in Gestapo HQ. But nothing of the sort happened. Stop your pearl clutching and deal with reality
If Trump had been "Hitler"
I didn't make that comparison. I compared the USA to Germany in as much as both countries abandoned their democracies at a time of great social discohesion and turned to a 'savior'. Please don't bring leftie Hollywood types into it, we'd have about the same opinion of that kind of person. They are irrelevant to the question at hand which is why the GOP can't come up with a better candidate.
But while that is a lot of blather, you do not actually make a coherent argument refuting what Bruce just said. And once we read the last refuge of the refute-less--"orange"--we know you have been defeated in your heart. Summarizing as I have done elsewhere--at your request ("What propaganda have I been repeating?") you have shown yourself to be proficient at publishing a great deal from your stash of pejorative adjectives, but not so proficient at refuting good points made.
"you do not actually make a coherent argument refuting what Bruce just said."
I didn't need to refute it, I clarified that the only point of the comparison is that when nations are severely stressed they can turn to demagogues to 'save' them. Trump and Hitler (or any other demagogue) are comparable in that way.
"a great deal from your stash of pejorative adjectives"
I haven't even started. Here's a first effort:
Narcissist
Moron
Ignoramus
Egotist
Criminal
Chancer
Opportunist
Liar
Betrayer
Child trapped in a man's body
Traitor
Incompetent
Scammer
And he has lousy taste in whores (Stormy).
As for refutation, my only point is that Trump will have difficulty winning the next election, and since we agree that it would be catastrophic if the woke were to win, a candidate with a better chance should be selected. And you have not refuted my logic.
There is truth in this.
In what? That he "might" do something, when we have proof that the Left HAS done it? What a smear.
I would have to think that had Trump concealed six cases of highly classified docs living in a country ruled by Stalin, he probably would have been shot. With not even a blindfold. At least here in our now unfree country he gets a trial with the best lawyers still willing to work for him (albeit not many), and facing a somewhat friendly judge. What could go wrong?
America, baby, still better than anywhere else
I'm guessing you saw the documents? And that Trump gave them all to Putin?
The Stalinesqe crap is all being done by the psychopath in the Oval Office. Who also had boxes of classified stuff in his garage and offices at Penn But nevermind.....
What does it matter who Trump may have shown them to? He should not have had them in the first place. He didn’t want to give them back to his own government (!) when asked and went out of his way not to comply. So why would he do that? (Did he think he owned them? Is he an idiot?) There’s a law on the books which forbids that. I know Trump doesn’t like reading or understand history - but he has well paid lawyers to tell him exactly the law he’s transgressing. And they did. And he still fucked up. Be happy he’s in front of a judge he selected. I hope the jury will be kind - and gently convicts.
Amen. Are these two really the best we can come up with? In a country of 300+ million people two octogenarians (one a doddering fool and one an egotistical lying opportunist) are all we can come up with for president? Wake up America. Do your homework. Let’s put forth candidates that will actually govern.
As a non-partisan I simply look for sanity, competence, integrity and ability. Both parties have respectable people who might offer the country a functioning administration. Nuts, most of the GOP candidates strike me as competent people. Christie, Haley, Hutchinson ... several others -- these people are proven. On the other side, there are Dems who have not drunk the woke kool-aid and remain reasonable people. Shit, I'd even take RFK -- ok, he's a bit of a nut-bar but we all have our little insanities and he seems to have something like integrity. But no, it has to be the worst of both -- both parties put forth their very worst rather than their very best. Democracy can't survive much more of this.
You didn't mention the most proven of all, DeSantis. If you read his bio, he is the kind of person we could only hope to have as our president. I agree that the GOP has many very competent and proven leaders in its lineup...I hope we look to them rather than Trump who inspires so much division. He HAS been wronged but life isn't always fair and our nation is on the brink of chaos. We need a steady hand at the helm.
Yeah, DeSantis ... shoot, I'd vote for him just on the strength of his takeover of that university in Florida -- shut down DEI *entirely* cut out grievance studies *entirely* sent woke professors packing. But he makes these blunders over and over again.
I totally agree. I’d take anyone from the Republican debate the other night as our candidate. And I don’t mind RFK Jr either. At least his quirky beliefs are backed by years of investment doing environmental legal work. And he does seem to have integrity. Something sorely lacking in politicians from both sides of the aisle. I love Nikki Haley btw. So much common sense.
Yeah, Nikki looks good to me. Funny thing, I'm your prototype Patriarchal White Omniphobic Racist Oppressor ... and I like Nikki, I couldn't care less that she's brown and female, she seems to have what it takes. She'd have more good ideas in five minutes than Biden will have in the rest of his life.
Too neocon-ish in foreign policy. That's where presidents have the fewest checks on their power.
Choosing the president, I think for the near future, will entail selecting the better of two bad candidates. THIS is the reason for smaller government -give either of them less influence and less to screw up or use for their own personal advantage - looking at you Joetato.
And, FWIW, I like The Bad Orange Man - as did the ENTIRE country when the Apprentice was on - it was only after he took on "withHer" - crooked Hillary, that the knives came out. BUT, perception is reality and I think his second term will be much like the first, obstruction all day every day from the PRO-crime democRATs.
Nicki Haley said in the debate we should immediately cut ourselves off from China. Did you agree? Did you not find this both alarming and ignorant of our deep dependence?
Again, Susan, I totally agree!
I would agree but you lost me at Chris Christie.
That's fine, the point is that there's some good people there. Dunno, I'm Canadian so judging at a distance -- CC *seems* competent to me, and he calls a spade a f'cking shovel when it comes to Trump, so I like that.
Democracy most certainly cannot survive much more of Wokeness, which amounts to a brazen attack on American traditional values that kept us strong, free, and prosperous, with an emphasis on protecting the individual againstthe power of the state. Today we see the long arm of the state interfering directly with that freedom. We see the Biden administration threatening social media to do its bidding (!); we see horrific unequal application of the law; we see refusal to enforce laws with which the Left disagrees; we see attacks on freedom of speech in much if not nealy all of academia, which has spread to corporations and many other aspects of American life; we see attacks on the right to own guns for self-defense even thought the Left has no answer as to how it would restrain criminals from owning and using guns; it certainly has indicated that not only can it not restrain the criminals from engaging in so much theft that chain stores are closing all over the country, but in some states the government itself has authorized theft up to $999, as if theft is not wrong. Individuals own stock in those corportions that are forced to close due to "shrinkage" and so do pension funds for individuals.
Agree. That's why failure should not be an option. It has to be stopped and that's why a candidate who can win is so important, and that means that the moderate and centrist vote *must* be courted. And that means that Trump should not be the candidate. But it's all pointless because he will be the candidate. But Biden will win so long as they can keep him from falling over and slurring his words. A senile, corrupt, woke-enslaved POTUS. That's what the Republicans are going to give the country. I myself wish there was a better plan.
Christie has guzzled the kool-aid
Really? Woke? But he's GOP. Please expand.
I think back to Eisenhower. Everybody sorta new he was going to be president, but of course he had to pick a party. It hardly mattered which one tho. Either would be fine, both were respectable. His Republicans were to the (sane) left of today's Rats.
Eisenhower is my favorite post WW2 president. But, he made some key concessions; most critically putting Allen Dulles in charge of the CIA where he was responsible for the ousting of democratically elected prime minister of Iran and forming a coup in Guatemala to oust its President as a favor for United Fruit. After several failed assassination attempts by the CIA/Agents of Castro in Cuba and the failed Bay of Pigs, Kennedy got rid of him. Ironically, Dulles was feeding McCarthy bad information in the early 1950s to get rid of him because McCarthy was investigating the CIA for communist (this is actually kinda of funny) and Eisenhower was able to make a move against his fellow Republican several years later because of that bad info that was fed to him. Dulles also lied to Eisenhower about the U2 program, claiming that the Soviets couldn't shoot it down and having flights over Russia when Eisenhower told him not to. Of course the U2 was shot down over Russia causing a major incident that eventually led to Soviet attempt to put nuclear weapons in Cuba. That one mistake of putting Dulles in charge of the CIA is one of the greatest miscalculations in American History and has caused so many kickbacks and American pain. I do think, if my memory is correct Eisenhower was a non-voter while active military but voted Republican in 1950. He was basically drafted to become the nominee from Republicans trying to take advantage of his popularity.
"one a doddering fool and one an egotistical lying opportunist"
Correction: one a doddering fool AND a man who appears to be bought by our major adversaries working through his son and distributing millions through his son and to his family; it's called pay to play. I'd have to thus refer to HIM as a egotistical lying opportunist.
So what do you have to say about Trump?
Susan, half of one party is in love with a craven politician who’s halfway to prison and the other is too afraid of saying their candidate is too old. We have the candidates but not decent political parties to put them in.
Agree, Susan; however, BOTH are narcissistic liars!
But sadly, the divide is so wide that I fear we will, once again see a Biden win. After all, “He is the most popular president in American history” and accomplished his major win from his basement! The few times he did hold rallies he was lucky if 81 people showed up - mostly made up of his handlers & the MSM. Impressive, yes! Uh, not to me.
My question is WHY will the DNC not allow anyone to run against Biden?? (See the latest on RFK Jr. and the DNC tactics against him.). No debates, but we all know why that is.
But then there is “But, but, but Trump”
God help us!
This is "democracy's" natural end. The all-hallowed majority eventually gets what it wants. The result is the destruction of democracy itself.
https://thewordofdamocles.substack.com/p/biden-trump-seriously
The Constitution provides that all born within the United States are citizens. No other requirements allowed. Some states used to require a literacy test in order to vote, but that was used just to exclude Black voters so the Supreme Court threw out those laws.
Well then the test should be required to be a *voting* citizen. Yeah, I know the idea is subject to abuse but the alternative is an electorate, most of whom can't name the three branches of government. Here's the test:
1) 2 + 2 = ____
2) The government can give us free stuff. (T/F)
3) Name three past presidents. ___ ___ ___
4) Name the two houses of Congress. ___ ___
5) Warm air rises. (T/F)
6) All Black failures are Whitey's fault. (T/F)
7) Mathematics is a system of oppression. (T/F)
8) Sacking the Capitol is valid protest. (T/F)
9) Men can get pregnant. (T/F)
10) What is the national debt to the nearest 10 trillion. ___
#10 is asking too much. The rest I like.
The Biden goverment would create that exam, Ray. Ever think of that?
That's ok, but really, who that would flunk that exam should be voting? Anyway, I made it up then and there. Write a better one. Or maybe just the existing citizenship test for immigrants. No pass, no vote.
How many citizens have seen the current test? Have you?
Well then they should see it, that's my point. Sad to think that -- so they say -- a huge majority of natural born citizens would not pass it. BTW the test is freely available online. I'd make you a bet if it were doable: match me, a Canadian, against some randomly chosen American, and I'll kick his butt.
Not only do few Americans know of George Orwell’s dystopian society, many supposedly intelligent and educated people actually support suppression of free speech they view as hateful or somehow dangerous. In a rather frightening recent survey of law school students at Harvard, most of these supposedly best and brightest deemed the Constitution dated and irrelevant.
These are the potential leaders of our future.
Yes - and as a leftist myself (in Canada), I find it frightening that people just accept things 100% uncritically if it is coming from the left. In Canada, any questioning of the left is usually met by some whataboutism that includes Trump - or accusations of being a Trumper. I'm not even close to being a Trumper - always disliked him way before politics, I am not even on the right and still am not.
But these irrational, rigid, uncompromising positions coming from the left on quite a few issues - are NOT the path we should be on. But it's hard to watch grown, educated, "sophisticated" adults accept these positions with total obedience, believing any questions or concerns are marks of "right-wing-ignorance-extremism" and will simply parrot what they hear, and acquiese obediently. It IS Orwellian and it seems unreal to watch it happen and by PEOPLE you assumed at least had critical thinking skills and a tiny bit of courage.
So it's not just America - although it's even scarier to me that Americans, who I always thought of as bold and proud individuals, just sit back watching this happen.
Either they lack courage en masse, or the brainwashing has been really effective. What's scarier?
That comment terrifies me. So do the ones prior to it. Our young people are UNEDUCATED - on purpose. Western Countries have been taken over by the Marxists. The UNELECTED woman heading up the EU just declared her excitement over introducing a DIGITAL ID and Monetary (Tracking) system that will control your movement and money. They are selling it like the latest and greatest Smart Phone. Kids don’t know they MUST have one to get into their 15 minute Cubicle 150 SF home identical to all the others and if they don’t BEHAVE, they might be locked in for two days.
Well look no further than their professors.
"Will it mean victory against an increasingly oppressive government willing and able to employ Orwellian measures such as declaring faux states of emergency, suspending democracy, further censoring opposition press and government critics, and ultimately throwing political opponents in jail?" My prediction: a renewed push by the Democrats to pack the court before this case is heard.
Me neither
Evans! So I just released a podcast on the topic of "Menticide" which I don't think too many people are familiar with. When we talk about a totalitarian government, we have to really think and understand, "wait, is my country really out to get me?" And if we think "yes," what are we doing about that?
With today being 9/11, the podcast is on if the events of that day were a false flag attack, if we're experiencing menticism, and what could we do about it. Coming to the realization that our government just might be a totalitarian regime if like the first step:
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/september-11th-and-menticide#details
We are indebted to Dr Bhattacharva and others for daring to have their voices heard and to the FREE PRESS for providing the means. If FREE SPEECH doesn’t prevail neither will the American Dream!
Photo caption: Which is the ventriloquist?
I well remember reading the Declaration when it came out. Shared it with my wife who’s reaction was that I had been “radicalized”. That was the very dark days of 2020-21. I shared it, along with other numerous articles about the failure of masks to stop the spread, with the principal of my daughter’s school to try and convince her to stop mandating masks. She didn’t listen. And on it went. As Jay points out all of what was in the declaration back in 2020 has held up. Our fundamental enemy is not our woke, totalitarian government, it’s the willful ignorance of our fellow citizens. I loved Julius Erving and marveled at his ability to levitate on the court, but Jay Bhattacharya is my “Dr. Jay” as he soars over a court of ignorance and censorship and plants a slam dunk for the truth!
*Is* it a win? Is anything going to change? Social media companies are more than willing to censor without the government telling them to; in fact YouTube just radically expanded its "medical misinformation policy" to basically mean that any natural or homeopathic medicine channel (and I guess all Christian Scientists) can be banned at any moment.
All this really means is the government isn't *supposed* to tell social media to censor stuff. It doesn't stop them from doing it on their own, and it doesn't stop the government from de-facto continuing to do it.
'The sooner this case can get to the Supreme Court the better.'
That's if the decision is appealed. I don't think it will be.
Well said - I echo your sentiments wholeheartedly!
In the court disclosures, I hear a reference to govt threatening regulating the communications industry to coerce these media companies to censure. Could this threat be to revoke the 230 exemption from liability for publishing content? That liability pressures non-exempt, traditional media companies to consider the consequences of publishing content that violates pornography, hate speech or slander laws, and for profit companies running ads without support to verify claims.
Jay Battacharya, you are a rock star. I remember reading the Great Barrington Declaration when it was published in October 2020 in the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages. Since then, I’ve asked numerous people if they’d read it- and, no surprise, very few people had even heard of it! It is incredibly disheartening and frightening that our government would go to such lengths to suppress 3 brilliant minds. These are legitimate, well respected scientists - whose paper was supported by thousands of colleagues. I am thrilled that they have prevailed.
Yesterday was Chuck Todd's last day on Meet the Press, where he opined about how he spent the entire time on the show searching for the Truth. I don't recall him ever having Dr. Battacharya on the show to "inform the public." The corporate press and social media companies showed their faces and tilted the scales. The failure and wrongness of those who followed this policy show up in test scores for kids and the excess deaths of despair among adults. There must be a reckoning, and glad the Free Press is pursuing it.
Chuck Todd wouldn't know the truth if it jumped in his back pocket, and if you think he was bad, just wait for the new clown show production of Meet The Press hosted by Kristen Welker.
A disgrace to the might legacy of Tim Russert.
Oh my gosh yes. Tim Russert was a national treasure. There is no one close to him today.
I like Trey Goudy.
I believe the correct term is not "jumped in his back pocket" but" if it bit him on the ass".
Word
I think a boot up to the ankle.
No, I like "bit him on the ass."
You didn't watch Chuck pass the torch to Kristen yesterday, it was so moving and inspirational. I watch that as a form of torture but also to see how they are marketing issues. Its disgusting but necessary.
I hate that I missed it, but I normally save the throwing up in my mouth for Rachel Maddow.
Thanks for your sacrifice. Sincerely. Anything to report?
He gave her an alarm clock with a battery back up that had him wake up for the show. That was a nice touch as I always try to find something nice in something awful
That made me laugh. Thanks.
Aren't clocks and timeliness part of white supremacy culture. Did Welker accept the clock and show that she has internalized "whiteness"?
Taking one for the team—I thank you!
Remember the throngs of people demonstrating at NBC headquarters demanding that Chuck Todd be named to replace the beloved Tim Russert?
No, neither do I.
A diminutive nobody. Nothing more.
When Comcast CEO Brian Roberts went on a nervous Morning Joe and told them nothing would change with his acquisition, it explains the political agenda of Meet The Press. It’s what mogals get to do. And if 80% of media ownership is on one side of the political spectrum.....fill in the blank.
More then 80 %.
What he said👆🏻🤜🏻👍🏻
Despite the fact that I read news and social media online almost every day, I didn't hear about the Great Barrington Declaration until months after it was published. I remember an era when something that significant would have been reported on widely in the press, if only for people to denounce, debunk, or make fun of it. The fact that we now live in an era when opposing viewpoints are actively suppressed, with government involvement in that suppression, is deeply chilling.
You got me thinking...., how the heck did I know about the Great Barrington Declaration from Day One? And then I remembered: It's all because Dr. Joseph Mercola (I'm a subscriber) posted an essay from someone at the AIER (the American Institute for Economic Research) which I liked; so I began to subscribe to their newsletter. They were the initial sponsors of the Great Barrington Declaration. I no longer subscribe to the AIER, but I'm glad that, temporarily, I did. I sent the link to the Declaration "sign up page" to every scientist I knew in order to help them get signatures..... Go, Dr. Bhattacharya. You make me proud to be a human being!! : )
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
Sound familiar?
Very!
Fauci boss referred to the signers as obscure scientists.
I know right. ?? even my esteemed dr friends said it was bunk. when I told them they were bunk. well you know what happened
🤣
Fauci called them “ fringe epidemiologists “
The suppression also denies the theory that the press is all about clicks and traffic.
The studies about the political viewpoints of members of the press have made it clear that the Media is a collection of Leftist propaganda agencies. When I was in grad school in the early '00s, the youngest professors thought it was their moral duty to use their lecterns as bully pulpits to indoctrinate their students. (Oh yes, in far-Left circles, this has been a secular religion for a long time.) I'm quite sure that young journalists feel the same fervor toward their audience.
More and more people are beginning to discover that there is no American political there there. Likewise, the players on the nasty little screen attempting to control the American destiny have slipped squarely into the realm of the pathological. The Republican Party is MIA and the manufactured DNC/MSM/Davos/CCP narrative clearly doesn't come close to any legitimate recognizable American reality. In what free market/capitalism professing world does political and corporate leadership allow riots, looting and the burning of small business or open mass smash and grab theft on the scale we are witnessing. The capitalists have abandoned capitalism and America. "..we the people.." are on our on. (Which is where we've always been.)
Musk/Twitter/X aside, most major internet platforms need to be broken up and reduced to a utility level status. Claiming coercion or not, they more than willingly joined hands with the bureaucratic/surveillance state in the suppression of free speech, the exchange of ideas and the free flow of information. All totalitarian regimes build bureaucratic structures that thrive on the looting of peoples, tax dollars, labor, economies and natural resources. Here, they also employ a well paid cadre of entirely mercenary censorious poseur Marxists to hold vital American institutions hostage to an ideological utopianism neither they nor any other Americans actually believe in.
It's real and it's happening. We witness daily and are surrounded by the human damage and chaos these monsters create. The truth/fact based reality we are attempting here, the Republic and the Constitution are the only way forward.
(I hope you're catching the Kirn/Taibbi AMERICA THIS WEEK discussions each Friday/weekend. If you have the time MODERN WISDOM has a three hour interview with Eric Weinstein on YouTube. This is an entirely new age and requires an entirely new narrative.)
I watch America This Week every Friday morning it comes out. Matt and Walter are the real deal.
True. I remember the very esteemed Mike Wallace saying very earnestly that once educated you become liberal. I think that belief is where the wheels starting coming off the cart. No Mikey, everybody who believes in the Constitution is a liberal. Some have a conservative APPROACH thereto and others have a progressive approach thereto but we are all liberals. But to your point the progressive movement has infected all professions.
Heard of it extensively through podcasts, the antidote to legacy media.
Celia, there was government suppression yes, but the social media platforms did not have to buy into it. They have First Amendment rights too, and I find that the thrust of this essay is too easy on the platforms that caved to the gov’t’s pressure. Google, Facebook, Twitter are among the largest corporations in the world. They could have easily faced down the government to continue to offer contrary opinions. They chose not to. They took the easy cost effective way out.
But they didn’t have to.
The fact that the Leftist-run social media companies caved easily to government pressure doesn't absolve the government of exerting that pressure. Indeed, it makes the decision-makers at those companies *complicit* in the government's crime of depriving people of free speech.
Governments have always exerted pressure. This is not new. Everybody’s going crazy here because its Biden. He’s an old guy but this predates him by more than a century. You know it, I know it. Everybody knows that. Every single Administration since 1800 has exerted pressure to not publish. It’s up to media organizations to resist. It is their First Amendment right. Think of the Pentagon Papers. Think of the Gulf of Tonkin. Think of Iran Contra. How about Watergate? Spiro Agnew? Clinton and his follies? They were all exposed by an alert free press. Every single US government has done this and will continue to do this until we’re all dead and buried. I have to laugh at the shock and indignity displayed by both the writer and so many commenters here. The horror!
Simply put, these behemoth companies caved because it suited them to do so. They did not want to die on that hill. But they could have fought. And they would have won. Just like the doctors did.
Until now, most Americans believed that it was WRONG for the government to exert that pressure and that it was the DUTY of the press to resist.
But now, nearly half of Americans believe that the government OUGHT to control the press. Now, the majority of the media are members of just one political party, enthusiastic zealots of a political ideology that deems those who disagree with the party's narrative "Nazis."
The fact that these companies readily complied and NO ONE ON THE LEFT CARES is a clear indicator that our system is broken, very probably beyond repair. A free press was meant to help reign in the misbehavior of government, not be complicit in helping tyrants to silence dissent.
So I’m not sure where you got the stats on almost half of Americans wanting to control the press. News to me - but I’m all ears. And as to the ‘complicit lefty’ social media - we all must keep in mind they succumbed to pressure. Had there been no pressure, they very well could have continued with the contrary tweets and ‘dangerous’ opinions and everything else the gov’t thought as misinformation. Why? Well, likes and views of course. In other words, money.
So why stop? Had they been truly progressive as you say they would have needed no prodding from Biden’s henchmen. They would have censored all on their own.
Why does lefty CNN rail and rail on Trump? They can’t stand him yet put him on the news feed every single night. Money and ads and views.
As I keep on repeating - no social media had to cave. They just did it to protect what they perceived to be in their best interest. Not their finest hour.
As you cogently point out - the problem is us. How many Americans sided with our bozo government and their lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates and demonization of anyone who dared question them?
I agree but I also think it is time to get to the bottom of how people have been adroitly manipulated. Rob Henderson had a good article last month on the power of movements. It was factual and I had a few aha moments related to our current circumstances. We know that there is some odd cultists behavior. How do we free the members?
We don't. Cultist are immovable.
The thing is, we are supposed to be able to trust institutions. That is the point of them. If you constantly have to question every institution, society will collapse. So it makes sense that people want to believe when these groups tell them stuff. 1) they have been conditioned to do so their whole lives and 2) They NEED to be able to believe them.
And unless you punish them for their perfidies, in the harshest possible manner, the undermining of our society will continue apace.
Well said and absolutely true.
Guilty, for a bit. I was in a silo that started to crack just before COVID hit. And with a little extra time at home, I started to expand my reading/listening options and discovered a whole bunch of smart common-sense voices showing me we were being duped.
Same here. Read the Declaration the day it was published. To this day, so few people I ask have even heard of it. Hard to see that as anything but successful censorship. The left will argue it’s because it’s not a popular idea.
It made perfect sense to protect high risk people & keep the schools, businesses & society open. I was shocked when I tried to get friends & family members to read it & they refused on the grounds it “didn’t support what Dr. Fauci said & he was the one they trusted.” And guess what? They still trust him & think he’s being unfairly maligned. Thank you, Dr. B. for unwavering commitment to the truth.
They still trust Fauci, they still think Trump won in 2016 because the Russians interfered- hell, they still think the SCOTUS “stole” 2000 for Dubya. For people who have “progressed beyond religion,” the left sure clings to its dogma against all logic and reason.
The left hates this article on two counts.
1. They hate stories of people immigrating here with nothing and from a life of abject poverty and come to the US and make a smashing success of their lives. How can you be a victim if you work hard and become a success. Remember work is a four letter word to the left.
2. Like lemmings they believe anything that inept, corrupt, the ever senile Joe and his minions tell them and they hate anybody who contradicts the head of the Biden crime family and his corrupt administration.
To be fair, Trump fanatics are the same.
Couldn’t agree more!
Read it and signed it. At that time, early in the lockdowns, hundreds of thousand of people from all walks of life had beat me to the punch.
In my 36 years as a practicing nurse working among all types of infectious disease, never had I witnessed such a bizarre response by health and government authorities as I did with COVID. The worst of it was how the government officials (politicians) would issue edicts using limited or biased information then never admit they were wrong or reverse course once the strength of scientific evidence was established and revealed. Thank you thank you, Dr Battacharya and your colleagues, for your work and having the courage and tenacity to take on this important fight.
Putting infected people in nursing homes was not only stupid, it was criminally negligent. But Cuomo and his ilk were lionized for their "courage" by the leftist press, whien they should have been tried under the penal law.
While the 1,000 bed hospital ship Comfort sat in the harbor empty.
Yes as did the Samaritan Purse hospital facility. New York -then as now - was a ship of fools.
Every single doctor pushing the shot should be tried.
We wouldn't have many left. I just laughed at mine when he suggested the booster.
my fav response was the governments: you better stay home, wear a mask and get your shots because otherwise you'll kill grandma but if you want to protest the virus will magically disappear while you support BLM and burn everything down
I liked the cartoon. if I dont wear pants and you pee on me I will get covid. but if we both wear pants and pee in them we wont get covid but we will get soaked horrible pants..but even so called smart people shared that nonsense
My first thought, when I saw how the government was reacting after the initial 14 days, was "what happened to the old-school quarantine system?" It made no sense to shut down our economy and keep healthy people at home.
Fauci's initial objection to mask-wearing also baffled me. Although we know now that masks don't do much, initially it would have made a great deal more sense for people to mask up and carry on with their lives. I personally made over a hundred cloth masks for family and friends, since many of us had "essential" jobs, and masks were the only thing that could give us any sense of protection.
Anthony Fauci recently said the primary benefit of masking is psychological. The Cochrane meta-study showed no benefits to masking.
Exactly. But Fauci could not get his story straight. First, masks would not help. Then they were not just important, but vital.
I started in making cloth masks at the very beginning, having come to the conclusion that it might help (at least preventing against droplet spread) and wouldn't hurt. And almost everyone I know thought that, even back when Fauci was against masks.
But none of us wanted masks to be mandatory!
When Fauci flip-flopped on masks, suddenly it was political, not a personal choice. Masks were forced onto the faces of children, who were least at risk from the virus, but most at risk for social learning loss from not being able to see people's faces.
Most of the people I know who still wear masks in public do so largely because it soothes their fears (or the fears of someone close to them). Recently, my husband and I wore paper masks in public for a few days after recovering from our second bout of Covid, and that was certainly about droplet spread, since we couldn't predict when we might have to cough.
But the reality is that the strains going around are highly contagious. My father-in-law caught Covid for his second time (and NOT from me and my husband--we caught it from him!), despite being housebound, and despite the fact that only a handful of people had been in his room, none of them for more than about five minutes.
I'm glad that the coroner recognized, when Dad passed away, that Covid was only a contributing factor, not the primary cause. Dad had recovered from the acute infection, but he could not shake the pneumonia, and the strain was too much for his almost-90-year-old cardiopulmonary system.
All exactly right and consistent with what I've read. Viral particles can easily pass through cloth masks.
Your perspective is refreshing Paula. Thank you for speaking out. You are one of few who will. I was shocked by the amount of highly educated people in your field who “rolled over” for the Fauci plan. Many lives could have been saved by pausing and changing course. I know that many caregivers were afraid of losing their jobs, but it failed me to see how so many could continue a course destined to fail. Thousands of years of medical research and reasoning and a highly trained group of scientists, doctors and nurses couldn’t collectively form some kind of resistance. There was Dr. Battacharya and a few others trying to help and he was censored and ignored by his own colleagues. I am still baffled and I no longer trust many so called “medical experts”.
"... then never admit they were wrong or reverse course..."
THIS is why they deserve the level of trust that they now enjoy.
To err is human. To deny is Biden. And Fauci. And CDC....
The CDC's initial effort to provide support for masking was a 'study' of a couple hairstylists who got covid but masked and allegedly didn't pass it on to any of their clients.
And this we were supposed to view as 'science' propagated by people to be referred to as 'the science'.
Meanwhile even when kids were finally allowed back into schools, it was more as prisoners (silent lunch, masking, trapped in classrooms, no recess) than as students.
But no worries said 'the science', kids are resilient!
I despise every bureaucrat and elected official who caused and allowed this to continue past spring 2020, and (im)patiently await a day of reckoning.
“The worst of it was how the government officials (politicians) would issue edicts using limited or biased information then never admit they were wrong or reverse course once the strength of scientific evidence was established and revealed”
It was never about politicians being right or wrong about Covid. It was about CONTROL and they used that control to change election rules, rig the 2020 election with harvested ballots. and get a imbecilic puppet elected president.
I am a 69 year old physician who would like to thank Dr. Bhattacharya for his courageous stand. I signed the Great Barrington Declaration as soon as it was made public. I knew in my bones what the ongoing shutdowns were doing to the lives of individuals and that much of what we were being told was of weak to non-existent in terms of scientific evidence. The whole pandemic experience brought home to me the power of fear and how some will exploit that fear. All Americans should spend some time outside the US in 2nd or 3rd world countries; then they would value the freedom that our founders bequeathed to us.
Congrats on your courage, Doctor. We needed more of you, but like your profession, mine, (the law) is now in the hands of committed leftists and their dupes. And the only way to change that is to lop off the heads of the professional associations that impose such madness.
In Thailand people still wear masks all day and night, every day. You can see a single person driving in their car, wearing a mask. All the employees in every store wear masks. The govt. has created a frightened, unthinking population who do as they are told. I haven't worn a mask in several years and get some disparaging looks from the natives.
Regarding exploitation of fear, Rob Henderson had an outstanding article on movements last month that addressed use of fear. Very calm and dispassionate analysis.
God bless you.
And that is, bit by bit, being chiseled away from us.
I’ve had the honor of having met Dr. Battacharya through Hillsdale. To say he’s both humble and principled is an understatement. This essay reflects both qualities. Thank you FP for publishing it.
The fight isn’t over. The government still has virtually unassailable authority over scientific research in countless areas from human sexuality to energy. It starts in our public schools with kindergartners. Our administrators tout “complex thinking.” We should laugh in their general direction. What we’ve got is complexity within defined parameters of dogma. We need a lot more people like Dr Battacharya and institutions like Hillsdale to take this monolith down.
This "fight" is a fight with the Democratic Party over free speech, the integrity of our Constitutional rights, scientific freedom, sensible government policy, and liberty as a core bedrock of our society.
And it's not the Democrat voters, it's their leadership who established in 2015 that they can rig rules to keep themselves in power. They must be removed en masse to save the Party and the future of our country as a democracy.
You have to learn facts in order to think deeply on complex matters. We no longer teach basic facts nor require students to memorize anything.
I can only say thank God for brave, principled people such as Dr. Bhattacharya. His name should be inscribed with the likes of Nathan Hale, John Paul Jones and Abraham Lincoln.
Could not agree more. He and his colleagues are true American heroes, reflective of America at its very best. This also applies to Bari, Matt Taibi, Michael Shellenberger, Jordan Peterson and the others who shine a harsh light on the duplicity of those in power.
“But I can never go back to the uncomplicated faith and naive confidence I had in America when I was young.” That sentiment certainly applies to me and I expect to a, hopefully, growing segment of the population. At the same time, polls (for whatever they are worth ) show that it’s even money that the current regime that will be re-elected in 2024. That is truly horrifying.
Polls are just a method to guage how many ballots will need to be harvested.
They also use polls to generate news stories because they don't have any real reporters going out and asking real questions. They don't want to know.
Oh yes. It I'd so tedious. Same with sports coverage too.
Does not matter who the D candidate is in 2024. He (God forbid 'she") will get 100 million votes.
True. Or at least 100,000,000 harvested ballots.
Good one. I've always thought of polls as the MSM's gauge of how well they're disseminating their propaganda.
That too.
Just as we can no longer trust many media sources and journalists to be truthful, I no longer trust any polls. The kind of corrupt manipulation these entities use to sway our minds is beyond anything I thought possible in this country. Critical thinking leads me to think that polls are corrupted as well. They don’t encourage or discourage me. I’m choosing to remain fearless.
Don’t be so excited. The government intentionally violated the essence of the First Amendment and they will intentionally do it again as much as they want because there is no deterrent here and there is no significant punishment here for this behavior. They don’t give two shits what the courts say. Symbolic victories are not victories. Victory can be declared when something significant enough happens to force compliance and change behavior. The Biden administration has no such constraints to change their behavior at all and they won’t!
What we CAN do is to resist their next mandates in every way possible. With lawsuits, massive public resistance and even force, if necessary. Our Founders gave us the Bill of Rights for a reason. But if we don't fight for it, it's a dead letter.
Perfectly TRUE! The courts may issue their opinions, but the government is under no pressure to comply. There is no mechanism for enforcing these decisions and no consequences for ignoring them. If a group of average citizens were to sue any branch of government the courts would declare that they had no "standing" to do so.
We are at the mercy of which ever party controls the levers of power. The only thing that we, the people, can do is to STOP voting with our hearts and begin using our brains when we fill out our ballots. Even THEN, it is still a crap shoot.
Exactly!
They were so bold and blatant about it. They will try to find and end around and do it again.
The only thing that will bring about that change is the election of a very strong president (executive) who will bring the bureaucrat dogs of the executive branch to heel. The courts can keep slapping them down but they are already attacking the courts. Congress could also impact things but Congress is useless. It cannot even address budgetary issues despite having the purse strings.
Sad but true. They never acknowledge any of the scams and hoaxes, from the WMD lies to the Trump/Russia election interference scheme. And they never will.
Sadly this may be true. Unless the people that violated the First Amendment are actually punished and held accountable this will just we a worthless slap on the wrist.
So true, and the DOJ has the deepest of the deep pockets. Humiliating that US citizens are funding the censorship and now the appeal. Horrible decisions were made and there's zero accountability.
You want a change in behavior, Wanderman? Then please get a decent candidate whose last name does not start with a T and vote him or her in. Number 45 wanted to call for a national emergency and seize voting machines three years ago, (slightly counter to the Constitution I’d say), enjoys having fake electors, listens to idiotic lawyers - and never understood that state votes once confirmed after numerous recounts cannot be changed. Sounds like a guy with no constraints who also doesn’t give a shit about what courts say. I have to admit, he is entertaining.
I am overcome with joyous emotion reading about your vindication. I have been following you since the beginning of the pandemic. In the beginning we were very nervous about the virus. It was hard to know who to believe. It was clear that politics played a heavy hand. But you, Marty Makary, and Vinay Prasad made the most sense to me. Stay in it! Preserve our America values. It’s interesting to me that those I trusted most are all immigrants to the USA.
The first pillar of medical ethics, respect for autonomy, without which the other 3 pillars (beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice) cannot stand, was violated repeatedly and systematically throughout the pandemic.
Brave physicians, including Dr. Battacharya and his colleagues, put their livelihoods at risk to fight for our patients and, as he says, all Americans. This suit and the suit against the FDA brought by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, who personally saved many of my patients during the Delta wave in 2021 by delivering efficient monoclonal antibodies to patients at risk of hospitalization (before the Biden administration turned off the spigot of this life-saving intervention to Texas and Florida), was successful with 2 other physicians in their suit against the FDA last week. She continues to be vilified in our community to this day. She knew, as all of us on the front lines knew, that the “fully vaccinated” were becoming ill with Covid in droves, while Birx et. al continued to gaslight the public with their silly 95% effective narrative.
Realizing my “democratic republic”, the US government, was behind this shocked me to my core.
They interfered with my ability to give TRUE informed consent to my patients in violation of every one of the pillars of medical ethics.
Nuremberg type tribunals should take place, not for retribution, but as a signal to medical professionals that this behavior is condemnable, and must NEVER happen again. Unfortunately, it continues even with this ruling, while Birx is back working for Pharma to pay for another vacation home. Orwellian dystopia meets good old-fashioned unethical and greedy behavior sanctioned by our own government right in front of our very eyes.
Dr, B, you are my hero is this dystopic mess. God bless you and Godspeed!
You said, "Realizing my “democratic republic”, the US government, was behind this shocked me to my core."
My question is WHY? I am a child of the 60's and lived through and experienced the lies and deceptions of the government regarding above ground nuclear testing as well as the Viet Nam war. NOTHING shocks or surprises me about this. One of the first rules of power is "consolidation of that power", which means that despite developments it is essential that they do NOTHING that may reduce that power. The later Trump admin, and then the Biden admin have confirmed this again, and again.
Which is why we all should be true conservatives. Not Republicans or Demicrats. Fight big government and the expansion of its powers at every turn. Big government has not been and never can be the answer. Once it has enough power to do a modicum of good, instead, it uses that power to gain more instead.
Hear, hear. I am on whichever side will effectively strip the federal government of its money and power.
Democrats. Woops.
The truth can stand on its own. Only lies need to be forcefully upheld. I have lost so much trust in our institutions through the past few years, hopefully this is a step forward to more truth coming forward into the light.
The events surrounding the Great Barrington Declaration are still vivid in my mind. Our grade school children were wearing masks to school and had long stretches at home in radically subpar online learning environment. From August- October 2020 we were beginning to question what was actually going on. Weeks after the Declaration our entire family contracted covid, which for us meant loss of taste and stuffy noses. By the new year Vaccine For All was being included in the Ministry of Truth’s Newspeak regardless if you were young healthy and hd natural immunity. We experienced huge pressure during this time from our progressive PA community. Dr Bhattacharya was one of many who became a symbol of hope for us.
Even now, the facts emerge that the booster makes you twice as likely to contract Covid. But how many know that? Or will dispute it as "misinformation?"
Left-wing science, where policy trumps objectivity is an epidemic.
Trumps? Hmmm. And speaking of he who's name shall not be mentioned.....Did Trump ever engaged in such Orwellian idiocy? No he did not. But the senile imbecile, inveterate grifter and Depends-wearing clown installed to rule us is Soviet to his core.
Trump allowed it to happen when the pandemic started. He was completely out of his depth at that point. I had been reluctantly pleased with his policy accomplishments up to that point, but his lack of leadership on Covid was shocking.
Think about that. Don't we want a President who was not a medical expert to defer to his CDC et al? How was he to know that Fauci was a compromised fraud. But recall that where Trump did have expertise, such as closing down travel from China he was excoriated as a racist. I well remember the idiot health officials in NYC and NY State extolling people to party in Chinatown for the Lunar New Year. Trump also did Warp Speed which gave Biden the vaccine that he grossly misused. Trump may not have been perfect but I blame Fauci, Birx, Collins for being stooges of China and grossly misleading our government.
I place the blame where you do but Trump did get played. We all were.
I agree that they tried to play us. But people such as Drs. Battacharya, Risch, McCullough, Makary et al fought back. So did some lawyers. In Spring 2020, another lawyer and I separately sued CT governor Lamont over his lockdown efforts. Mine over his 5 person limit edict and my colleague over his mask mandates. Not everyone believed this nonsense and many - but not nearly enough - resisted and fought back.
I agree. And I commend you for your efforts.
I do remember that Trump's initial response (travel bans) was excoriated by the Media. Indeed, everything he said was twisted and decried by the Media. With the Leftist Media fighting him at every turn, he would have been better off telling people to do the opposite of what he thought they should do!
But yeah, it seems that too few people remember that Democrats were initially PROMOTING events that would cause the spread. Just as they later promoted the protests, as if Covid could magically tell who was a "righteous" protester and who wasn't.
Not your fault. We have to rely on the media and they lied shamelessly.
Yes all those others are to blame very much, but you're being too generous to Trump. I don't recall the backlash over closing down travel being that much of a furor. He should've stuck to his gun on that anyhow. And ofc now we know the lab theory and all that is true now. But he just couldn't help himself and had to sound almost racist when he talked about China. Another normal politician would've done a better job presenting the case, and called for investigation seriously. But Trump being Trump he just couldn't help himself. His style stokes the Leftists with TDS and the rest of us suffer because nothing can function normally with the drama between him and that bunch. Still there was a sliver of hope when Jared got his friends together and tried to formulate a national crisis response. Now the response could've sucked or ended up benefitting all his cronies, or it could've given us a coherent and capable national policy to manage it. But we'll never know because Trump just decided to drop it and told the governors to deal with it, with the hope to see the blue state governors tank. The result was an utter chaos and incoherent managements based on politics, and even more division and polarization we didn't need. On top of that he, again Trump being Trump, said some crazy thing like telling people household cleaners can kill the virus. It's really too bad because in hindsight now we're finding he often said things that turned out to be true, because he did have inside information. But he also,said so many wild and crazy stuff, and sometimes sounding like he's racist when he's trying to be funny. It was his antics that got all the airtime and truthful things he said got lost in the midst.
I also find it disturbing that he didn't know Fauci was funding all those researches in Wuhan and the serious extent of the corruption. He may sound bombastic, but in reality he and his people are not very sophisticated working behind the scene. No one was even looking into the background of the guy? The Dems would've played dirty politics and dug up (and even made up) all sorts of dirt. He should at least subscribe to Glenn Greenwald who dug up a lot of sinister things Fauci did.
Celia is right, Trump was out of his depth and other people screwing up or doing horrible things whataboutism doesn't negate the fact that he was the president in charge and his handling of the pandemic was pretty poor. The only good thing one can arguably say is many governors handled it even worse.
All we had to so was follow Sweden.
Yes sir, Trump has/had some flaws and missteps, but he was very good at seeing what needed to be done. Too bad he trusted Covid response to those who were not worthy of same.
A lot of that was due to putting Pence as the COVID Czar. He fell for Birx and Fauci's blatant BS. Remember that in the Primary.
My view is that Trump is complicit with the DNC and installed as a 'bad cop' that they can continue to vilify but never catch. It creates hate on the liberal side and support on the GOP side. It locks up the presidency so anyone on the DNC side can run against Trump and it is expected that a win is reasonable.
Before Trump took office, I realized that there were two possibilities: 1) That he was an outsider and was going to clean up DC. 2) that he was a plant and nothing would happen.
Trump had many opportunities to take down the corruption in DC. Many will give the excuse that everyone was against him and how could he ever prevail against such rampant corruption. As head of the Excecutive branch there were many tools at his disposal and anyone questioning them would be taken down along with the other corrupt, but he never used them. State of the Union "I have issued arrest warrants for the following people:". He had Executive orders. He had Grand Jury's. He had control of the military and secret service. He could replace the heads of CIA, FBI, etc.
All of this corruption that was supposedly against him from day one, would have also been against him in the primary's. We watched Bernie, one of the most popular for two election cycles get replaced twice with worse candidates that the people didn't want. We watched Tulsi Gabbard get eliminated based on 'media polls' that were fixed and debates that were fixed. But we are supposed to believe that Trump was so clever he got past all of this control to become president then not do anything but be a punching bag for the next 4 years? Heck, they impeached Trump for Bidens crimes in Ukraine. After all the attacks on Trump, they still can't make is so he can't be on the ballot (all the while looking like they are trying but never successful).
Get your popcorn, it is all just theater!
Agree totally. In fact with Covid and George Floyd he was handed a gift. He could've played the great statesman and rise above the fray, and sailed onto a crushing win in the next election despite all his haterz foaming at their mouths. He really missed the mark by not taking charge with Covid, and then politicizing things even further.
Fauci and Birx told Trump that covid was a bio weapon designed by the Chinese in retaliation for his trade policies with China . They played him with partial truths( it was bioengineered in wuhan financed by Fauci). Trump prides himself on knowing people and when he’s being lied to . He blew it when he failed to detect Fauci as power hungry manipulator. Trump should have fired him. Dr Bhattarcharya was available to offer his opinions but was not asked. Same for the other authors and signatory of The Great Barrington Declaration. Ongoing disaster. Look what CDC and FDA and White house are doing right now by pushing the new booster on all including children . This time people are responsible to pay for this booster. That fact coupled with the more pervasive distrust will hopefully prevent most from taking the dangerous modified mrna “ vaccine” booster.
I love Celia, but Bruce is right
Oh, he is. But that doesn't mean that Trump's leadership was good on Covid.
There were a lot of missteps made by Trump but you have to consider what he was up against. The entire MSM, FBI, DOJ, CIA, hell the entire government was against him. I think he is smarter now and admitted to not having the right people in the right positions. His is a fighter and we need him back in to correct all the things the leftist have damaged. I have seen the evil they are doing. If we are going to make America great again, and he is our nominated contender and you don’t like him, hold your nose and vote. I want to win no matter what it takes.
From the very start of his administration, it was clear that he was bad at choosing underlings and bad at managing them. The same flaw DeSantis has demonstrated with his mismanaged campaign.
I will not vote for Trump again. I only voted for him in 2020 because the Democrats had demonstrated how unhinged they are so abundantly from 2016 onwards. Trump is not a solution to the problem; he is just gasoline on the fire that Leftists want to use to burn the U.S. to the ground.
Mistake, no one is 100% on, but with all that was happening, who would figure BEFORE all this the corruption of so much of the government, e.g. DOJ, FBI. One, before this, would think the "science" arena would not be penetrated. I was involved with the Volen Center at Brandeis University for decades, and could not believe they would have DEI "presentation" for half of a graduate student day long program I was involved in funding. No longer support any of that University. BUT, just like the main article--he too was stunned could (and did) happen in the USA.
Way back in the early 00s, in grad school, I had already seen the way Leftists reacted to science that did not support their ideology. While I was dismayed by the capture of science institutions, I was not surprised.
Science's problem is much larger than individual politicians as this recent Free Press article illustrates so well:
https://www.thefp.com/p/i-overhyped-climate-change-to-get-published
Surely you jest??? You can’t possibly believe this.
I was responding to Celia- demagoguery is exactly the problem we have. We need more INDEPENDENT THOUGHT- not belief in one or the other point of view without adding reason and actual thought to the mix.
Patrick Brown's article provides plenty of evidence.
"We recommend leaving borders open to the virus because racism is more dangerous than a virus"
- left wing "science" aka CDC 2020
“But I can never go back to the uncomplicated faith and naive confidence I had in America when I was young.”
This makes two of us. While I’m grateful to you and others who have pushed back with success, I have concerns about departments, agencies, bureaus, institutions, Et al. The unelected controls the elected. Which has been an issue prior to covid. The pandemic pulled the curtain back.
I have followed this free speech hero for 3 years, and we all should be grateful for his steady and reasonable efforts to end this tyranny. I would like to see him take on Stanford’s own “Internet Observatory” next, where there has been and will likely be again, speech censorship work related to the elections. As a Stanford alum, this kind of program embarrasses me and does exactly what it accuses its conservative opponents of going - it interferes with the election by steering the discussion and debunks narratives that are not “approved”. I hope this case reaches the Supreme Court so that this administration can be exposed for its tyranny in the most visible way possible.
That’s their playbook - accuse your political opponent of the very things you are doing. The dems have had a lot of success with it.
I see it too. I will never, ever vote for a democrat.
I traditionally vote Republican but there are miscreants there too.
That's on page one of the politician's handbook. All members of congress memorize it.
Thank you for your service to this country Dr. Bhattacharya.
You are not alone in disbelief of how our country violated our free speech rights in the past few years. Many of us had our blinders ripped away and have been horrified and so disillusioned. The worst part for me is the number of our fellow citizens who supported this along with our government and painted anyone who disagreed as selfish or ignorant and actually wanted the dissenters imprisoned.
They didn't just want us imprisoned. They wished us dead. They said so openly
And first they will come for the Christians, who historically are skeptical (at minimum) of government. Look at what was discovered about the FBI going after “traditional” Catholics. No one will be immune who doesn’t bow down at the altar of government propaganda.
It's always a delight to read Defiant L's on Twitter, where hypocrites' old and often horrifying posts are revealed in all their ugly shame.
The thing that scared me was encouraging people to tell on their neighbors and friends and then people actually doing that. That is straight out of the Soviet playbook.