Stephen Colbert. Jimmy Kimmel. A close relative. Just three of the many victims of our Mad King’s effort to erase the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.
Most of you reading this are already aware that the Trump administration’s threats–to block mergers and pull broadcast licenses–led their cowardly networks to pull comedians off the air, despite huge audiences and excellent ratings. Many of you have also been reading about the ordinary citizens who have been fired or suspended for comments made on social media. In all these situations, the comments at issue were protected by the First Amendment–and most of them were anything but inflammatory.
One of our Mad King’s favorite accusations is that he is the victim of a “witch hunt.” Like most of his pronouncements, it’s projection. What we are seeing now is a witch hunt, carried on by the administration and MAGA–and it threatens more than the First Amendment.
As usual, Indiana’s MAGA Governor has hopped on the Trump/Rokita train, threatening the state’s teachers, and announcing that “The Secretary of Education has the authority to suspend or revoke a license for misconduct and the office will review reported statements of K-12 teachers and administrators who have made statements to celebrate or incite political violence.” In a Sept. 12 X post, Rokita encouraged people to report teachers who “celebrate or rationalize” Kirk’s Sept. 10 killing so they can be included in his office’s government dashboard. That platform has been used to list and condemn instances of “objectionable” political ideology entering the classroom. Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith has also asked for such reports.
Orwellian.
You might wonder how these purported opponents of “cancel culture” justify their 180-degree turn on that issue. You might suggest they take a remedial course on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. But far worse than this display of hypocrisy and constitutional ignorance is the real-world effect of igniting actual witch hunts.
Rokita’s “dashboard” and Braun’s statement are invitations for disturbed or angry people, or people with grudges, to slander the objects of their hostility. My relative was a recent object of such vilification. That relative teaches at a charter school; an individual that relative has neither met nor heard of — a person who had evidently disagreed with my relative’s political postings on Facebook for some time– decided to “send a report” to virtually every public official in Indiana, along with numerous parents and funders of the school. The “offensive” posts consisted of statements that Rightwingers have been responsible for more violence than people on the Left (a fact found by the FBI that the Trump administration has now scrubbed from the official website), and one comment to someone else’s post to the effect that calls for empathy were inconsistent with Charlie Kirk’s own statement that he did not believe in empathy.
Hardly hate speech. Certainly not a call for violence. But a clear warning about the actual effects of a “snitch” society.
If MAGA folks were able to learn from history, they might take a lesson from other times and places, where people seeking favor from autocratic governments, and people with personal grudges, were encouraged to “turn in” friends and neighbors considered insufficiently loyal to the regime. Those societies weren’t pretty.
Frederick Douglas, among others, was eloquent on the importance of free speech, saying: “No right was deemed by the fathers of the government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government.” Dougles also said that freedom of speech “of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.”
There can no longer be any doubt that Trump–ignorant and incompetent and mentally-ill as he is–is a wanna-be tyrant. But he isn’t the real threat. The real threat comes from the powerful people who obey in advance, the businesses happy to discard integrity in exchange for official permissions, the GOP elected officials who “suck up” to their cult leader rather than standing up for civil liberty or even for their own prerogatives.
What’s worse is that those who are bending the knee would easily prevail in a court of law.
We have a would-be King who is so thin skinned that he can’t even take a joke, and a political party that is a joke. But it’s not funny, and we need to reverse it.
Professor-what was it Voltaire said about free speech? I wonder if our President remembers that incredibly important phrase.
I knew it was only a matter of time before Republicans dusted off the good ol’ Nixon playbook. He threatened broadcasters licenses and comprised his own enemies list that included several prominent journalists. Every time there’s a new outrage one can rest assured that the Republican Party has already been there. The Republican Party – – intellectually and morally bankrupt for decades.
It is hard to tell who is responsible for this attack on the First Amendment. It isn’t just the “enemy’s list president from hell”. Is it the FCC members, or is it the board of directors at ABC? Or further down the chain is it Nexstar? Or is it our local Channel 59? Perhaps we need to focus on the Republican Congress, or maybe the sick majority on the Supreme Court who believe that the president can do no crime?
Sadly we are faced with the horror that it is all of the above. A cabal if you will, a confederacy of greed, a collective disregard for honesty, decency, and faithfulness towards one’s country. Worst of all, a majority of voters thought this was the way to go and now sit back and simply watch.
I used to wonder how the German people let Hitler come into power. I don’t wonder that anymore.
Steven Schmidt, of “ the warning” pod cast talks about little Eichmanns. In a democracy they are generally harmless, in an autocracy they turn deadly. We seem to have a lot of little Eichmanns in government and society.
“As usual, Indiana’s MAGA Governor has hopped on the Trump/Rokita train,…”
The Indiana Republican government has been on the Republican train and its despots since long before Trump and Rokita were put in charge of the firings of those who “don’t go along to get along”. In the 1960s my mother worked for the Indiana IRS Department, her required 2% DONATION of her salary to the Republican party keep her job was deducted from her paycheck before she received it. This was the case statewide for government employees. In the 1970s when I went to work for Indianapolis City Government I had to swear to a loyalty oath and sign a document for the same. Being politically naive at that time, in the process of divorce with five children I really needed that job; by the 1970s the check deductions had ended and we stood in line every payday to pay our 2% DONATION in cash to the Republican party to keep our job. I was also told where, when and for how long to work at the Reelect Nixon campaign to keep my job with its $64 weekly take-home paycheck.
When Mayor Bill Hudnut took office he ended that 2% requirement; that lasted for two years and we were faced with 2% of our salaries being deducted from our paychecks to the Public Employee Retirement Fund (PERF) to keep our job. (As an aside, retirees learned when applying for PERF that 2 years of our employment records had been lost, was it that 2 years Mayor Hudnut so kindly let us keep our entire paychecks?) PERF is of course a strong Republican foundation which Trump intruded into, along with Mike Pence, in their 2017 first presidency year. The PERF budget was transferred out of Indiana banks into State Street Bank Retiree Services in New York City (where Trump was later convicted of fraud in many NYC banks). Since 2018 Indiana Republican Legislature has been trying to cut our annual retirement income. They continue playing games with our money so PERF recipients are on shaky ground along with those of us receiving our paid for Social Security checks.
The Republican Despot train has just been rolling faster and stronger with two engines hauling the cars behind; Trump and SCOTUS working hand-in-hand to force us to pay more to keep our lives and our mouths shut and those who are losing their jobs are just now learning the lesson of “going along to get along” with the Republican party. But this is a much more dangerous era; Republican Despots, mentally unsound president and his appointees and billionaires seeking more money ruling by terrorism and heading toward genocide by denying health care as the norm.
Sadly, Ball State kissed the ass of Todd Rokita, who got a complaint about a director who posted on her personal Facebook page about Kirk, who was nothing more than a government functionary, but for some reason has Bibi Netanyahu denying twice on TV that he was not responsible for killing Charlie Kirk. WTH
They may start with educators and public workers, but you know it will branch out from there. Rokita is a Koch and Trump toadie. He’ll devise a plan to garner some limelight or praise from King Trump.
What Brendan Carr at the FCC did was flat-out coercion, and Disney made a snap judgment – money over people. I read yesterday that a famous director refuses to work with Disney on a TV series until they bring back Kimmel. It will take a lot of that to fight back against authoritarianism.
Free press and speech are essential for a democracy, and our federal government has allowed the oligarchy to consolidate our media into basically five companies. As we’ve seen since January, those five companies have taken a knee and tossed out a list of Trump’s critics, including MSNBC. Do you still trust that you are getting unfettered truth from these government functionaries?
I believe Bill Clinton passed legislation that set us down this path. We need legislation that breaks up all these media conglomerates and then goes on to do the same with banks. Obama failed us. Force them into local ownership. In other words, democratize the oligarchy. I do believe Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani have some ideas about this. So does Elizabeth Warren.
The barrier to democracy is the ignorance of the people. We see it in Indiana and most Red States. All it will take is a politician or CEO to scream, “socialism,” and the people will vote against it. #ignorance
In the meantime, the oligarchs will be meeting with Stephen Miller for suggestions on how to deal with unruly and misbehaved workers and protesters, especially those who use the word Antifa.
What a hot mess. Germany 1934 2.0 is not that much of a stretch. It’s been done often. See Hungary, Russia, et. al. today. Now, the U.S. unbelievably put in place the orange dictator. Well done, voters. Yeah. #Ignorance. Or as my old grandma used to say, “These damned fools don’t have the sense God gave a goose.”
BTW, teachers’ ethics include not stating their preferred politics in any forum in any classroom. For example, as a science teacher, I was often asked if I believed in God. My answer was: “(1)This is science class and science works with proofs and facts. (2) My beliefs are none of your business.”
Dennis, “remembers” assumes that he ever heard of it , in the first place: doubtful.
Jeff, that’s an excellent point.
Vern, you also nailed it.
It is very sad to see how easily the creep of fear has compromised presumably sentient beings.
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
We see that old truism unfolding before our eyes and ears on the pervasive screen world that commercial interests have led us into, as well as from pulpits in the South and country clubs nationwide.
Apparently, Congress and SCOTUS are spineless toadies who run from their personal bogeyman.
Trump hates competition, so he’s breaking our Bill of Rights to eliminate late-night comedians who tell the truth to power.
The collapse of a once-great nation can be attributed to having too much free time to fill with endless entertainment.
Theresa’s sentence, “ I used to wonder how the German people let Hitler come into power. I don’t wonder that anymore.”, is too accurate. It took other nations to defeat Hitler and his ambitions. Trump has so isolated the US that no one will come to help us. It will have to come from within.
You shot your own argument in the foot: “If MAGA were to learn…” An oxymoron.
The hypocrisy of the government whining about critics and limiting free speech reminds me of a familiar adage from elementary school: “when you point your finger at someone, remember that 3 others are pointing back at you”. Each of us has a responsibility to defend our democracy by recognizing the wisdom of the First Amendment to our Constitution and standing up for it.
Not all speech has caused problems–Brian Kilmeade from Fox has not suffered and he suggested the murdering of the homeless, the mentally ill, and I suspect others. Since, most of us have zero expectations of decency for Fox, it was barely a blip in the other traditional media sphere. He still has a job too. Truly alarming
The timing of silencing Jimmy Kimmel seems to have a correlation to the permanent silencing of Charlie Kirks white supremist verbal attacks on Wokeness. The Maga regimes loss of a political operative spokesman for their cause needed to be publicly addressed so that their image of strength could be restored. Manipulating the narrative of the killing and falsely blaming the Left, Maga advanced its authoritarian agenda by the abuse of power of pressuring through the FCC to get Kimmel taken off the air. All that Kimmel had said was that (paraphrase) the shooter of Kirk was one of their own and they were blaming the Left to get political points. Pulling back the veil and exposing the truth really hit a nerve with the trump regime.
Freedom of speech is fundamentally American and when government tries to silence Americans civilians and truth, they are overstepping their roles and need to be corrected at the ballot box.
OK, I’m back to the point that a full third of eligible voters in our country didn’t bother to vote, and of those that did vote, the vote was split pretty much evenly, with rump winning those deflated totals by a percent or so. That means he won an election to be the leader of the most successful country on earth with about a third of the eligible electorate’s vote. Not even close to half the country. Shame on those who didn’t even bother to show up at the polls to decide who would lead this great country. We instead end up with the most vile undeserving character anyone could imagine, along with his supplicant toadies, to run this amazingly, up until now that is, aspirational place to live in history. I know in my heart there are more of us good folks than there are of the magas, and we’d damn well better prove it next November, and again in 2028. It isn’t too late if we do, and there will be an enormous number of things to do on our plates, but first we have to get out the vote like it’s never been done before and take back our country at the polls. If we don’t, if we let gerrymandering and the other voting obstructions already in the works overcome even the traditional mid-term election reversal, then we are doomed to live in a dictatorship. That is unimaginable and absolutely unacceptable.
40 years ago I had a Teeshirt emblazoned FYIYCTAJ. It has a crass translation and my wife threw it away because she didn’t want our daughters to learn what it meant.
Would be fun to wear it to a MAGA rally.