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In response to one of the conspiracy threads I found myself re-watching the Kirk shooting, when it occurred to me: watching it does make a difference.
When you watch a shooting, even on video, when you see the blood pour out of a man, I think you start to feel a bond of commonality with all those who live and unexpectedly die. They stop being an abstract political product in a marketplace of ideas. You start to drink in the small details that make life mundane, and make the mundane not monstrous. This is true, of course, not just of the Kirk shooting. Generally speaking, the more the censors revile people who watch a video, the more important it is to watch. For example, in the Christchurch shooting, we saw the very ordinary setting inside a mosque - not some Christian American daydream with scimitars and pictures of Osama bin Laden on the walls, but a community building with ordinary people pursuing their devotions. We saw how one hero very nearly stopped the gunman and was truly, as Muslims like to say, "martyred" in a way that even a Christian should agree on. Above all, whenever we contrast them in these videos, we witness the sheer difference in importance between the people who really matter - the ones who are being attacked - and the mindless killer, who is like some misdirected force of an evil nature, or occasionally, shows shock and uncertainty at what he is doing.
It isn't just video. Even in text, we have "news" sources that treat the "5 Ws" as something to avoid. They can't say who because only the Police have the right to release that, and they live under fear of liability and of being demonized for daring to print something that wasn't cleared with the right authorities, even if they have witnesses. Why? Because the cops are busy taking down (censoring) everything the attacker said, so that nobody has anything to argue about except their own knee-jerk reactions and prejudices. And, of course, the blame for why everybody is so polarized nowdays! The journalists can't say where because who knows, someone might rubberneck, or worse, find out something that wasn't meant to be found out. They can't say why because that's terror ideology right there. They can't say how because who knows, someone might copy it, and it's up to the Authorities to meet behind closed doors and (pretend to) make changes that are directed at stopping future attacks (while removing basic liberties) ... never the people. And they can't even say when because they have to change their story repeatedly, not just to censor inadvertent disclosures, but to keep it indexed like breaking news with the search engines. You go back to the articles trying to see what day it happened? Forget it. For now you can still ask an AI to tell you.
Whenever we see people angrily saying they are glad Kirk was shot, or leaping to conclusions to blame trans people and in the name of conservatism (?) take away their right to bear arms, or vilifying the people who say such things as Nazis, or calling people who call out Nazis terrorists ... it is all one big vicious cycle that swirls around its single source. The censorship of the real facts! And then they complain about fake news and demagoguery.
We have been on the wrong road about censorship, and especially about censorship of news "justified" in terms of privacy or imagined harms, ever since EPIC was going after the White Pages. Now people who publish phone numbers and addresses of well-known officials are listed beside looters and rioters as the sort of terrorists to be expunged by executive order. If we don't find a way to turn around, politics will continue to degenerate, and everything will be blamed -- but the source.
When you watch a shooting, even on video, when you see the blood pour out of a man, I think you start to feel a bond of commonality with all those who live and unexpectedly die. They stop being an abstract political product in a marketplace of ideas. You start to drink in the small details that make life mundane, and make the mundane not monstrous. This is true, of course, not just of the Kirk shooting. Generally speaking, the more the censors revile people who watch a video, the more important it is to watch. For example, in the Christchurch shooting, we saw the very ordinary setting inside a mosque - not some Christian American daydream with scimitars and pictures of Osama bin Laden on the walls, but a community building with ordinary people pursuing their devotions. We saw how one hero very nearly stopped the gunman and was truly, as Muslims like to say, "martyred" in a way that even a Christian should agree on. Above all, whenever we contrast them in these videos, we witness the sheer difference in importance between the people who really matter - the ones who are being attacked - and the mindless killer, who is like some misdirected force of an evil nature, or occasionally, shows shock and uncertainty at what he is doing.
It isn't just video. Even in text, we have "news" sources that treat the "5 Ws" as something to avoid. They can't say who because only the Police have the right to release that, and they live under fear of liability and of being demonized for daring to print something that wasn't cleared with the right authorities, even if they have witnesses. Why? Because the cops are busy taking down (censoring) everything the attacker said, so that nobody has anything to argue about except their own knee-jerk reactions and prejudices. And, of course, the blame for why everybody is so polarized nowdays! The journalists can't say where because who knows, someone might rubberneck, or worse, find out something that wasn't meant to be found out. They can't say why because that's terror ideology right there. They can't say how because who knows, someone might copy it, and it's up to the Authorities to meet behind closed doors and (pretend to) make changes that are directed at stopping future attacks (while removing basic liberties) ... never the people. And they can't even say when because they have to change their story repeatedly, not just to censor inadvertent disclosures, but to keep it indexed like breaking news with the search engines. You go back to the articles trying to see what day it happened? Forget it. For now you can still ask an AI to tell you.
Whenever we see people angrily saying they are glad Kirk was shot, or leaping to conclusions to blame trans people and in the name of conservatism (?) take away their right to bear arms, or vilifying the people who say such things as Nazis, or calling people who call out Nazis terrorists ... it is all one big vicious cycle that swirls around its single source. The censorship of the real facts! And then they complain about fake news and demagoguery.
We have been on the wrong road about censorship, and especially about censorship of news "justified" in terms of privacy or imagined harms, ever since EPIC was going after the White Pages. Now people who publish phone numbers and addresses of well-known officials are listed beside looters and rioters as the sort of terrorists to be expunged by executive order. If we don't find a way to turn around, politics will continue to degenerate, and everything will be blamed -- but the source.
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