Conversation as Intervention

With the rise of BLM and the #MeToo movements, there has been a constant theme across the Left when it comes to addressing concerns raised by people not within those movements:  Let's Have a Conversation.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The people who claim to want to have a conversation only want the chance to hector, humiliate and lecture people who do not bend the knee.

How do I know this?  Well, because I've tried to have conversations with people, both online and in person.  What usually happens is that I'm told I need to educate myself.  Considering that I read upwards of forty books a year -- none of them in the James Patterson or Maeve Binchy categories -- and that I listen to podcasts involving people who are on both sides of an issue, I'd like to think I'm educated beyond what most people are.  Admittedly, I don't know everything about every issue, and I'm painfully uninformed when it comes to statistics -- as some say, statistics can mean whatever a speaker wants them to mean -- but I'm relatively conversant about most hot-button issues.  My rhetorical style doesn't lean on too much sarcasm or snark, I don't revile my opponent and I don't insult people, generally, although if someone starts a fight, I'll finish it.

During the Obama administration, I got into it with a couple of black guys about Trump, and how racist he is.  Perfect he ain't, but I don't think he's particularly racist.  I was harangued about my support of Trump -- it was more of a defense, but OK...-- and told I had drunk Kool Aid.  The conversation took the inevitable turn into systemic racism, and Michael Brown was brought up.  To them, it was clear the cop was a dyed-in-the-wool racist and was only looking to gun down the first black guy who provoked him.  But when I brought up Eric Holder's DOJ autopsy which, on pages 88 and 89, stated that Brown was rushing at the cop when he was shot...the discussion abruptly ended.  See, they didn't want to have a conversation:  They wanted to hector me until I apologized for being white.

In my time, I've been around plenty of horses' asses of the male variety.  I know of one guy who, in high school, slept with a fellow student on her birthday and then broke up with her immediately after.  So I'm quite prepared to defend a woman who makes a credible accusation of rape or sexual harassment.  But I've also known that some women, for whatever reason, will make claims that are unsupported by the facts simply to impugn a guy.  Take the Brian Banks case, the Duke lacrosse cases and the UVA frat case for starters.  And those are just the most visible cases.

Gun control always brings out zealots.  Despite never having touched a firearm, much less fired one, gun control advocates will point to the need to get rid of all semi-automatic assault rifles, asking rhetorically why weapons of war are needed by anyone.  When the difference between automatic and semi-automatic is finally explained to them, and when statistics about murders by cars and knives are raised, the discussion ends, because it's not a conversation that was sought, but an intervention.  When the person who is the subject of the intervention is resistant, the conversation abruptly ends.  That the intervenors might be proven wrong, or that they may admit that their point of view needs correction, is not a possibility.  Only the complete and utter capitulation of the interlocutor is acceptable, and once it becomes evident that that's not going to happen, the conversation ends.

So spare me the entreaties to converse.  No matter what LeBron James says, I don't need education.  I'm not omniscient like those who want to convert me.  But I am analytical, I am well read and I'm no fool.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott, I'm not about to change my beliefs as one would change his coat with the weather.

(c) 2022 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

The Twitter Files: This Millenium's Watergate

 When I first heard about Twitter, I asked someone what it was about.  After I heard what people were tweeting, I decided no one needed to hear what I had for lunch.  Obviously, I underestimated the importance of the medium, but I am nevertheless very happy I never opened an account.

Over the last six years, there's been a firestorm over Twitter, who can be on Twitter, what can be said on Twitter, and how Twitter censored certain viewpoints.  Generally speaking, I suppose I don't understand what all the fuss is about.  But upon further inspection, something very invidious took place.

Earlier this year, Tesla owner Elon Musk bought Twitter.  We can only guess at his motives, but thank goodness he did.  Upon taking over, Mr. Musk opened up the files of his new company and allowed two independent -- and it should be pointed out, left-leaning -- journalists, Matt Taibi and Bari Weiss, to report on what they discovered.  What's been reported not only has rocked the nation, but it's also confirmed what many have suspected for a long time:  Twitter censored viewpoints with which it disagreed, shadow banned some people, and did other things to tweets that made them unavailable to viewers.  What people didn't suspect, however, was that not only was it members of Twitter that were engaged in the censorship but that these Twitter employees were working in tandem with the FBI and the Biden presidential campaign.

It goes without saying that as a private company, Twitter was well within its rights to publish whatever it wanted, as well as censor whatever it wanted.  Where the line was crossed, however, was when it was getting direction from the FBI, a unit of the federal government.  It's also questionable whether the Biden campaign's involvement crossed constitutional lines (if the Biden campaign received federal funds, I contend, it was thereby a quasi-governmental unit bound by the Constitution in the same way a university received federal funding is).  So while Twitter would otherwise have the right to do with its platform whatever it liked (withing constitutional reason, of course), once the FBI and the Biden campaign got involved, the equation was queered.

Why this is at all relevant is that two topics had a direct impact on the 2020 election.  First, the Hunter Biden laptop fiasco -- was the laptop the product of Russian operatives or real, were the emails contained therein Russian disinformation, was Man of Dementia involved in influence peddling -- had a crucial bearing on the election.  From certain reports, as much as 17% of Biden voters would not have voted for him had they been told the truth of the laptop story.  Depending on where those voters lived, that could have changed the outcome of the vote and therefore the results of the Electoral College.  

The other story that was suppressed was the origins of Covid.  Debate raged as to not only the origins of the virus, but also whether the vaccines and the masks were effective.  How did this impact the 2020 election?  Not having all the perspectives out on the table allowed certain states, such as Pennsylvania, to alter the voting rules to favor the Democrats over the Republicans.  It's a little like allowing the home team to move the goalposts when the other team has the ball to make it much harder for it to score.

Now that Republicans have taken back the House, I earnestly hope they don't go tit-for-tat with investigations to pay back the Democrats.  I do, however, hope they launch investigations into Hunter Biden and the FBI.  If Republicans regain both the presidency and the Senate while holding onto the House in 2024, they need to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to hold social media companies accountable for such invidious, undemocratic behavior.

(c) 2022 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles