I swore I was going to try to keep this blog apolitical, but I saw this on Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr feed this morning and it NEEDS to be repeated everywhere and anywhere:
There is also an article from “The New Yorker” that deserves to be read as well:
Orwell’s 1984 and Trump’s America, by Adam Gopnik
In this new and very disturbing age where photographic and video evidence is now casually washed away with denial, when a presidential adviser is telling the press to “shut up”, and where “alternative facts” are becoming part of our lexicon, we need to be vigilant. We need to resist.
First, there are no such things as ‘alternative facts’; those are called LIES.
And a free press’ duty, a duty guaranteed in the First Amendment, is NOT to be silenced. This pillar of the US Constitution MUST be safeguarded, always.
George Orwell’s “1984” is a ‘fictional’ allegory that we, as a vigilant populace, cannot ALLOW to come true.
~ End of rant ~
Hope I’m not too pessimistic here, but I think it is a totally deliberate, well planned, full fledged attack on free society.
Free press is totally indispensable for a free society, and trust is vital for a democratic state. The forces behind these attacks are trying to undermine both. Deliberately, as part of a strategy. Once press no longer checks the government and trust no longer exists, the door is open for autocratic government.
The goal behind this strategy is no less than replacing liberal republicanism with autocratic dictatorship.
Some believe the Nazis survived 1945 and were hiding on the dark side of the moon, or in South America… but they’re right here, in the heart of Western societies, and we’re right in the middle of their largest offensive since the 1920s.