The Irony of Our Current Censorship (Is Subsidiarity Flooding In?)

By Carl Nelson

“What censorship? I haven’t heard anything about censorship? “– a Facebook posting

Prior to the ham-handed censorship of the Covid ‘crisis’, whether or not censorship was actually at play in the legacy media, social medias, search engines, our schools and throughout our institutions was ‘a matter of debate’. After Covid hit, censorship came out of the closet, called itself “fact-checking” and paraded about like the Spanish Inquisition rooting out heresy, punishing dissenters, labeling mis-information and cancelling its procurers as heretics. That nearly everything the powers that be came to call mis-information was actually correct information, and that most all of what they propounded was false and injurious to the public has come out since then – but not through their engines. But what has been touted as possibly the most hostile period to free speech in our country’s history (and looking to get worse) has actually produced more personal access to dissenting information and opinion than I have experienced in my lifetime. It’s as if the scales have been removed, and the free flow of information I had previously thought I had enjoyed in a country whose founding document advertised Free Speech right there in its initial statement – had not actually existed.True, in the past, one could generally say and publish what one wanted – but the access to this information was generally denied or hidden down long obscure corridors, by the institutions which nurtured the cultural memory – who made it a point not to nurture those particulars.

For example, my grammar school histories all extolled President Woodrow Wilson as the beacon of Progressive light, shining our path forward into the twentieth century; “remembered for his legislative accomplishment and high-minded idealism” (online Britannica).Cast as the enlightened academic who took on the burden of leading out great nation, he pushed us right into WW1, after campaigning to keep us out. Then he created the League of Nations so as to prevent further world wars. (What a big success that was.) Furthermore, what a good idea, to create a world-wide governing body of unelected representatives, which like a hydra has launched the UN, the WHO, the IMF, the World Bank, the European Union and countless other unaccountable worldwide meddling tyrannies. He also established the Income Tax, and then the Federal Reserve so that the government would not only be able to meddle in monetary affairs but have oodles of money with which to grow bureaucracies and prosper. The guy was a disaster – and to place the cherry on top, a racist. But that’s not the way my school books pitched him.

Then there’s Lincoln, “the Great Emancipator”, who I was taught to revere for “saving the Union”. But by insisting upon “a war to end slavery”, Lincoln succeeded in killing more Americans in a bloodier carnage than any in our history to accomplish something the other Western nations managed to do within a few decades without firing a shot. I was also taught that the first years of the war were slow going as Lincoln could not find generals who were aggressive enough to follow up on their successes to cement a victory. The facts of the matter were that these generals had to stop their advances when they had outrun their supply lines. Lincoln found new generals such as Grant and Sherman who would practice non-negotiated surrender and total war.. i.e. living off of the civilian population as they advanced. It was a scorched earth policy meted out upon our own citizens. A great leader? How about someone who purposely precipitated a disaster the facts of which our population can still not face up to.

Then there’s FDR, who allegedly “got us out of the Depression”. Or so I was taught. Whereas, the facts of the matter appear to be that he prolonged the Depression, and in doing so laid the foundations of today’s welfare state, and the bureaucratic maze of federal programs which have only ballooned into the future and which we labor under currently. Then there’s Johnson’s War on Poverty and Civil Rights legislation which in the ensuing years hasn’t made one jot of difference in the poverty level or altered the condition of the Black community for the better. And yet, we’ve been led to revere all of these ‘advances’.

But that’s just us. Peering elsewhere, we’ve also been taught to revere Churchill as the great statesman. An eloquent and excellent wartime belligerent he may have been, “But a warlord? As one Englishman recently and very harshly put it, “Churchill was an idiot.” (Armando Simon, “That Which Must Not Be Mentioned About WWII”) Read all about it.

Here’s another anecdote about how our collective history has been built (or rather, fabricated):

“that whole “not getting up on the bus for a white person” thing was staged.

9 months earlier, Claudette Colvin then 15, did the same thing on a similar bus in the same place.Hers was an actual incident that she was arrested for. The NAACP took an interest in her and her case… until she got pregnant from being raped by a married man.

They then abandoned Claudette and staged a repeat incident with Rosa who was older and married, therefore an “acceptable representation” of what a woman should be especially one to represent the NAACP who Rosa was also a member of at the time.

And it worked, people know Rosa but never Claudette, a victim of rape and sexism from the results of it by the NAACP members we were taught to respect.”

– John Davenport (a Facebook posting)

“Colvin did not receive the same attention as Parks for a number of reasons: she did not have “good hair”, she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, and she was pregnant. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the “most appealing” protesters the most seen.” – Google

Imagine a thousand or more of these ‘disinterested’ non-profits and ‘very-interested’ for profit politically active pressure groups all vying to pitch the next fabrication of our cultural memory, and establishing their narrative for political advantage. Watch them at work over a century’s time. Then “read all about it!” It would seem as a nation, our self image is manufactured from a propaganda fog of fantasy, projection, and notions fanciful and inflated as any teenager’s, with leaders who are acting like any culprit who has found their story and they’re “sticking to it”. Add to this Biden’s proposed plan to add a Ministry of Dis-information Czar, and we have the current cherry on top.

Nowadays the news – as is being pitched to us – is so surreal and beyond common sense as be perceived as illusory even as it is being spoken. So much so that no one bothers to disagree. The legacy media is one big parrot store. Does anybody believe President Biden (when intelligible) or what the White House Press Secretary has to say? Who even bothers to listen, except for the legacy media reporters who turn up dutifully to file their report and pitch the soft questions? Currently, post debate, the legacy media are “shocked!”Shocked I tell you, to find that Biden is cognitively challenged i.e. senile. And even the Conservative pundits are forced to go along with this pretence of surprise at the Biden’s poor performance – because that’s where the conversation is. It’s a bit like the Dutch tulip mania. Even those who knew it was a mania were forced at some point to get involved.

The silver lining, I suppose, is that as the legacy media becomes more surreal people are leaning on their learned experience and are also more open to declarations of personal knowledge from others, and give their ear to much of what used to be outside the Overton Window. For example, people are testing much of what conventional medicine says against a flood of information flooding in from other sources: substacks, news, and social media postings.

That reality is flooding in from every side to fill the vacuum left by social media, shouldn’t surprise us. Nature abhors a vacuum. This is as true for physics as it is for human nature. Substacks and blogs are reporting from the cultural and political frontlines. These are self-sustaining entities reporting for the general good, if only so that reality can be witnessed and attested to. Whistleblowers abound! Doctors and researchers report their experiences directly from their practice. These are ‘unauthorized’ messages. But we’re seeing the gift horse’s teeth examined by vets who know.

I’ve never had such a wealth of information pouring though my online in-boxes. Links spawn links which spawn more links. There is a wealth of small publisher books available bearing every sort of unauthorized witness. More than I’ll ever have time to read.(And I have stacks of books I mean to get to.) It’s so much different than the years, decades previous, when it was so difficult to dig up supporting information to substantiate my arguments.

For example, I can remember way back when at the beginnings of the Global Warming hoax, there was only one columnist in the Seattle Times, of that time, who wrote about business – but who would now and then post an opposing column regarding the onslaught of Global Warming propaganda. But he disappeared from the paper after a year of so, not to be replaced -which left me arguing mostly by the seat of my pants. Without an informational access of my own, I had to use theirs. I would compare conflicting statements the Global Warmers had made, as this was the only information available, and point up the absurdities. For example, I’d point out that the Maldives were still there (and still are); that the Antarctic ice shelf has not severed, swamping coastal cities, etc., etc. (And still hasn’t.) Having no access to informational sources of my own, I had to argue the contradictions inherent in theirs. Not wholly satisfying, but still a squeak!

I was interested in this statement by a famous reporter of her time, Martha Gellhorn, notable also for having married Ernest Hemingway:

“People often say, with pride, “I’m not interested in politics.” They might as well say, “I’m not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future”… If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics.”- Martha Gellhorn

Note, this is the thinking of a Progressive. (Who began participating in politics by the age of 7, participating in “a rally for women’s suffrage at the Democratic party’s 1916 national convention in St. Louis.” – Wikipedia) And they love politics! Minding one’s own business is surely no panacea to them. And, in fact, makes them squirm. They simply cannot remain politically still.

But isn’t much of the problem that it shouldn’t be so. That one should be able of one’s own efforts to have an impact on the culture one swims in and the government one is subjected to without becoming one of a politically active group. Surely, we needn’t be one of a group or politicize to buy toothpaste, or a car, or a house, or to decide to take a vacation. Wouldn’t it be great if we were as free to determine our government and its actions in a like manner?

Rather than worrying a correction to our present state of affairs, the solution as it appear to me, is to recognize that politics is perpetually illusory, and that the nature of the political beast is to create the most persuasive illusion which will trap the allegiance of the largest majority of the populace. The closer this illusory confection replicates reality – I would guess the more successful the society. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be so – as we can see from our situation today.

For these reasons, I would vote that the most promising direction to go in finding our way free of the current nonsense is to use as our heading, the Principle of Subsidiarity.

“The best way to allow the world to adapt to change is by respecting the principle of subsidiarity. This is the concept that decision-making authority should be delegated to the smallest, most local competent level. The principle of subsidiarity demands decentralization. The ultimate component of a decentralized adaptive world is not the nation-state, it is the family. We need to celebrate the family as the core of the principle and thrust of the concept of subsidiarity.” – Robert Malone

The best way to avoid being played or suffered by a delusion is to judge what is real by our personal experience. Second hand knowledge like second hand testimony violates the “hearsay rule” and is naturally suspect. Most people would judge what they know and have experienced to be true as more reliable than what someone might have said… especially when it’s something read or blathered in the media. Why should you believe me? I would think it’s most likely you will accept what I say based on how well it aligns with what you have experienced yourself. And the best way for me to convince you of that would be to use examples from my own personal experience.

So the problem presently consuming me is, how can each citizen take control of their lives through personal witness? Truck drivers, who refuse deliveries to New York City, would seem to be invoking their personal witness. They do not support what in their view is not being run right. As a writer, I try to argue from my personal experience. If I mention information gleaned elsewhere, such as online or from books, I try to mention how I’ve found it working for me personally – just like a cook will wait to tout a recipe until they’ve tried it.

This is certainly, why there is a great preference, among especially the more Conservative voters, to be hesitant to vote for a candidate who has not had to make their way in the world and achieve some success. After all, the notions and ideals of a person without experience are apt to change like a sail in the wind of whatever circumstances arise. The Conservative’s hesitance is only prudent. For example, since it is a proclivity of administrations to get us into wars, it is a natural preference for the citizenry to elect someone who has served in one, and understands the downside. Likewise, since the economy is such a pressing concern, it is natural to think that a business person might react more knowledgeably and with more prudence than a sinecure ensconced bureaucrat.

One of the reasons the incoming information I glean from my network of online links is so favored is that often it is firsthand knowledge. It has not passed through the fevered dramatizing mind of some journalist. If there were one common complaint about our current crop of politicians, it is that they are built near entirely of illusion. What they know best, and are the masters of, is creating illusion. And currently this country is dying from an illusion.