Monday, January 11, 2021

The Darkness Closes In

Ben Domenech offers a number of pertinent remarks about last Wednesday's ruckus on Capitol Hill in a fine essay at The Federalist.

Some of his most interesting comments, perhaps, are in his concluding paragraphs where he notes that those who control our news and social media will use the riot as an excuse to amp up their condemnation of conservatives, at least those who themselves don't condemn Trump, and to accelerate the process of suppressing, or even eliminating, the free exchange of ideas in this country.

Here's Domenech:
What will happen next is obvious: A total crushing, anti-free speech effort that treats Trump-supporting groups like Branch Davidians. An effort to restore the fundamentally unserious neocons as the voice of reason in the room. A hardening of the bounds of the People’s House to keep people away from politicians. A use of any levers of government power — including audits, regulation, and lawfare — to harass conservatives now categorized as seditionists and terrorists by the incoming president who falsely claims to want to unite the country. And above all, a doubling down on all the policies and efforts put in place to crush exactly the type of people who showed up at the Capitol yesterday in a foolish, desperate attempt to make themselves heard.
The crushing of free speech is absolutely necessary for the left because they're aware, if only subliminally, that conservative ideas have a powerful appeal to rational folks. Progressives sense that their own ideas can only compete on an emotional level and simply couldn't withstand the criticism they'd be subjected to in a free and open public square.

This is one reason for the postmodern disparagement of Reason itself and for the ascendence of fact-free emotivism in our public discourse. It's one reason why so many conservative speakers, people like Jordan Peterson, for example, are disinvited from speaking on college campuses or shouted down and threatened with physical harm if they do show up. The progressive leadership at these schools fears that the audience would find these speakers too persuasive if they were permitted to expose students to their ideas.

Likewise, Facebook and Twitter will continue to deplatform conservatives. Many newspapers and tv newsrooms will continue in their role as propagandists for the left. Apple may follow though on its threat to drop Parler from its app store, applicants for teaching positions will be asked their opinions of sundry social issues and quietly passed over for the job if their answers don't pass progressive litmus tests.

It's ironic that progressives who see themselves as the champions of justice for the oppressed are themselves busily engaged in creating another unjustly oppressed class and happily serving as the oppressors. The people who see themselves as children of light are actually ushering in the darkness.

Domenech adds this:
The rioters failed in their effort and ensured their marginalization. But marginalization doesn’t mean evaporation. They’re still here. They’re still Americans. And they’re not going away.
They may not be going away, but every effort will be made to make them seem irrelevant, insignificant and malign and to suppress their voices lest people who hear them begin to think that they make a lot of sense.