Acid Washing the First Amendment
The firing of Scott Pelly is the latest acid splash to dissolve freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom to protest.
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Authoritarian regimes, dictators, despots are often, but not always, fools. But none is foolish enough to give perceptive, dissident writers free range to publish their judgments or follow their creative instincts. They know they do so at their own peril. They are not stupid enough to abandon control (overt or insidious) over media. Their methods include surveillance, censorship, arrest, even slaughter of those writers informing and disturbing the public. Writers who are unsettling, calling into question, taking another, deeper look. Writers — journalists, essayists, bloggers, poets, playwrights — can disturb the social oppression that functions like a coma on the population, a coma despots call peace, and they stanch the blood flow of war that hawks and profiteers thrill to.
That is their peril.
—Toni Morrison, “Peril”
To misquote Oda Mae Brown from Ghost, “We in danger, folks.”
Last week, CBS fired veteran CBS and 60 Minutes journalist Scott Pelley. His termination was the former Tiffany network’s and Dump regime’s latest splash of sulfuric acid to dissolve the first amendment. A few weeks before, Stephen Colbert aired his final episode of the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. CBS booted both men because they spoke truth to power.
Just weeks before Pelly’s termination, another violent acid splash occurred. According to Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and novelist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, directed energy weapons were used against her after she reported on Jeffrey Epstein, his CIA ties and Zorro Ranch. To continue reporting and living in safety, she left her home. Now she is in the process of moving her and her family. At this time, her current whereabouts are unknown.
The most violent and ongoing example of acid bathing the first amendment are the Newark, New Jersey Delaney Hall and anti-ICE protests. New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill sent state police she claimed to protect protesters. Yet instead of protecting them, several state police officers helped ICE agents.
If people still are not yet worried about their own first amendment rights, they should be. Last week independent journalist Don Lemon revealed to his viewers that the DOJ prosecuting his civil-rights violation (you read that right) case wanted his The Don Lemon Show subscribers names via his YouTube channel.
Lemon refused to turn over those names.
Add to the DOJ demanding Lemon’s subscribers is the rise of environmentally damaging data centers and AI. To quote God, “Ultimately, these fascists are coming for all of us. With their AI data centers sucking up all your water and draining your lakes and rivers.” Data centers and AI collect our public and private information.
The rise of data centers and AI is not innocuous or coincidental. Nor are they inevitable. Across the nation, people are protesting and taking their concerns to their state capitols and city councils.
Last week in Illinois, the state legislature failed to pass its bill backed by Governor J.B. Pritzker that would have “raise[d] data centers’ electricity rates . . . .” On Monday according to Yash Roy of Insurance Journal, Pritzker had Illinois like Ohio halt tax credits for these data centers. Yet this does not go far enough and may be too late. Financial investments in Illinois data centers began in 2020.
Naperville, the latest Illinois town where a data center was proposed, already protested and fought back. Naperville resident and author of Lets Address This Qasim Rashid, Esq. and his fellow residents spoke their concerns to Naperville City Hall. Their righteous words led the city council members to defeat the data center proposal by a 6-1 vote.
Don’t forget that the dystopian and evil Palantir has been integrating federal data from numerous federal agencies. That includes our social security information among other data. Though the sweaty translucent goblin Peter Thiel, the greedy and weak billionaire behind Palantir, fled to Argentina after Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical warning about unregulated AI’s danger to humanity, our privacy and first amendment rights remain threatened and violated.
Of course Dump & Fiends’ initial first amendment acid splash hit the arts and humanities. The acid hit once he took office. Though he has never practiced or studied art and demonstrates a clear philistine history, Dump installed himself as head of the Kennedy Center. Soon his MAGA-Nazi foot soldiers infected its board. That should have set off everyone’s alarm bells.
Next step was Dump & Fiends defunding PBS, NPR, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. State and local arts and humanities organizations are now being destroyed or outright killed because their granted federal funding has evaporated.
These acid splashes have become more frequent and rapid. That corrosive splash will soon hit all of us. We must prepare ourselves and fight for our first and most vital Constitutional right.
To protect myself, I opened a Proton account. Proton encrypts emails and cloud documents. Despite MS cribbing my handwriting, I also remain vigilant to write in my notebooks by hand.
Pritzker, who played an essential role in establishing the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, reminds Illinoisians, U.S. citizens and immigrants that fascist regimes and fascist authoritarians do not last. Right now, I understand that for many of my readers that may be hard to believe or take comfort in. Terrifying does not go far enough to describe our time in contemporary history.
But we must repeat Pritzker’s words like a mantra. These are our affirmations.
We must prepare, strengthen and protect ourselves. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society teaches MS patients like me to “Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.” Everyone must adapt this attitude.