A Thought Experiment On the Censorship Topic For My Fellow Lefties
Would we be so quick to support Big Tech if the roles were reversed? Let’s find out
Would we be so quick to support Big Tech if the roles were reversed? Let’s find out
If I force a gun to your head and make you decide between being on the Left or the Right, then this thought experiment is for those of you who choose Left (and for those of you who couldn’t figure out a way to get the gun out of my hands in the first place. Really, I mean no harm!)
Those who chose the Right? Read on and tell me in the comments what I may have gotten wrong (or right!).
This experiment requires we enter into a mirror of American political reality and we’ll go back to October 2016 to begin.
Are you all strapped in? Good, let’s get this (shit)show on the road! Vrrrroooom!
Welcome to 2016, The Year Forged in Hades
October 7, 2016: The Washington Post releases the article and video that we know of as the Access Hollywood Tape where we hear Donald Trump in 2005 speak lewdly about how he relates to women, saying, “, “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
People who see the article are outraged and want to share it on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook.
But they can’t.
Because the Big Tech companies are owned by fundamentalist Christians and they’ve determined that the content is “inappropriate.”
How can they do that? You scream at your computer screen, though by then you are growing used to such decisions because these outlets have been making them more and more over the past year or so, and most often they use the justification of “protecting the public good.” From your perspective, however, that justification often covers up political motivations.
You are allowed to talk about your frustration on social media and the platforms are more than happy to let you engage your outrage because that means you are spending more time on their platforms. It’s a win/win for them; they control the info and they increase engagement.
You’re smart enough to understand this, too, and that just makes you even more outraged.
Still, you log onto Twitter and Facebook and post (without the link, of course): Still, this Access Hollywood story about Trump has a direct impact on the presidential election, people have a right to know! I’m pissed!
Fortunately, because of users like you and because there remain some Left-leaning media outlets, the story has enough traction to make it to some of the public, but it’s being either downplayed, ignored, or even called into question as misinformation from Russia by the major media outlets, some of whom who also believe that the information violates “community standards.”
Over the next few weeks, no one in the Trump camp releases any evidence to prove that the tapes weren’t real but it doesn’t matter because the media has settled on the narrative that they are either too lewd to share or are fake, so the story isn’t the bombshell you think it should be.
To cap it off, less than a month after the story appears, Donald Trump goes on to win the election reasonably convincingly but you aren’t convinced and neither is the Hillary Clinton campaign.
There’s talk of election rigging and very possibly foreign interference, most likely the Russians. In fact, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is all but convinced and begins running stories every night that suggest the Russians were involved in manipulating the election, that they may have not only used social media to sway voters, but they’ve hacked into voting machines to change votes from Hillary to Trump.
The media shorthand for this is RussiaGate and it leads you to believe that, come January 20th, Donald Trump will not be taking office. You put your hope into this because you think Trump is an existential threat to the country.
Unfortunately, most media outlets don’t take this story seriously and are promoting the narrative that the election is over and Trump won fair and square and, meanwhile, the Clinton team’s lawyers are botching every attempt at winning the battle in the courts. It’s infuriating, but you still keep hoping.
Still, it looks like despite all of your sensibilities that something rotten is lurking throughout Denmark and delivering a tragically flawed candidate like Trump, he’s going to become president.
And while the MSNBC’s of the world continue their coverage of RussiaGate, hyping listeners like you to believe you are right, the folks on the Right are split in how they react to you. The meaner ones increasingly call you batshit crazy and the nicer ones tell you to relax, learn how to lose, and move on with your life.
You find yourself in a situation where you feel like the election was stolen in broad daylight but your opinion has been assigned to the fringes and come January, you are facing four years of a president who you think should be in jail for sexual assault at the very least.
But wait, there’s one more step: The social media giants have changed their policies and will be removing any content that promotes charges of election fraud. People making YouTube videos with speculation and, perhaps what they feel is proof, of the foreign meddling that seems so clear to you will, so long as the YouTube algorithms work, have their videos removed. If they do it enough times, their channels will be erased.
How did 2016 alternate reality make you feel?
Before we come back to the reality of December 2020, I want you to think about your answer to that question: How does the you who lived in this alternate reality feel right now?
Are you angry? Do you feel wronged, like you’re being made a fool of and that nobody will listen? What is your stress like as a result of these feelings?
Or perhaps you are OK with this version of events.
Back to 2020 Reality
My guess is, based on how upset many people really were in the wake of Trump’s election, how many really did sink a lot of time and emotional investment into the idea that RussiaGate was going to lead to Trump’s impeachment, if the events I’ve described had played out the way I described them, you would not have been OK with things.
Now, do you think this was a worthy thought experiment? I hope so.
If my intent was not clear, the idea was to help you empathize with where your friends on the Right are right now in mid-December 2020.
I tried to make the stories parallel — so the Access Hollywood tapes in the Washington Post are akin to the Hunter Biden e-mails in the New York Post and RussiaGate is akin to the Stop the Steal campaign. It’s likely not a perfect analogy; most aren’t. But I think it works well enough.
And obviously, the goal is not to make you agree with the Right’s take on things now.
I hope that by reading this, you’ll be more open to hearing their complaints — not from a strictly logical perspective, but a heart-based one.
Because I contend that if the divided America of 2020 has any chance of reuniting, it’s going to have to try some different tactics; it’s not going to be won in the intellectual debate-sphere, it’s going to be healed in the emotional sphere where we have open-minded discussions and really listen to each other.
And by listening, this means giving an ear to people we often don’t want to hear.
Because if you were in their shoes and you did feel those feelings of being unheard and angered, what would you do? One can only suck it up and take so much.
We also have to consider that some are better equipped psychologically to deal with such a heavy headspace. Some, though, are going to do what humans have long done when they feel these things: lash out.
Perhaps having done this thought experiment, you’ll be slower to accept the new rules of the Big Tech companies and the justifications giving for them by both the companies themselves and by major media outlets and politicians because you’ll question if they are being applied fairly to all political perspectives.
And if you think they aren’t, you’ll understand better why people who feel targeted by them are upset and you won’t respond by getting mad at them, but by listening to them, instead.
Perhaps if we take such steps, we can turn down some of the heat of the culture war and we’ll reduce the emotions that can lead to people getting hurt or killed as they have been in Charlottesville, Portland, and Kenosha.
That’s my hope at least.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
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