Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

This week was hectic and filled with outrageous moments and events, from the beginnings of an absurd impeachment process by the Republicans in Congress to Russia and North Korea strengthening ties, much to the chagrin of the illiberal liberal globalist class.

First up is an event from my archives, this is from the week ending July 30^th. I will offer brief analysis of the gerontocracy now ruling the US, which was epitomized in a recent Senate press briefing where Mitch McConnell was speaking, and then froze for 15-20 seconds. He is not the only government official who is ancient and senile. Senator Dianne Feinstein, after being away from the Senate for three months due to a case of shingles, told a reporter that she had not been absent. Feinstein is wheeled around and told to “just say aye” at Senate committees. Washington is now an old folk’s home, inhabited by incoherent, vapid, fossilized remains that were once politicians. The ruling class are ruling fossils. The Soviet regime near the ends of its life was constantly referred to as a gerontocracy, and it was seen as an inevitable byproduct of the Soviet system. The American liberal democratic system was superior as its leaders were elected and fresh faces replaced the aging ones, and yet, the US has become what it mocked in the Soviet Union.

Second, in a significant court ruling, the Biden administration is accused of violating the first amendment through its pressure on social media companies to censor individuals who allegedly spread mis and disinformation on COVID-19. This ruling exposes the Biden administration and the permanent regime whom they answer to for what they are, friendly fascists, not benevolent liberals who are the saviors of democracy. The Biden administration is appealing the ruling, and whatever the result of their appeal, they are evidently everything they claim Trump is.

The Ruling Fossils

During the first Cold War, the Soviet Union became a gerontocracy starting in the 1970s. Within three years, three leaders took over the Soviet regime and died. First, Leonid Brezhnev, who died in 1982 but had already been infirm due to a heart attack followed by an onset of arteriosclerosis since 1975, was succeeded by a battered and gravely ill Yuri Andropov, a once courageous and lively dissenter in the Stalin era. Andropov took over while he was suffering from kidney disease, and 15 months later, he died. Finally, Konstantin Chernenko, took over at 72 and died only 13 months later, and he was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev, who symbolized an end to the Soviet Union’s gerontocracy, and ultimately, the end of the Soviet Union.

American leadership is plagued by a similar issue. This is not just at the presidential level, as Biden will be 78 at the end of his first term in office, and if re-elected next year, 82 at the end of his second. Trump was the oldest person to become president at the time of his inauguration in 2017, at 70, and he will be 78 next year if elected, and 82 when leaving office. In Congress, Nancy Pelosi stepped down, but not until she was 82, after serving 20 years as House Speaker. Senator Dianne Feinstein is now 89 and unable to comprehend events around her. This was captured by her response to a reporter who relayed to her that she had missed a couple of months due to recovery from shingles. Feinstein insisted that she had not been gone at all. The myriad clips of Biden stumbling and making up words speak for themselves on his mental infirmity.

As well as the elite in the Democratic party, the elite in the Republican party is also a gerontocracy. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is 58, which is the average age of those in Congress across both parties. Senator Chuck Grassley is 89, and Senator Mitt Romney is 75, and the average age in the Senate across both parties is 64. This is a focus of analysis this week because Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell froze during a press conference on July 26^th. McConnell had already taken a few months leave due to a fall and concussion.[i] Despite being clearly unfit to serve in public office, McConnell is back on the job, as if it’s just another day in the retirement home that Washington D.C functions as now. Officials being wheeled around, advised on what to say and how to respond in situations, and guided through doorways and down paths is more like aides assisting senior citizens in their final years than serious politicians governing the free world.

What’s fascinating about the old age of America’s ruling class is that even among the more populist candidates, there is little youthfulness. Aside from Trump Bernie Sanders is 81. It is now evident that voters look at years of experience as a negative, not a plus. In 2016, Trump may have been older than Hillary Clinton, but it was Clinton’s decades of experience that hurt her chances in the election, and Trump’s complete lack of experience that helped him. Jonothan Rauch and Raymond J. La Raja analyzed data on how candidates who were either experienced or inexperienced in holding public office performed in House elections between 1990 and 2016, and what they found was that in the GOP, inexperienced candidates did far better.[ii] Of course, Trump’s nomination and election in 2016 at the presidential level embodies this preference for lack of experience over experience within the Republican party.

That Vivek Ramaswamy, who is partly modeling himself after Trump and his America First Doctrine, is only 38, shows how this trend continues, as the more establishment figures in the Republican primary, like Nikki Hayley and Chris Christie, are far below Trump, Ron DeSantis and Ramaswamy. Being an outsider or an amateur especially helps in foreign policy. The gerontocratic ruling class, partly excluding Trump, clings to the fading reality of America as a virulent superpower, or as Michael Mandelbaum calls it, a hyperpower.[iii] McConnell’s freezing on camera represents America’s fossilized ruling class addling and stumbling along, the US is not a superpower nor a hyperpower, it is an aging power much like its adversaries that is relentlessly mocks, like China and Russia.

There is clearly a hunger for fresher faces in American leadership. Though necessary, this may be, like the reign of Gorbachev was for the Soviet Union, the end of the republic, not for lack of trying, but for lack of understanding the extent of the rot and corrosion in the political system. Just like it’s ruling fossils, the US empire is on life support.

Reign of the Friendly Fascists

In a landmark ruling, the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Biden administration likely violated the first amendment through its demands that social media companies censor and supress individuals for allegedly spreading misinformation relating to Covid-19.[iv] The case, titled Missouri vs. Biden, has as plaintiffs the states of Missouri and Louisiana as well as medical professionals, like Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, who were ostracized and targeted for censorship by the US medical establishment for their arguments on the efficacy of vaccines for children and lockdowns, and other health mandates. The appeals court found that The Biden White House, surgeon general Xavier Becerra, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FBI coerced social media companies to monitor and moderate content related to Covid-19. The court ruling says that “We find that the White House, acting in concert with the Surgeon General’s office, likely (1) coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences, and (2) significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”[v] Although the executive branch of the US federal government was not asking directly for people to be censored, the use of coercion to pressure social media companies to monitor certain content is still a violation of the First Amendment. This was established as precedent in the case Bantam Books vs. Sullivan, in which the Rhode Island Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth was sued by four book distributors who refused to stop selling books deemed obscene by the Commission, who would notify law enforcement which distributors refused to comply. The US Supreme Court overrode the decision by the Rhode Island Court and concluded that although states had the right to regulate obscene material, the moves by Rhode Island disallowed adults as well as children from access to allegedly obscene material. Importantly, the US Supreme Court ruling in this case argued that the government may not use what it deems ‘informal sanctions”, like “the threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion, persuasion, and intimidation,”. We see this all the time when the heads of social media companies are hauled in front of the Congress and questioned by Democrats on why they are not censoring more, or when social media companies are threatened with more stringent regulation if they do not moderate content that government officials demand be moderated.[vi]

In the case of Missouri vs. Biden, it is ruled that people like Kulldorf were censored due to pressure from the US executive branch. The ruling cites the case Bantam Books vs Sullivan, for example they write that officials repeatedly requested certain posts be taken down and when they were not, officials became angry and hostile, asking why posts were still up, and “Officials threw out the prospect of legal reforms and enforcement actions while subtly insinuating it would be in the platforms’ best interests to comply.”[vii] This is an example of government officials resorting to informal sanctions. The ruling states that “Like in Bantam Books, the officials here set about to force the platforms to remove metaphorical books from their shelves.”[viii] The government may not have been telling social media companies to censor outright, but it is evident that the pressure/coercion, or, as noted by the court ruling in reference to Bantam Books vs. Sullivan, the informal sanctions, they used to encourage compliance with their moderation demands curbs freedom of expression and violates the First Amendment.

As noted by Andrew Ceonzo of The National Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the civil liberties group that represented the plaintiffs in this case, “The Constitution allows the government to express its views from the bully pulpit but prohibits bullying people into silence.”[ix] What is at issue is not that the Biden administration and officials like Becerra were expressing their views on Covid-19 in contest with the views of people like Bhattacharya. The issue is that any view that dissented from the official government narrative on Covid-19 was ostracized and censored. Dissenters were silenced because of the government bullying social media companies.

Corporate news outlets like NPR may like to focus on the fact that the appeals court is a ‘conservative court’ or that the ruling is a victory for the right, but this ruling is a victory against the friendly fascists who oversee the US government. The Biden administration may be appealing the decision, but they have at least been exposed for who they are, tyrants.

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[i] Pengelly, Martin. “Mitch McConnell Fell Earlier This Month, before Freezing Mid-Sentence This Week.” The Guardian, July 27, 2023, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/27/mitch-mcconnell-freeze-press-conference-fall-age.

[ii] La Raja, Raymond J., and Jonathan Rauch. “What Inexperienced Candidates and Primary Challenges Are Making Republicans the Protest Party.” Brookings, June 29, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-inexperienced-candidates-and-primary-challenges-are-making-republicans-the-protest-party/.

[iii] Mandelbaum, Michael. The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy: Weak Power, Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022.

[iv] Bond, Shannon, and Natalie Escobar. “Appeals Court Slaps Biden Administration for Contact with Social Media Companies.” NPR, September 8, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/08/1197971952/biden-administration-fifth-circuit-ruling-social-media-injunction.

[v] NCLA. “In NCLA Victory, Fifth Circuit Upholds Key Part of Government Social Media Censorship Injunction.” New Civil Liberties Alliance, September 8, 2023. https://nclalegal.org/2023/09/fifth-circuit-missouri-v-biden-social-media-censorship-injunction/.

[vi] FIRE. “BANTAM BOOKS, INC., et Al. V. SULLIVAN et Al. | the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.” http://www.thefire.org, December 3, 1962. https://www.thefire.org/supreme-court/bantam-books-inc-et-al-v-sullivan-et-al.

[vii] NCLA. “In NCLA Victory, Fifth Circuit Upholds Key Part of Government Social Media Censorship Injunction.” New

[viii] NCLA. “In NCLA Victory, Fifth Circuit Upholds Key Part of Government Social Media Censorship Injunction.” New

[ix] Ceonzo, Andrew. “Courts Must Distinguish between the Bully Pulpit and Bullying to Stop Abridgements of Free Speech.” New Civil Liberties Alliance, June 16, 2023. https://nclalegal.org/2023/06/courts-must-distinguish-between-the-bully-pulpit-and-bullying-to-stop-abridgements-of-free-speech/#:~:text=But%20the%20Supreme%20Court%20made.

References

Bond, Shannon, and Natalie Escobar. “Appeals Court Slaps Biden Administration for Contact with Social Media Companies.” NPR, September 8, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/08/1197971952/biden-administration-fifth-circuit-ruling-social-media-injunction.

Ceonzo, Andrew. “Courts Must Distinguish between the Bully Pulpit and Bullying to Stop Abridgements of Free Speech.” New Civil Liberties Alliance, June 16, 2023. https://nclalegal.org/2023/06/courts-must-distinguish-between-the-bully-pulpit-and-bullying-to-stop-abridgements-of-free-speech/#:~:text=But%20the%20Supreme%20Court%20made.

FIRE. “BANTAM BOOKS, INC., et Al. V. SULLIVAN et Al. | the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.” http://www.thefire.org, December 3, 1962. https://www.thefire.org/supreme-court/bantam-books-inc-et-al-v-sullivan-et-al.

La Raja, Raymond J., and Jonathan Rauch. “What Inexperienced Candidates and Primary Challenges Are Making Republicans the Protest Party.” Brookings, June 29, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-inexperienced-candidates-and-primary-challenges-are-making-republicans-the-protest-party/.

Mandelbaum, Michael. The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy: Weak Power, Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022.

NCLA. “In NCLA Victory, Fifth Circuit Upholds Key Part of Government Social Media Censorship Injunction.” New Civil Liberties Alliance, September 8, 2023. https://nclalegal.org/2023/09/fifth-circuit-missouri-v-biden-social-media-censorship-injunction/.

Pengelly, Martin. “Mitch McConnell Fell Earlier This Month, before Freezing Mid-Sentence This Week.” The Guardian, July 27, 2023, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/27/mitch-mcconnell-freeze-press-conference-fall-age.