Aren’t you sick to death of the Current Message? I know I am.
If you aren’t concerned about climate change, or whatever name The End of the World is going by this week, it doesn’t matter because you will be made to see or hear it. Or maybe the current message is Pride or Acceptance or Eat Bugs and Like It.
Actually, Eat Bugs and Like It is so January. The Current Message is Your Gas Stove Is Killing You, Your Dog, and Mother Earth, Too.
Did you notice that something that had never been an issue before, gas stoves, suddenly popped up everywhere all at once? That’s how it works. One message is repeated, amplified, repeated again, and reamplified, across every available medium.
Whatever the Current Message is, your favorite TV show will include it in a plotline. The network that airs it bombards you with similar messaging in its promotional spots. The search engine you use — and it doesn’t matter which one — promotes pages selling the same pablum and squelches dissenting views. Social media algorithms void your shares and silence your comments. TikTok, social malware unleashed by the CCP, fuels division and discontent by serving up the most dopamine-friendly content.
Normal people — that excludes you and me, gentle reader — who get their news the way normal people do, are suddenly questioning their gas cooktops. Because the ever present Current Message pounded it into their heads.
ASIDE: The indoctrination going on at our colleges, universities — and yes, even in our K-12 system — is even worse. That, however, is a column for another day.
Each of us has a voice. But what does it matter when all our voices are shouted down in the cross-media din? Or as PJ Media’s own Richard Fernandez tweeted today, shortly after I’d turned in this column:
Let me get personal here for a moment.
When I started VodkaPundit in 2002*, I refused to include any ads whatsoever. No tenth-of-a-penny-per-click banner ads, no sponsors, no tip jar, no nothing. I wanted to write whatever I wanted to write, beholden to no one. But that’s when writing was a hobby. It soon became a career, complete with a fancy title and coworkers and everything.
But you know what? I still write whatever I want to write.
Well, almost.
When it comes to Big Tech/Big Government censorship — censorship! — I have to watch that infamous mouth of mine.
The irony here drips like a chocolate ice cream cone on a summer day, fast and thick.
And what’s going on is censorship. We can’t stay in denial, clinging to the notion that what a private company chooses to promote or effectively banish is its own business. Because it isn’t a single company. There’s a cabal working hand in hand — and sometimes cash in fist — with the United States government and governments around the world.
My RedState colleague Brad Slager just cued me into an organization in the UK called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), reliably progressive, that produces lists of sites and articles that ought to be made unpersons, or at least thrown down the memory hole. GDI and groups like it all over the world, Brad explained, are set up as “non-profits, media-focus outfits, or university-based think tanks that classify sites that go against the narrative as dangerous and in need of corrective actions.”
Big Tech, with a wink and a nod, takes their “non-partisan” rulings as gospel, and friendly governments (like our own and the UK’s) turn a blind eye to this suppression of free speech. When they aren’t actively taking part, that is.
“The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government,” John’s Hopkins professor Dr. Marty Markary testified to Congress on Tuesday. That misinformation was repeated, amplified, repeated again, and reamplified, across every available medium.
Want to talk about the dangers or efficacy of the you-know-what jabs? Want to talk about masks? Down the memory hole with you. But masks were yesterday and jabs are today. Tomorrow you’ll be memory-holed for defending your gas cooktop. The day after tomorrow it will be about your child or grandchild being subversively “transitioned” behind your back by their school authorities.
We’re drowned out by the Current Message, and yet I continue to shout into the din because I must.
PJ Media and our Townhall brothers and sisters launched the subscriber-supported VIP section three years ago to give you a place free from the Current Message, a refuge for dissenters. We have big plans to expand that refuge and to make sure that our voices — that your voice — will be heard above the din.
If you haven’t already, please become one of our growing numbers of VIP supporters. Each PJ Media VIP and VIP Gold membership is another shout against the din. We’re holding the line against inflation, so use the promo code SAVEAMERICA for 40% off your membership.
*Yes, VodkaPundit is old enough to drink. How about that?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member