New York Gov. Kathy Hochul — aka Big Brother in a Pants Suit — says her administration will "collect data" and "reach out to people when we see hate speech being spoken about on social media." Did I really just call Hochul "Big Brother in a Pants Suit?" Sorry, my bad, that was uncalled for. What I meant to say is, "New York's Big Brother in a Pants Suit just introduced her social credit scheme in drag."
That's a whole lot of socio-political gender-bending going on in one brief announcement from New York's chief apparatchik, so bear with me a moment while I show you what I mean.
First, Hochul's announcement during her "I'm Getting Tough on Crime Again, and THIS TIME I Mean It" address to New Yorkers.
Kathy Hochul announced that New York is "collecting data" from "surveillance efforts" on social media
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) November 13, 2023
Hochul says the social media analysis unit will contact people who commit "hate speech"
This is to "ensure safety" Even though they got rid of Guiliani's Stop and Frisk which… pic.twitter.com/QjlPiXfRpz
If she reminds me of anyone here, it's Leonid Brezhnev but with more hair, smaller eyebrows, and arguably less charisma. Watch this clip and then try to tell me I'm wrong.
Here's the thing about New York's crime spike: it isn't due to "white nationalist MAGA Christofascists" on social media. It's largely the result of crazed and/or drugged-up vagrants that the police won't or aren't allowed to properly police and that New York's immense public health establishment won't or aren't allowed to aggressively treat.
If Hochul were serious about crime, she'd insist that local police departments go back to actual policing while introducing new state legislation mandating that the insane and/or drug-addicted be properly hospitalized and treated.
Instead, helpful state officials will pay a visit to your cranky Uncle Tommy who shared a pro-Israel meme that offended the finely-tuned sensibilities of some Hamas-loving hack in Albany, all courtesy of Hochul's surveillance scheme. Will the helpful state officials carry guns? Maybe, maybe not. But you can bet their accompanying police officers — who ought to be doing legitimate police work — will be.
One effect of Hochul's scheme would be the silencing of political speech she doesn't like. It would also put in place the first building blocks of a social credit system like Communist China's. If your score — calculated by everything from spending too much time online to saying anything the Party does not approve — drops too low, you're locked out of life. Can't buy a plane or train ticket, can't get your kid into school, can't even use a vending machine.
A bit like the classic Kurt Russell/John Carpenter movie, "Escape from New York," Hochul would build a wall — not around the city, but around the entire state. And it wouldn't be a physical wall, but a virtual wall hemming each New Yorker into a pen of Albany's design.
I keep expecting a mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks, but they never appear. Maybe Comrade Hochul is what most New Yorkers want. To the rest, I'd advise escaping from New York while you still can.
A century ago, when President Woodrow Wilson's second term ended and, with it, years of unconstitutionally imprisoning and silencing his political opponents, Warring Harding promised a "return to normalcy." He delivered it, too, dismantling Wilson's budding police state before its roots had a chance to sink deep into the nation's political soil.
This nation — not just New York, but the nation — needs another, much bigger, much more thorough return to normalcy.
But who will deliver it?
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