Progressivism Makes the World Smaller…In A Bad Way

August 30, 2024 by M. Walter

Social media, books, movies, news—my universe of media options has decreased dramatically and I’m pretty hacked off about it.

Once, on a transcontinental flight, I sat next to a Brit who I asked, upon noticing his accent, “Are you from England?” He answered in the affirmative, and added, much to my delight, “And how are you enjoying your independence?”

It’s a uniquely American sport to tease our English brothers and sisters as being hopelessly unfamiliar with liberty, but now it’s not so funny, is it? The recent crack down on wrong-think in the U.K. diminishes us all. Who knows what we’ve missed? What thoughts, pictures, images we’ve been deprived of because of their social media suffocation? Not everyone over there is a hopeless stiff. Heaven knows there are enough liberty-valuing English to have voted for Brexit, so they’re out there, for sure. And like here, they were making themselves known… until recently.

Something revolutionary is happening, and how ironic that in an age of global communication, when we could know what’s going on instantly, without waiting months for transatlantic mail, we can’t, or might not, because those with a U.K. IP address fear prison. Just for… tweeting. We just lost millions of eyes and ears because John Q. British Public has a mortgage to pay and a family to feed and who needs the hassle?  And who can blame him? So silently he goes, used to being a Subject, not a Sovereign Citizen.  And though we never knew him, we will miss him.  We are all diminished by what the government of the U.K. has done to its own citizens.  All of us.

Now, clearly, we have our own Sovereign Citizen problems here.  There are people in prison right now just for posting memes, or simply for being in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. We’ve all seen the stories. But at least, as of now, we still have the thinnest veneer of a Constitution to protect us, though, clearly, if it rests in the hands of a progressive judge, all is lost.  How tragic that you have to hope you get a non-progressive judge to have even a prayer of a fair trial. We can thank Mitch McConnell and our garbage Senate Republicans for gaveling through dozens upon dozens of judicial nominees when Obama was president for the current spate of tyranny on the bench. And why did the Republicans do it?  All in the name of “governing.” We should just call “governing” what it is: Uniparty capitulation to corruption. That’s what “governing” is nowadays.  “Reach across the aisle” my fanny.  How about “No”?  That’d be refreshing.

You know who’s rarely told “no”?  Progressive historians.  Every Tuesday is new book day in the publishing world, and every Tuesday I check the History list (I happen to check the list in Audible as I like being able to have my hands free for knitting, etc.) for new books, and every Tuesday I am amazed and appalled at the number of America-bad/whitey-bad books out there. What’s most distressing is when you find a book that isn’t outwardly progressive but compelling; then you dig into it just a bit and there it is.  The bias.  And so often it’s just gratuitous on the part of the author, with the aroma of “I know I am writing something an inch right of Mao but don’t freak out; I’m actually a progressive.”  Even the slightestdrift off the progressive plantation and these slaves literally whip themselvesback.  It’s quite something to see, and something I hope some future generation of sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists will study and write about because it needs a good looking-at, for sure, this mass virtue-signaling, my-poop-don’t-stank narcissistic psychosis.

Then of course, there’s movies.  Can’t find a decent new history book to read?  Let’s try a movie, right?  Oops.  Not if it has any one of dozens of loud-mouthed actors in it, right?  How many of them have made it blazingly, scorchingly, unavoidably obvious they do. not. want. our. business?  And how many of you just can’t watch them anymore because their vitriol oozes forth from the screen like an odor?

Ok! I’ll just watch some documentary then.  Oops.  Those are largely infected too.  It’s a real conundrum too, because, just like with the history books, there’s a lot of quality research that can be found in these works, but you have to endure the upper layers of sanctimonious muck to get to it.  PBS and even CNN do marvelous work in the documentary arena, but they either leave out or spin so ferociously they are rendered null.  About the only documentary you can watch these days from either of them is stuff about the natural world, like media on octopuses and the like, but even there, we have to hear about the “bleaching” of the coral because cow farts cause global warming or some such thing; not because it’s cyclical and has happened for centuries.

Even Fox has gone to the dogs. Ever since they called Arizona for Biden, I’ve not watched a minute of them.  Cut the cord.  (The countless clips of Fox Lite I’ve seen since have only affirmed the decision.) Any news we need, we get via X/Twitter or Citizen Free Press (what Drudge used to be before he lost his mind) and a handful of other sources, like here, Real Clear Politics, Twitchy, and The Conservative Treehouse. They comprise my morning rounds every day with coffee.

So, clearly, our choices have diminished.  Progressivism has made everything small, diminished our choices, diminished the ability for all of us to access reliable information, and I’m frankly sick of it.  Sick of having to work so hard for my media consumption to be fair and balanced (to borrow a phrase). There’s a whole universe of books, films, documentaries, news channels out there, but progressivism’s tyrannical mandate to stay on the ideological plantation in everymedium has shrunk that universe to a handful of free thinkers trying mightily not to get canceled on whatever platform they do their work.

Have I mentioned I’m sick of it?  Yeah, I’m sick of it. We used to say “bring back mean tweets (and cheap gas).”  Well, he’s back. Maybe that’s the crack in the dam of the progressive firmament.  Maybe RFK Jr.’s endorsement is another swift kick in that big blue wall.  Time will tell.  I often wonder about my British acquaintance from that transcontinental flight.  I wonder how he’s doing.  Given the U.K.’s new Thought Police powers, I’m unlikely to hear… and we are all poorer for it.