{"id":399,"date":"2023-08-09T20:33:16","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T20:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=399"},"modified":"2023-08-15T00:10:38","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T00:10:38","slug":"sign-1-youre-headed-for-dystopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=399","title":{"rendered":"Sign #1 You’re Headed for Dystopia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One clear-as-day indicator that the state is out of control is its desire for censorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, a “good” state (if such a thing is possible) is not interested in forcing the people to think a certain way about any particular issue. If it does anything, it provides facts or arranges for round-tables where a variety of perspectives are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

An out-of-control state uses its power to choose winners and losers in discussion and actively suppresses dissident views. The winners are typically the cronies who pay politicians the most and\/or have agendas that meld well with the march toward tyranny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, a state pushing toward dystopia might censor social media posts<\/a> that bring up side effects of a vaccine. That policy, of course, would be against well-established “Constitutional” norms, going against a huge number of very prominent precedents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when that state gets a wrist slap from a few reasonable faces in the judiciary, they fight like mad to maintain that power<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the above link, Sheldon Richman says “Shame on Government for Censoring Us,” but we all know that government agents are mostly incapable of feeling things like shame or remorse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s one reason why smaller methods for getting the word around are preferable–it’s much more difficult for the state to directly censor blogs, and there exist some social media companies that don’t just pay lip service to free speech, they design their systems to be decentralized and resilient to attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the state censors you, speak louder!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One clear-as-day indicator that the state is out of control is its desire for censorship. Now, a “good” state (if such a thing is possible) is not interested in forcing the people to think a certain way about any particular issue. If it does anything, it provides facts or arranges for round-tables where a variety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[128,10,19,72],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-political","tag-censorship","tag-free-speech","tag-liberty","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marginalnonhermit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/books-25.jpg?fit=638%2C235&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}