What Would You Call It?

In keeping with the stated purpose of Society Building Blocks, Critically Thinking About Things That Change Society, this post to show a malignant cancer that’s eating away at the very core of our society, free speech and as such it’s eating away at our morality. This is not necessarily the free speech as a pure constitutional ideal where it specifically restricts the government from suppressing speech, but as a cultural and societal status quo, aka”norm”, that we don’t censor our fellow Americans because we disagree with them, instead we engage in reasonably civil but intellectually challenging dialogue and use better speech to counter what we consider as bad speech.

The following is my opinion regarding the constant censorship and social cancellations I’m seeing from the political left.

Whether a Democrat is a extreme progressive like Gregory Humphrey of Caffeinated Politics or a self proclaimed moderate classic liberal like Dave Cieslewicz of Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos, both Democrats in Madison Wisconsin, it seems to me like they both share a common trait, a trait that is so common amongst the political left in the 21^st century that it’s become evident that it must be a core belief to their ideological leanings. Silencing opposing views.

Silencing opposing points of view, aka 21^st century cancel culture, has taken hold of the political left across the board in such a way that the Democrats may never, ever recover from this brain eating malignant cancer. This is happening so often that it’s become a signature significant¹ trait and it’s now synonymous with the political left. Silencing opposition is a 21^st century in-your-face Democratic Party ideological trait that seems to be shared across the board with Democrats and there are very few exceptions to this. Jonathan Turley and Alan Dershowitz are a couple of truly outspoken and outstanding genuine classic liberal² exceptions that actively oppose the anti free speech silencing of the new cancel culture.

Now let’s get into some specifics.

As far as I’m concerned, Humphrey of Caffeinated Politics is a unredeemable transparent and unapologetic pure biased extreme political hack (though he refuses to admit it) with his head buried so far up his progressive³ biased ass that it’ll never see the light of reality, his words of moderation are absolutely hollow. I’ve already discussed Humphrey’s anti-free speech censorship actions in detail. What I haven’t discussed is the malignant cancel culture cancer that’s eating away at the self-proclaimed moderate classic liberal Dave Cieslewicz (Mayor Dave as we affectionately call him around Dane County Wisconsin) of Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.

Mayor Dave is an intelligent Democrat with progressive roots, as in an old Madison, WI progressive, but he appears to me to be one of those liberal intellectuals that’s trying to put lipstick on a progressive pig by reframing himself as a moderate classic liberal because 21^st century progressives have shifted so far to the left that they’re unrecognizable and he doesn’t want to be publicly associated with them. Unfortunately, it seems to me that Mayor Dave is either not self-aware or just a lying partisan like so many other politicians. Mayor Dave trots out his non partisan’ish moderation and writes things like “I would vote for a moderate Republican given the chance“ and then writes in the same comment breath “I vote for Democrats, but I’m not a partisan”. From what I’ve heard from my Liberal and progressive friends, there’s no such thing as a moderate Republican and, when challenged to do so, Dave couldn’t produce the name of one moderate Republican he would vote for. Later in another blog post, Mayor Dave tells us in no uncertain terms that he is “focussed on just winning elections“ and he votes Democrat because he wants to put more Democrats in office saying “any compromise” is “fine by me if it meant electing more Democrats“. “Just winning elections”, “any compromise”, “elect more Democrats”, I’m sorry Mayor Dave but these are not the kinds of things a that a center-left moderate trying to portray themself as non-partisan’ish would write. What you’re telling us is that you’re engaging in pure partisanship specifically for the Democratic Party and against the Republican Party, isn’t that advocacy.

Yes I know that Mayor Dave is a politician and he can certainly do the politician twist where they talk-the-talk of political moderation, individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise, but his actions show us that he can’t seem walk-the-walk, particularly when it comes to partisanship and most importantly his stance on free speech.

Maybe there’s a light at the end of that tunnel and Mayor Dave is actively trying to moderate, at least compared to the in-your-face extremes of his partisan favored Democratic Party, but it’s the pompous liberal intellectual elitists that lie straight to your face while breaking their own arm patting themself on the back, that try to pull the wool over your eyes as they hypocritically break their own standards and engage in the “any compromise” is fine as long as they are beating the Republicans. Partisan hacks? Partisan tools? Advocacy? What ever you want to call it, these self proclaimed moderate liberals are the bald-faced partisan hypocrites violating their own standards and voting for the political left extremists that they profess to oppose; therefore, they’re the singular reason that the irrational and extreme social justice warriors and cancel culture (like Humphrey’s ilk) are completely taking over the Democratic Party and dragging the USA towards Orwellian styled totalitarianism. Keep up that pure partisan anti-Republican bigotry and continue to vote for anything with a (D) after the name and you’ll end up scuttling the Constitution and sinking the USA. Have the guts to stand up against the wackos in the Democratic Party, it’s very obvious that there are loads and loads of Republicans standing against the extremes in the Republican Party (think Trump) at least it’s obvious unless you’re a partisan Democrat swallowing whatever propaganda that the “progressive” shepherds decide to plaster in your face via their Pravda like media outlets.

Another major problem I see with Mayor Dave’s actions is that it appears he’s a genuine hypocrite when it comes to free speech. I abhor hypocrisy. In a recent blog post by Mayor Dave at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos titled “Free Speech is an End in Itself“, it’s a good post and I encourage everyone to read it, Mayor Dave props himself up as almost an advocate for free speech which is fine and dandy but the problem is that Mayor Dave’s actual actions regarding free speech don’t necessarily correspond with his stated convictions about free speech and this is either a self-awareness issue or he’s lying straight to our face. Regardless of which is truth, what is written appears to me to be hypocrisy.

Now why would I make a claim of hypocrisy, here’s why.

In the “Free Speech is an End In Itself” blog post, Mayor Dave tells us about his views on free speech not once, not twice, not three times but six times. He informs us, in no uncertain terms, what’s not in his book, what differs starkly from his point of view, that he puts free speech first, what good things come from the freedom to think and express your thoughts, how to logically sort the ideas expressed with free speech, and lastly how having the maximum freedom of expression is the heart of classic liberalism and the very meaning of freedom. These are all very good things to prop up in our society, the problem is that Mayor Dave literally does not practice what he preaches; therefore, it appears that Mayor Dave is a bald-faced hypocrite when it comes to free speech.

First know this; Mayor Dave told me that he “changed the settings for everyone” commenting on his blog and moderates all comments that are submitted to his blog. That said; I have no idea what Mayor Dave is doing with respect to the comments posted by others, but I’m positive that I’m the direct victim of past and current selective censorship that Mayor Dave engages in on his Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos blog, it’s a supported fact as you’ll see below.

Here are some supporting facts. FYI: I’m using actual screen shots to present these facts, they were captured using the Snipping Tool provided by Windows 10, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s a great tool and extremely useful. You can click on any of the screen captures below and it will enlarge it.

Recently on Mayor Dave’s blog post titled “It’s My Fault, It’s My Success” I posted the following comment…

The following day I posted the following reply to a comment posted by a fellow commenter Paul W Schlecht…

This comment never made it through moderation and appears to be censored, so I took the time to send Mayor Dave the following personal email and asked why it was selectively censored.

As of the time I posted this blog, I have not received a reply to my email inquiry and the comment has not been posted. As he’s done with other comments of mine, it appears that it’s been censored.

There are far too many examples of Mayor Dave’s illiberal selective censorship to share in this blog post but here is a couple more examples where the selectiveness of his censorship was very much in-my-face. There was this comment thread (read the caption’s under each screen capture)…

Then there was this comment thread…

So, those are some related examples, aka facts. Now for my opinion based on those facts.

Notice what’s being approved and what’s being censored. It appears that back in March of 2021 Mayor Dave started approving my comments if they agreed and praised his blog post while he selectively censored my other comments. Incidentally, from my records of my comments, both posted and censored, I’ve posted comments to 47 of Mayor Dave’s blog posts (32 blog posts since the end of March 2021). It appears that at the end of March is the turning point where Mayor Dave began his selective censorship of my comments, I’m not going to speculate why in this post I’m just stating what happened.

What would you call it when you see this kind of blatantly obvious selective censorship from a self proclaimed center-left moderate classic liberal? In my opinion, this behavior is about as absurd as you can get.

In a recent attempt to bring Mayor Dave’s free speech hypocrisy into focus and figuratively ring his bell, I posted the following comment on Wednesday, March 29 at 11:05 AM in his recent “Free Speech is an End in Itself” blog post.

That comment has not been posted.

Now I want to make a couple of things perfectly clear:
First; Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos is Mayor Dave’s blog and he can do whatever he wants to do with his blog, however, when I see the kind of in-your-face hypocrisy that I’m seeing based on what Mayor Dave writes vs Mayor Dave’s actions I’m going to say something and I’m going to be very pointed with how I say it.

Second; I think Mayor Dave is an intelligent man with potential to be a lot more non-partisan than he currently is and I have a level of respect for him that I simply don’t have for people that I consider unapologetic pure biased political hacks, like Gregory Humphrey of Caffeinated Politics, therefore I’m willing to give Mayor Dave the benefit of the doubt and consider that maybe he really isn’t self-aware of how hypocritical his words come across when his actions contradict the words.

Actions are very revealing, words are cheap. Mayor Dave could very well be trying to moderate himself and become more centrist (my word not his) where he could actually vote for a moderate Republican over someone with a (D) for Democrat behind their name and a change in rhetoric would go a long way in this regard. The real proof of such a genuine effort to support free speech would be to change his actions across the board so they correspond to his words thus reflecting a genuine level of respectable personal integrity that I think he truly believes himself to possess; however, if he maintains or deepens his levels of free speech censorship on his blog then his words are hollow propaganda lies and his censorship actions are overruling his integrity. The choices and consequences are his.

The consequences of actively engaging in this malignant cancerous speech suppression (whether it’s a blogger suppressing commenters in a blog thread, or a horde of irrational college students shouting down speakers that they disagree with, or the Pravda like media’s blatantly obvious suppression of the opposing viewpoints) is that it thoroughly corrupts the thoughts of the ones actively doing the censoring and there is a slippery slope of unethical rationalizations that go along with this immoral behavior that strips the active censors of personal integrity. The move towards speech censorship is a terrible anti-American, anti-culture/society, anti-civil, and anti-constitutional pattern, it’s unethical, it’s immoral and it’s just plain wrong for our society as a whole and for the morality of individuals. Our society is rapidly moving towards complete moral bankruptcy and anarchy and the censoring of free speech is leading the flock of ignorant sheeple away from liberty and straight over the metaphorical cliff into the abyss of open persecution, tyranny and eventual Orwellian political totalitarianism.

I no particular order; we now live in an absolutely absurd place:

• Where some of the satire presented by the Babylon Bee becomes reality.
• Where biological boys claim to be girls, biological girls claim to be boys, and some others don’t know what heck they are.
• Where “it’s isn’t what it is” has become so common place that it’s becoming “normal”.
• Where the ends justifies the means as long as the ends condemns aspects of liberty and promotes totalitarianism.
• Where you’re socially punished and your life is destroyed because you’re accused not because you’ve been found guilty in a court of law.
• Where you’re “guilty until proven innocent”.
• Where roughly 4% of the population, that used to be considered on the fringe of “normal”, are telling the majority that the 4% are the normal ones and the 96% are the abnormal ones.
• Where individual responsibility is quaint.
• Where your free speech is only allowed if the irrational fringe elements of society agree with you.
• Where the law, which was a dominate core of society, now takes a back seat to social justice cancellation.
• Where equity overrules all logic.
• Where common sense is dead.
• Where the status quo is considered wrong regardless of what the status quo is.
• Where brainwashing propaganda is absorbed as factual truth even when the factual truth completely proves it wrong, it’s cultish.
• Where statistics that are mathematically indistinguishable from zero dominate the minds of the irrational mobs.
• Where “do something” is a viable emotional argument to be used for all things.
• Where striping the rights of the majority because of the actions of a miniscule few who abuse those rights becomes socially acceptable.
• Where being silenced has become so common that it’s badge of honor joke worthy.
• Where delusional thinking rules the roost and critical thinking is criticized and persecuted.
• Where thinking like an inexperienced and immature 7th grader garners more respect in the minds of social justice warriors than an experienced and logical mature adult.
• Where the sons and daughters of history are openly condemned and expected to pay for the sins of those that have been dead for well over a hundred years.
• Where history is wiped from the face of society and replaced with delusion.
• Where we’re judged by the color of our skin, not the content of our character.
• etc, etc…

Need I go on?

If you told the common man or woman walking down the street between 1955 and 1975 that our society and our culture would be in this kind of turmoil in the first quarter of the 21^st century, you would have been shrugged off as a lunatic that needed psychiatric help. But here we are.

Our society and culture have been turned inside out and flipped on its metaphorical head and yet there are still people out there that refuse to believe that we’re in serious societal and cultural trouble.

¹Signature Significance: Signature significance posits that a single act can be so remarkable that it has predictive and analytical value, and should not be dismissed as statistically insignificant. Source: Ethics Alarms Concepts & Special Terms

²liberal: 1. willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas. 2. relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

³progressive: progressive in this context is an oxymoron, 21^st century progressive ideology is actually regressive.