These two bills are not the end of the First Amendment. But if they’re allowed to stand, they could begin the erosion of the First Amendment.
I believe these two bills will have a chilling effect on political memes within California and I’m not sure how these will play out in situations where the host servers are not located in California.
The problem I see is that if California is allowed to prosecute memes regardless of where the creator lives, then defacto censorship is likely to extend across the entire nation. I honestly wonder about the longevity of this blog.
I’ve expressed some pretty strong opinions about our political candidates and even created one or two memes that are very unflattering to several presidents, vice presidents, and governors.
Will I be arrested? Will I have my First Amendment rights stripped from me? I’m a little guy, I can’t afford to mount a legal defense against the deep pockets of the State of California.
So until I understand the ramifications of the new laws, I think I’ll not be posting anything of a political nature.
Let’s think about this for a moment.
Due to uncertainty, and fear of unfair prosecution, I’m self censoring. This is exactly what these laws seek to do.
I’ll be reading these laws very carefully and looking at the details of what precisely they’ll prohibit. After I understand the law I’ll return to making political comments. I’m willing to bet there will be other people that just stop talking.
I happen to believe that if people aren’t allowed to speak… okay, bitch, and complain. Then like the boiler with a broken pressure relief valve, the pressure will just build until until what would have been unflattering speech will become something far worse.
The first read of these bills looks like they’re targeting memes, and videos that appear to have the subject political figure saying something they didn’t say. A.K.A. disinformation.
The “Very Fine People Hoax” for example is the one that pops to mind instantly. Biden and Harris have both kept that hoax alive even though it’s been throughly debunked, and disproven. The news media cut the video of Trump in such a way that it appears he said Nazis were very fine people. He didn’t. A shit ton of people still believe he said it.
Mark Twain said, “No amount of evidence will ever convince an Idiot.”
Turns out if the TV says it, It’s gotta be true.
Under these new laws, would California seek to prosecute Joe Biden or Kamala Harris?
Who decides what is dis-information anyway? The Nazi Party had quite a division to make this determination and sent authorities to arrest those believed guilty of creating or spreading dis-information.
Is this the America we want to live in? Do we want to have a Nazi-esq group of jack booted enforcers kicking down doors because some of us forwarded a picture of a dog looking up at the camera with a concerned face., and a caption, “I know we’re visiting family in Springfield, don’t let me out of your sight,” because it was funny.
It doesn’t matter if Haitians are literally eating cats & dogs or if it’s meant as a slur. The humor is visual, and conveyed by the dog’s expression. We as a people, used to be able to see humor without being so sensitive that it traumatized us.
I loved the Washington Post fact check on Trump when he said, “we had hamburgers piled a mile high.” They said, “at 2 inches high, 700 hamburgers wouldn’t be a mile high”
Duh! Really? You don’t say. It was an exaggeration. A figure of speech, no-one in their right mind actually thought Trump had stacked hamburgers 1 mile high.
We used to not have a problem with these sorts of exaggerations either. We as a people used to recognize that our leaders were human. We used to give them a pass on some silliness. We became concerned if the leader repeated the error. Then we’d ask, “Excuse me? What did you say, and what did you actually mean by what you said?” When we asked that question, we expected an answer, plain & simple. We didn’t want or expect a bunch of BS language that said nothing and never provided an answer.
This was back in the day when Americans had a sense of humor.
When was the last time you saw a good comedy routine?
I loved Netflix for their standup comedy. When there were fewer and fewer actually funny programs, I stopped watching Netflix, then I cancelled the subscription.
I digress, well, maybe not. As cancel culture became prevalent, comedians began self censoring. That might have been why the stand-up routines seemed so flat, or stale. If you can’t say what you want without someone being offended and harming your career then you start censoring yourself too.
I’m not sure I like this dark road we’re apparently on.
I don’t appreciate political parties supporting censorship because I look to the history of not only the Nazi party, but other dictators, kings, and potentates.
This is something I believe should concern us all.