Unreality Check #19: Cool guys, clowns, and CRT

If you’re in Houston Thursday night this is going to be fun. REHAB on the Bayou, 1618 Enid, 8 p.m., $5

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) thinks “big tech” is out to get conservatives. If this is the case, maybe it’s because conservatives have spent years trying to convince the American people that “big tech” is out to get them, the people (and big tech’s customers). Or because conservatives somehow throw all their “businesses are people too and can run their affairs however they want because…FREEDOM!!!” out the window when “big tech” is involved. I guess a baker can choose who they sell cupcakes to, but Facebook can’t choose who gets to use its platform?

In any event, it’s definitely in conservatives’ best interests to play the victim in this instance. It helps obscure reality: that they are the roaches and “big tech” the flood light.

Jordan says the Republican position on big tech is simple: Don’t censor political speech. He casts this as virtuous in comparison with what he sees as the Democrats’ parsing of which tech companies are good and which bad. He and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows are even pushing the theory that tech-focused bipartisan legislation making its way through Congress will cede control of the industry to Biden himself.

These are ridiculous positions to take. Corporations have been censoring political speech for as long as both have existed. You don’t have any more right to stand in my bar and spew political nonsense than I do to go to your church on Sunday and do the same. Either entity can bounce you at will. Tech companies are the same. They’re not a public service. They’ve never even positioned themselves as one. The only body prohibited from censoring our political speech is the government.

But if your only way to get votes is through fear, you need to invent a new boogeyman almost continuously. Yesterday it was cancel-culture. Today it’s big tech. Tomorrow…?

This guy is a clown. If he were really interested in solving the problem, he’d get involved with the legislative process. But no. He’d rather use his energy terrorizing voters.

And all this while there’re actual problems that need our attention.

Teaching students that World War II veterans were given GI Bill benefits to help them is teaching history. Also teaching them that the bill was structured in such a way as to deliberately exclude black vets is teaching history while applying critical race theory.

Why shouldn’t this be done?

And why hasn’t Melania divorced Trump yet?