Social media platforms are indeed private firms and can publish or edit whatever they like—subject of course to the terms of service between the platform and users who generate content.
It’s important to call the government and media on this unholy alliance, whether you view their targets as sympathetic or not. If we stay silent when they come for our enemies, they will ultimately come for us.
Ultimately, we need not rely on the government (i.e., the “king’s men” putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again). People acting freely in a marketplace could do it all by themselves. If only the government would let them.
James Bovard reports form Maryland, where the COVID-19 lockdowns have decimated employment and the rules only apply to powerless ordinary people. Cops and politicians can do as they like.
Americans were once harangued by government "experts" about the need to slow down on highways in order to save lives. Few listened. Today, laws demanding everyone "stay at home" may suffer a similar fate.
Propaganda kills, but it also works. Many of the same tactics employed to destroy opposition to the Iraq War are being used today against opponents of lockdowns.
Neither voters nor politicians watch the bureaucracy very carefully, so they respond as one might expect—advancing their own and their favorites' interests, at the expense of the public they are supposedly working for.
Some claim "the rich" will be fine—or even better off—after the COVID panic destroys the economy for most of us. But there's a problem: the wealthy depend heavily on an economy fueled by the production and consumption of all workers and entrepreneurs.
Media outlets, both left and right, are mostly narrative driven. Also, journalists have a tendency to lazily reprint whatever "experts" say. This makes media reporting thoroughly unreliable.
Doing things for money does not justify moral condemnation, unless using money to support your family, live up to the agreements you have made, and to try not to burden others justifies moral condemnation.
