Free Speech & F*** Disney

Elon Musk gives an expletive-laden interview in defense of his work while reporters detail to Congress the nefarious ways our government would silence him, you and me.

In an amazing development this week, Elon Musk delivered one of the most fascinating interviews in the history of business titans. Hosted by the skilled Andrew Ross Sorkin, the Dealbook Summit of the New York Times was something to see on Wednesday, chock full of great interviews. You likely saw Elon tell his detracting advertisers on X to “go F*** Themselves,” but perhaps the best moment for me was in response to a question about his approach to his various businesses and the negative blowback he regularly receives, said:

“Tesla's gotten to where it's gotten with no advertising at all... sells twice as much in terms of electric vehicles, more than all the carmakers in the United States combined. Tesla's done more to help the environment than all other companies combined. It would be fair to say that as the leader of the company, I've done more for the environment than any single human on earth…

I'm saying what I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil. Fuck them.” -Elon Musk on Wednesday

With these two expletive laced tirades, Elon is clearly fed up with his detractors and, since almost all of them have done nothing to advance the human race, invites them to shut the hell up. It was a side of Elon I had not seen in an interview before - the quintessential example of f*** you money telling the world to f*** off. The strange juxtaposition of this message (F you money is a euphemism for the holder to check out and focus on his or her own needs) is that Elon is doing this while working day and night to solve humanity’s major challenges. It is disheartening to watch such an amazing mind - focused on maximum good - having to defend himself to, let’s be honest, people out for themselves. There is something amiss in our society when we exalt, promote and glorify nefarious interests like Bill Gates, BLM or Hamas while attacking forces for good like Elon. No one is perfect, but there is a stark contrast. Meanwhile, Elon continues to work to improve humanity’s chances of survival in a cold, dark universe.

As an example, the story of X from Elon’s perspective is a story of maintaining the ability of humans to speak freely online. We can argue about what constitutes speech and what should be protected and what shouldn’t, but the Twitter files, the Facebook files and the most recent discover this week of the CTIL files - a plan by US Government officials to interfere in the 2020 election:

The emails show that CISA and its non-profit partners reported political speech to social media companies, including jokes, hyperbole, and the types of “viewpoints” and “non-specific statements” that CIS once claimed it would not censor. 

Using the pretext of “election security,” DHS sought to censor politically inconvenient speech about election legitimacy. Why were officials seemingly influenced by CTIL’s approach to disfavored narratives and “cognitive security”? What precisely was going on?  

There should no bigger story in our national discourse than the overwhelming bullying that the FBI, the DHS and other agencies in Washington have wrought to limit free expression and political speech. It is the most vile, disgusting permutation of government overreach and tyranny one can imagine. Once citizens are not free to speak, there is no longer democracy. It instead becomes a fantastical pageant whereby your choice among candidates is narrow and dictated by the parties and in which you only hear pre-approved messages in order to make up your mind. It is the worst of Orwell’s warnings, happening right now under our noses.

And at least half of the members of Congress seem to be willing defenders of this practice. There is no better example of the type of Big Brother actions that influenced the 2020 election than the episode of the Hunter Biden laptop. The FBI obtained the actual laptop in 2019 and verified its contents belonged to Hunter Biden. The same agents then pre-bunked the coming release of that laptop to all of the major social and corporate media companies, making sure they would treat it as “misinformation” -whatever that is. (If we’re honest, mis- and dis- information mean any information the government doesn’t want you to know, regardless of its veracity). When the New York Post story broke with the laptop just before the 2020 election, all of these willing participants in censoring speech and limiting press freedom followed the FBI’s directives. Then-candidate Biden’s allies were likewise provided cover when current Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his allies in the intelligence community orchestrated their own disinformation campaign with the “Russian disinformation letter,” that was demonstrably false.

Strangely, Representative Dan Goldman still believes in the conspiracy theory that someone tampered with the laptop, despite the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, CNN and all other major outlets admitting belatedly that it is authentic. Even Hunter Biden has tacitly admitted so by suing Rudy Giuliani for releasing it.

Here’s the exchange in which Representative Goldman continues to promote a conspiracy theory:

Representative Goldman doesn’t even care that a federal judge and an appellate court have found the actions of the government to be blatantly unconstitutional and have barred the agencies from contacting social media companies. They, of course, continue to do so through third parties funded by the government in a gross violation of the spirit of the order.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit unanimously agreed that the White House, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI had "coerced" or "significantly encouraged" the platforms, "in violation of the First Amendment," to suppress speech that federal officials viewed as dangerously inaccurate or misleading.

This is a very important time in our history. The internet and social media, despite their promises to democratize information, have been slowly designed over the past 10 years to LIMIT freedom, information and our constitutional rights endowed by our Creator. This is the most important fight for the future of our Republic. I sincerely hope you start paying attention, and ask every candidate for office about their plan to eliminate any intervention into our discourse by our government. The FBI, DHS and every other agency has no business, no jurisdiction and absolutely no authority to participate in any social media posts by the people.

If we do not act - and swiftly, here is where we are headed in the not-too-distant future (courtesy of Rupa Subramanya of the Free Press who also testified yesterday):