Elon Musk has opened up our cage

Liberty is a wild animal: it cannot be domesticated, it refuses to be tamed, and it’ll die if you force it to live within a cage.

The chain by which liberty is led to its holding cell is ‘speech’.

Once the government manages to put a collar on civilisation’s voice, its words and thoughts can be yanked around like a puppy being dragged down the road by Cruella de Vil, who is wearing the skins of her former pets as an outfit that shows less taste than Balenciaga.

This is the abusive environment inhabited by citizens of the West since our quaint cobbled streets went silent and the public forum moved into the digital realm of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

Our cheerily rotund town criers have morphed into faceless algorithms while the security measures set up to monitor ‘community safety’ have taken to snatching victims in the night, weeding out the strongest voices from the crowd to ensure society’s conversation remains directionless and incoherent.

And what a noise it is.

Social media has become a roar where domestic politics crashes into the politics of neighbouring nations. Individual countries are capable of reaching a moral consensus on topics – but there will never be a global consensus. It is an argument without end. A permanent conflict that must either dissipate or suffocate the other side. Unfortunately for the Western liberal values of freedom and democracy, there are billions more who favour the prison-planet view of Earth under the red sky of collectivism.

This is a bigger problem than mainstream political commentators understand.

Where the values of the West were once incubated, fed, and subsequently thrived within the British Empire and its rising colonial powers – they are now being actively poisoned by external nations who want to see the people of the West reduced to an idiot mob of mouths that consume. We are baby birds with our feet stuck in the thatch of our nest, pecking at the air for our government parent.

A brief wander through TikTok and the youth it has raised, or even its older cousin Tumblr, reveals a very ill and weak generation that cannot seem to get itself out of the basement, let alone in a position to lead the world. ‘Good citizenship’ has become a banner on their social media profile instead of holding down a job and raising a family. It is a low-effort existence.

Their failure to become adults will eventually mean that Australia becomes infantile.

Some may say, ‘social media is not real life’, but it is raising real people. Not a few – a lot. These under 20s are casting their votes in very real elections. Speak to them. They are the living embodiment of the TikTok app and are already tipping elections and taking control of political institutions.

As one dismayed old-school activist said on Twitter the other day, ‘They can’t formulate an argument. Their brain implodes trying to comprehend different opinions.’

To this I add, you cannot reason with someone who does not understand their own position – let alone yours.

Universities are no longer places of learning, but rather serve as finishing schools for ideological zealots. It would be a very foolish person who maintains an indifference to the power of social media whose offspring are then taken into the frying pan of activism to be seared, crisped up, and served at the banquet. You can call them useful idiots, or snacks, either way – they sustain the upper echelon of society.

I’ve seen this social media generation collapse the entertainment industry and they will do the same to our political system. Look no further than Australia’s Voice to Parliament. The generation that runs around calling everyone a ‘#racist!!!’ is openly advocating for a race-tested, unelected bureaucracy to sit above democracy as a form of historical revenge. Does this sound healthy for a peaceful, stable future?

These individuals genuinely believe that ‘avenging past racism’ will solve alcohol abuse in remote communities. How? They have no idea. There is no evidence that racism is the cause of the problem to begin with. If you push them on the topic and demand to know how a racial bureaucracy can keep a bottle from the lips of an individual a thousand miles away, they simply shout ‘racist!’ and fall silent.

Worse, the youth’s social skills have become so poor that no one can open up a conversation with them to test their views. Any attempt to do so is met with screaming, chanting, drum-beating, and violence.

Compared to today’s activists, the witch-burners were calm and measured. At least they could explain what they were up to and present a case for their manic violence. They were evil, coherent, and devout. We have no such luck with kids raised to believe in apocalyptic death cults and the supremacy of ‘self truth’ over The Truth. Individuals that tie their worldview to ‘feelings’ will remain adrift.

This is not only destructive for civilisation at large, it is a terrible shame and an embarrassment to the legacy of those who fought and died for the very gifts our kids believe to be ‘dangerous’. The sad thing is, they do not fear free speech because it is harmful, but because they are frightened of their own inadequacy to answer questions.

The hill their grandparents died on with truth, freedom, and democracy. Our young are sticking their flags (and there are a lot of those) into dictatorship, identity, and collectivism.

Instead of free-thinking, powerful independent citizens, we have become part-customer, part-product for a fascist digital machine that never sleeps.

Social media weaponised humanity’s love of socialising and found a way to profit from chasing the public from one political outrage to the next – like sheep into a pen where the waiting feed trough is sponsored by Woke brands. Nike in this pen. Bud Light in that one. Gillette in the corner.

People are so used to being barked at that they no longer question where the orders come from – they simply do as they are told, when they’re told. Wear a mask. Buy this product. Go to this rally. Partake in an experiment. Cheer for more tax. Own nothing. Be happy. Eat the bugs. (Or was it ‘the rich’?)

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter represents a fundamental breaking of this well-ordered social prison.

Musk wrestled all the keys off the digital slavers and opened the gates on the pens. The twisting of the keys and clicking of the lock echoed – even in Australia.

He sacked the ‘community safety’ security force and sat back to see what would happen to the former prisoners. There were a few weeks of confusion, marked by period of rage from those who were terrified of unlocked gates (what if the wolves get in?), and others who wandered around in a daze – unaware that they could leave their pens.

It’s been months, and the liberty Musk gifted Twitter has already returned a measure of power to the people. The Covid vaccine narrative was the first victim of free speech, with major Big Pharma companies and government authorities facing a legal backlash against their pandemic actions.

There will be more ideological empires felled by open criticism. Climate Change is losing public confidence, with a general murmur running through the crowd that the apocalypse is nothing more than convenient corporate lies. One day soon, this will turn into shouting and booing until the eco-fascist cult is disbanded.

Another ideology close to unravelling is that of radical gender activism – the sort of ideology that openly attacks biology as ‘fake news’ and creates a new patriarchy where men are once again asserting themselves over women.

Musk himself said: ‘Any parent or doctor who sterilises a child before they are a consenting adult should go to prison for life.’

He has picked up that red flag of collectivist thought and waved it at the bulls, taunting them into the fire of free speech to see if they survive.

Western Civilisation cannot save its children by trying to talk to them. Its pseudo parent – social media – has to be reformed. Musk is doing that. As kids are exposed to free speech on their phones and within their digital safe spaces, the hold of toxic ideology will start to slip. The need to be popular is the strongest force in their lives – and idiocy isn’t popular.

When their ideological positions are mocked and ridiculed, our kids will get the message and finally grow up.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/elon-musk-the-keys-to-the-cage/ ?

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Talk about being on the wrong side of history!

“The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” introduced by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., passed the House Thursday in a 219-203 vote. The legislation would require that “school athletics comply with the Title IX recognition of a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” according to a press release from Steube’s office.

“This bill ensures that biological females compete against other biological females in women’s sports that are operated, sponsored, or facilitated by a recipient of federal funding,” adds the press release.

Not one Republican voted against the bill.

Not one Democrat voted for it.

It’s unlikely the bill will pass the Democrat-controlled Senate. President Joe Biden has already announced he would veto the bill if it came to his desk.

This should be a bipartisan, consensus issue. It should not be controversial that girls deserve a chance to compete in sports against their physical peers, not boys.

Across the country, girls are losing to biological males who now identify as transgender. Here at The Daily Signal we’ve been covering the issue for years. In 2019, we told the story of Selina Soule, a high school runner who “missed qualifying for the 55-meter in the New England regionals by two spots,” reported my colleague Kelsey Bolar.

Two of the athletes who did qualify for the regionals were biological males.

“It’s very frustrating and heartbreaking when us girls are at the start of the race and we already know that these athletes are going to come out and win no matter how hard you try,” Soule told The Daily Signal. “They took away the spots of deserving girls, athletes … me being included.”

How is this fair?

“The simple truth is that males outperform females in regard to speed and strength due to inborn genetics and sex hormones. This has consistently been proven by long-term research on elite athletes when matched for training,” wrote Drs. Michelle Cretella and Quentin Van Meter in an article for The Daily Signal in 2021.

“While it is true that a male using estrogen will lose muscle strength and impair other aspects of his physiology, he does not alter his genetics; he remains male at the cellular level in all body systems,” added Cretella and Van Meter.

Yet across the country, girls must lose to biological males, just because of transgender ideology.

“Congress in 1972, created Title IX to protect women’s sports, to enable women to have an equal playing field in athletics. And in worship to their trans idols, the administration wants to flip that on its head,” said Steube on the House floor Wednesday. “It’s insane. Title IX was created for women’s sports and now the left wants to kill it.”

“In them giving homage to the trans movement, they are abandoning women all across the country,” he added. “Parents do not want biological men in locker rooms with their daughters, nor do they believe its equitable that a male can compete with women in female athletics. It’s the whole purpose that Title IX was created to begin with.”

Steube is right about the locker rooms. But it’s not just parents who object. It’s also the girls themselves.

“A male was in our locker room when volleyball girls were trying to get changed,” Blake Allen, a 14-year-old, told The Daily Signal last fall. “And after I asked him to leave, he didn’t, and later looked over at girls with their shirts off. And it made many people uncomfortable and feel violated. And I left as soon as I could in a panic.”

But the left doesn’t care that girls like Blake feel violated. Her feelings are irrelevant in today’s world.

So much for this being the golden era of feminism. Once again, the patriarchy is winning—even if it’s now under the disguise of the transgender ideology.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/04/20/not-1-democrat-votes-to-protect-girls-sports

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Roads Are 'Designed' to Kill Minorities, Says Transportation Secretary

Some stupidity is so extreme that it could be dangerous

While ignoring a cornucopia of crises in his two-plus years as Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg has found a supposed crisis that he will address, and it sounds a lot like his previously trotted-out theory that bridges are a tool of racism.

Speaking with Al Sharpton on MSNBC, Buttigieg declared "we've got a crisis when it comes to roadway fatalities in America" before making his usual pivot to frame the problem as one of race.

"We lose about 40,000 people every year," Buttigieg told Sharpton, adding roadway fatalities are "a level that's comparable to gun violence" for emphasis. "And we see a lot of racial disparities," Buttigieg continued.

Specifically, according to Buttigieg, "black and brown Americans, tribal citizens, and rural residents" are "much more likely to lose their lives — whether it's in a car or a pedestrian being hit by a car."

Buttigieg argued that the racial disparity is "related to discrimination" and "even the ways roads are designed and built" such that minorities don't have "access to a safe street design that's got crosswalks and good lighting."

Here's Buttigieg's full meandering argument about how roads are supposedly designed to be racially discriminatory:

"We've got to act," Buttigieg said, despite him not having such urgency to take action to address the broken supply chain, formula shortage, or toxic train derailments — just a few crises Buttigieg ignored or went MIA during.

What's more, Buttigieg should have thought about where his argument would lead before making his proclamation about racist roads. Because if, as Buttigieg claimed, roads were designed to be more deadly for minorities, who is to blame for building those roads?

In cities and states with crumbling infrastructure, members of Buttigieg's party are in charge of roads. Such as South Bend, Indiana, where then-Mayor Buttigieg was unable to address potholes? Was the danger posed by Mayor Pete's potholes a racist design in action?

A new Department of Transportation roadway safety data explorer shows clearly where America's most deadly roads are. The data viewed on a heat map lights up America's big, Democrat-run cities like fireworks. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, New York, and Philadelphia are where these deadly — apparently designed to be so for minorities — exist.

So, did Buttigieg just admit that Democrats are making cities unsafe for minorities? Sure looks like it.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2023/04/17/buttigieg-says-roads-are-designed-to-kill-minorities-n2622046?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&recip=6139244

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Matt Walsh unmasks the vicious Left

Online activists are the new revolutionaries and, as with their historical counterparts, they are becoming radicalised and violent in pursuit of their political goals.

The press at large have been ignoring most of this thuggish behaviour because it doesn’t fit with their official narrative of weakness and victimhood. Even when public figures such as female author JK Rowling found themselves receiving rape and bomb threats, the press remained reluctant to openly criticise the trans movement.

Can you imagine if women trying to speak out for their rights had been hijacked and terrified by a group of Neo-Nazis instead of trans activists? Oh no, wait… That happened too, and the press blamed the women, accusing them of ‘consorting’ with the men who mobbed them.

The more powerful these activist movements become, the more dangerous they are. Not only are many of their preachings ideologically unnerving – such as repeated demands to remove gendered language from medical environments where accuracy is crucial – but they have become dangerous in the real world where debate has turned into intimidation, threats, and abuse.

It was only a few weeks ago that Posie Parker was physically attacked in Australia and New Zealand for speaking out against the erasure of women’s spaces, and Victorian MP Moira Deeming was summarily banished by the so-called conservative party.

Increasingly, you must agree with the Left, or you will be hounded until you do. We have seen repeated examples of actors and public figures with social clout voicing simple questions only to find themselves facing cancellation if they did not immediately recant and re-affirm their dedication to the activist cause.

Think about what that means. People are being forced to publicly lie to protect their careers from an online mob whose power extends into the boardrooms of large corporations and the backrooms of Hollywood. This is a state religion. A political religion.

Desperate to paint itself as nothing more than innocent glitter, hearts, rainbows, unicorns, tolerance, and ‘safety’ – progressive politics has more in common with the bullying of Mao’s Cultural Revolution than most realise. It is a movement based on ideological purity and seeks to purge the culture that came before it.

A few days ago, political commentator and creator of the viral documentary, What is a woman? Matt Walsh had his Twitter account hacked.

Walsh has been at the forefront of recognising biological gender as a reality. He speaks bluntly on a position that was, until yesterday, the default among Western nations. Walsh is not lying, but telling the truth about gender has become a social offence.

When Walsh tried to explain the Western ideology of transgenderism to a Maasai Tribe during his documentary, their response infuriated activists who subscribe to identity politics. How could one protected group deny the existence of another? It breaks the ‘maths of oppression’ that goes on behind the scenes of the ideology.

Walsh’s questions were straight forward, but their answers are not. They expose the intellectual incoherence at the heart of identity politics.

The Maasai were simply saying what most Westerners actually think, but are too afraid to admit: gender is immutable.

Rolling Stone reviewed Walsh’s documentary with the headline: Why Are Social Media Companies Taking Ad Money From A Right-Wing Transphobic Doc? And began with the sentence: ‘For years, right-wing commentator, Daily Wire host, and all-round shitty provocateur Matt Walsh has used to his platform to go after trans people.’

There are countless reports like this which manage to avoid the central thesis of Walsh’s documentary, and that is the uncomfortable truth that the West appears to have lost its grip on basic reality. The refusal to define a woman as an adult human female is plainly absurd. Science duct-taped by radical ideology is something we were supposed to grow out of as a civilisation and yet in 2023 science bows to activism and we have the hide to call this ‘progress’.

Walsh ultimately won the culture war, with social media largely taking the view the left is wrong on the topic of biological gender. Adding to the ‘outrage’, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has removed the ban on misgendering trans people – or as others see it, users are no longer compelled to lie about the biology of other people if they do not wish to. To be clear, you cannot abuse people – that is still a violation of Twitter’s overarching terms of service – but the idea that failing to recognise new pronouns is ‘abuse’ has been removed.

Musk then joined the debate about protecting children by tweeting: ‘Any parent or doctor who sterilises a child before they are a consenting adult should go to prison for life.’ Many feel exactly as Musk does – that children must be protected from making life-changing alterations to their body. Others say this is ‘hate speech’. And that is Musk’s point. Who is to judge what is hateful, and what is said in the interests of protecting children?

One can only wonder if, sensing a change in the air, Walsh’s critics decided to up their game and go after his social media account.

It is in this environment that the Twitter hack took place.

Once compromised, Matt Walsh’s Twitter account, which has 1.7 million followers, began to post bizarre and disturbing content.

While we cannot reprint the full set of tweets here, some included statements such as: ‘My Pronouns Are That/N-’, and ‘Ben Shapiro. You Know What You Did etc’. Other tweets made light of shootings and hurled accusations at public figures. The hacker also sent disturbing direct messages to Walsh’s contacts. When it became clear the game was up, the hacker tweeted: ‘Twitter Isn’t Hacked, This Is Just The Real Me Coming Out.’

Ben Shapiro – who was targeted by one of the hacked tweets – said:

‘Over the past few months, my friend Matt Walsh has been threatened to the extent that he’s had to have full-time security at his home to protect his family. Now he’s been hacked. The tolerant and diverse and kind crows are celebrating, of course.’

Ben Shapiro added: ‘They tell you who they are. Believe them.’

Walsh addressed the incident on April 20:

‘Over the last year my family has been harassed, threatened, doxxed, and now we can add hacked to the list. Apparently the hacker had an “insider” who gave him access to my phone. A lot we still don’t know. But we’re funding out. And there will be consequences. I have also made note of the members of the media who openly solicited stolen information from my phone. There will be consequences there too. Fortunately we can afford very good lawyers.’

Elon Musk’s team worked fast to secure the hack. Later on, after Walsh regained control of his account, he tweeted:

‘As soon as the hacking attack started, I was on the phone with our tech team, security team, lawyers, and executives. They all worked around the clock. They’re still working to find out exactly what happened, who did it, and how. Very grateful for the support of the Daily Wire @JeremyDBoreing, @BenShapiro and the whole team. Can’t imagine going through something like this without these kinds of resources. Which of course is the situation most victims face. Yes, I’ve been doxxed, threatened, hacked, stalked, etc, but the other part of that story is that SW provides me with all of the resources I need to respond to all of these attacks. Never have to worry about being thrown under the bus or left to deal with it on my own.’

It is only the latest abusive behaviour that Walsh has suffered at the hands of the ‘peaceful and tolerant’ activist crowd. Around the same time, YouTube demonetised Walsh’s show, with Walsh tweeting:

‘As I announced during my speech tonight, YouTube has demonetised my show and threatened to ban us if we don’t respect the pronouns of trans people. I’d rather take my show off YouTube than cooperate with that nonsense. So I am … I’m not going to forfeit my integrity for the sake of YouTube ad revenue. But I’m also not going to go off to the hinterlands somewhere and languish in obscurity. We’re going to make the show bigger and more accessible on even more platforms. That’s how we’re responding.’

As for the hack itself, there is plenty of fall-out yet to come. This was no trivial event, and Walsh is not laughing it off.

Wired ran a story titled: The Hacker Who Hijacked Matt Walsh’s Twitter was Just ‘Bored’ and then added a whingy preamble: ‘Editor’s Note: Following publication, Twitter permanently suspended this article’s author, WIRED senior reporter Dell Cameron, citing its policy against the distribution of hacked material. WIRED believes Twitter’s actions were unjustified.’

Which sounds serious, until you read the rest of the story.

As reported by The Post Millennial:

On Wednesday, WIRED senior reporter Dell Cameron was permanently suspended from Twitter after he asked for and obtained hacked materials from Matt Walsh’s Twitter account.
“Spoke with the hacker who says he compromised Matt Walsh’s account, and who was able to supply some convincing proof they’d gained access to his personal email account. Story TK,” a tweet from just after midnight on Wednesday read.

And also:

In the article, Cameron stated that the hacker went by the alias “Doomed”, who said, “The intent was to make funny tweets, as Matt Walsh likes to ‘trigger’ people. We caused no financial harm, threatened anyone, [nor] ruined anything.”
Other screenshots given to Cameron allegedly showed the hacker “in the midst of compromising Walsh’s accounts, triggering authenticating requests received on the SIM-swapped device.”

There were various photos published on social media to go along with this.

Wired also released a tweet saying:

‘WIRED Statement on Dell Cameron’s Permanent Twitter Suspension: WIRED learned Wednesday afternoon that senior reporter Dell Cameron’s Twitter account was permanently suspended after he reported on Matt Walsh’s Twitter account being hacked. Neither Dell’s story nor his Twitter feed contained hacked materials. We do not believe his account violated Twitter’s policy. We have not received any further explanation from Twitter and our attempts to reach Twitter’s press office were met with the customary poop emoji. We ask that the account be reinstated, and that Twitter provide an explanation.’

This prompted Matt Walsh to issue a statement in response to Wired, reblogging their tweets with the following messages:

‘Your reporter directed solicited stolen material from my phone. A Twitter suspension is going to be the least of his problems, and yours.’ Walsh also said, ‘That is a flat out lie.’

The solicited materials Twitter rule that the Wired reporter has reportedly fallen afoul of is the same one that was used to suspend the New York Post over its Hunter Biden story – although in that case it was shown that no one hacked Biden’s abandoned laptop. Walsh’s Twitter account, according to Walsh and Twitter, was definitely hacked.

Walsh has said that he intends to pursue this incident, not only with the hacker – but also with media organisations.

It is clear that society has to start drawing some pretty serious lines in the culture wars before the West slides into the same sorts of political behaviours common in third-world dictatorships and collectivist tyrannies. People, like Matt Walsh, have to be allowed to speak out against radical ideology without living in fear of their life from online trolls.

There was a huge amount of fuss made by left-wing media outlets about Islam’s attacks on Salman Rushdie for his criticism of religion, but what are we doing right now in this progressive, tolerant world? Activist movements, particularly those online, are threatening commentators and hounding them with the same kind of blind zealotry. Walsh is exposing them – and let’s hope he exposes this hacker too.

Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/matt-walsh-unmasks-the-vicious-left/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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