Who will police Tucker Carlson’s utterances? Is it actually POSSIBLE that he could just…say what he wants?

That, apparently, is a deeply disturbing thought to the fine folks at NBC News. Being able to actually say what you think is dangerous stuff!

FLASHBACK: Brian Stelter’s reaction when Elon Musk bought Twitter: “If you get invited to something where there are no rules, where there is total freedom for everybody, do you actually want to go to that party or are you going to decide to stay home?”pic.twitter.com/TWQMSFcc1n

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) May 10, 2023

Imagine a world where people are free to think and say what they want?! What next, allow comics to crack jokes that may offend?!

Now before we get into the part where I share my wise thoughts on what this means, how we got here, and then bitch about the state of the world, let me point out something both obvious and easy to ignore: what is said on “free-flowing” discussions on Cable News is “policed.” Not quite scripted, but you can’t say what you actually think. They just admitted that there is a narrative that must be upheld.

They admitted that, and lament that Twitter makes that impossible now. What can be done?! How do we put the genie back in the bottle?

The MSM is worried that the narrative police might not control everything!

So much for “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It was always propaganda.

The rise of cable news channels and the explosive growth of social media have provided a window into the soul of our MSM overlords, and it is a very dark soul indeed. Media is now filled with “personalities” and “talent,” but for the most part, they are just actors fronting for an ideological agenda.

That actually makes it a pretty easy gig. Good pay. Nice parties. Access to the rich and powerful. And no need to think much, as long as you can smoothly parrot the party line.

It used to be that the media elite had limited time and space to vent, and the norms that developed for how to use the limited bandwidth tended to make media folks pretend to be sober seekers of truth. It was a facade, but it suited the media landscape. Broad audiences and limited bandwidth made “playing it down the middle” look like the best strategy to make money. Most people in the media still relied on talking points and narratives, but they had to be broader to fit the wider audience.

With Twitter available and unlimited time on cable news channels, the media folks now act like ideologues on meth. They need to and want to develop niche audiences, and nobody holds anybody to account. Taylor Lorenz has a job, for God’s sake, and a good one! They now spew the narrative they are fronting for like projectile vomit, but the overall content is still “policed” in the sense that you must stick to the propaganda line.

Develop your niche audience, but make sure they get the story the Elite wants.

During COVID that imperative became hard and fast. Challenging the narrative meant actual censorship and getting onto literal government watch lists. The government created and still funds organizations that exist to suppress both ideas and the speech of particular people.

The rise of Twitter as a free speech platform is a disaster for this model. Who will police the speech?!

Ironically the MSM has spent decades trying to convince everyone that Fox News was an outlier, a dangerous media force of evil that spewed propaganda that would make Putin proud. A danger to the Republic. Yada yada yada. Now they tell us that Fox, too, was part of the police force. They spoke to the dissenters from the narrative but still bounded the range of acceptable opinions.

Fox is something of a safety valve, where minor deviations from acceptable opinions could be expressed and controlled. Sometimes it came inconveniently too close to allowing free expression of opinion, but when it allowed too much the offenders were sent to the Gulag. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and now Tucker Carlson had to go.

So off they went.

Beck and O’Reilly went off to found their own media empires, but their audiences became narrow-casted, and hence less dangerous. Most of us have no idea what they are saying because we don’t subscribe. Their voices were muted.

Twitter is going to change that model, and it is scary to the MSM. Who is going to police what is said?! Will it become a free-for-all?!

Horrors!

The Elite so circumscribes the range of acceptable opinions that the very idea that genuine dissent will be allowed and amplified the bejeezus out of them. They have become so comfortable with the idea of suppressing dissent that they will openly say so.

Totalitarianism runs deep in these people. They love it, just as we are supposed to love Big Brother.