Relax everyone, the world is not going to end on Wednesday

Don't listen to the ads and the pundits. Even though they may all tell you that the world is going to end if the opposing political candidate wins, that is not true.

No, we are not going to be Venezuela or communist, if Biden wins, not even close.
No, we are not goin to become a dictatorship or fascist, if Trump wins, our institutions are too strong.

No, you won't have all your guns taken away, if Biden wins.
No, Trump will not end social security.

So, let's just all stop with the mindless hyperbolic fear mongering, and just do your duty and vote on Tuesday, if you haven't done so yet. Cherish that right. I can't vote, because I am a legal immigrant. I wish I could, and at one point I will, once I become a citizen. Don't take it for granted, or you'll lose that right.

 

Exactly. The sun will rise and life will continue on.

 

Life will go on.
But I’m genuinely concerned about the censorship we all witnessed in the last several months.

No democracy needs to censor speech, or withhold information from voters. If Biden wins we will set a precedent that might come in a very nasty form in the future.
Russia has elections, and is a democracy on paper. Ask any Russian why they vote for Pootin and they will all tell you that there is just no viable alternative - nobody can challenge Pootin on Russian mass media.
If we elect Biden then all of our future presidents will be appointed by a handful of CEOs. The US will become just another authoritarian country that does god knows what around the world and no one will have enough fire power to challenge those people in power. The authoritarian United States will not necessarily mean bad quality of life on the inside, as the dictators will still need to be fairly populist, but to the outside world it will become a nightmare.

I expect a rush of regulations being placed on American mass media and social media by the EU and other countries once the election is over. They are probably waiting to avoid being blamed for the election meddling. There is no way leadership in other countries sees this and chooses to do nothing.
Also, yesterday I watched some Ukrainian news. It’s interesting that their impression is that the only thing that unifies democrats is their hate for Trump. They also said businesses are boarding up before elections, especially those that “have experience with BLM protesters”. That’s how American elections look like to people outside of this country.

I think smaller countries are looking at the US like you’d look at some family member with huge authority figure who is struggling with a bipolar disorder and leaders of those countries are confused about what to expect from our country.

There will be a rush to distance from the US no matter who wins and it won’t necessarily be Trump’s fault.

Also, on international stage, every time Biden says anything about Pootins power grab, he will always be able to come back with “look at the US president who couldn’t win the elections without censoring media”. Biden would look like a total hypocrite in on discussion with Russia or China about human rights because you need freedom of speech to address those issues, something that liberals aren’t willing to afford to the US general population itself.

 

The bolded part is exactly the fear mongering that is totally unfounded. There is no censorship, and there will be no censorship under Biden. Privately-owned social media deciding to remove content that is hurtful or patently a lie, is not censorship. It would only be censorship if the government would force social media companies to do so against their will. The right to free speech doesn't mean that everyone need to be given a platform to speak.

Also, the idea that Biden will be appointed by a handful of CEOs is not in tune with reality. Who gave the CEOs their corporate tax cuts, that were used to buyback stock, instead of hiring? It sure wasn't Biden.

 

Can you at least be honest here?
We all saw censorship.

Sure, if they are a publisher, not a platform for all.

It is censorship when a company that gets protections from the US government for being a platform for all, starts to act as a publisher. If they alter the content, then they take responsibility for the tweets or posts, therefore they are a publisher that chooses to refuse to publish some material that is not favorable to a candidate of their preference.
In other words - corporate censorship, by corporations that have special relationships with our federal government.

Boeing, Target, Walmart, and quite a few other large corporations aren’t visibly taking sides.
So, it wasn’t the tax cut that caused this.

 

You have missed the big picture. Fact is Twitter and Facebook rule and they do censure info. Twitter refused to allow the New York Post to submit their story on the Biden family affair. Yet the Post had the text and emails along with an eyewitness, plenty of evidence. Now you may say Twitter had the right to do that but when the public was made aware and Twitter was exposed they reversed themselves. It should not have happened in the first place. There was no legal or ethical reason to suspend the NY Post account. Congress is prepared to act and when they do it will be in the interest of the country. Standard Oil was also a privately owned company but congress saw the need to bust it up. It's the same reason we have the law of Eminent Domain. What is best for the country as a whole benefits all citizens.

 

So you are saying everything is going to be just peachy no matter who wins yet we will lose our right to vote if we take it for granted? Now who is fear mongering?

 

Then you aren't paying attention. When the three largest information systems delivering content to citizens in the US takes a side, and obviously they have, it isn't just corporate interests protecting themselves. These corporations are actively interfering with the election, banning content that dares to show just how vicious the left wing protesters of BLM an ANTIFA are. Banning discussion about or content related to the Democratic nominee to protect his campaign is the abuse of trust that must be remedied.

After mr Trump is reelected, the senate must take action against the 230 protections allowing Twitter, facebook, and google to ban the thought that they don't like, and treat them as any other content producer. I never thought in my lifetime that I would ever see democrats so eager to marry up with corporate censorship but here they are, snuggling up to the tyranny so many of us have warned they would inflict on this nation.

 

Wanted to add to my prior post.
Russia has an agency called Rospotrebnadzor. That agency has the powers to shut down social media accounts or fine Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any other company for displaying certain information to Russian residents.
You know how they justify it?
They say they make sure the consumer has only accurate information and they are fighting foreign disinformation.
Rospotrebnadzor is pretty much equivalent to a handful of CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Google, AT&T (CNN), and others, making a decision what is true or not and whether a voter has the right to have access to certain information.
The only difference now is that in Russia you can land in jail for “spreading misinformation”. Here you just get cancelled and will have difficulties finding a new job.
In Soviet Union, one of the ways to induce a soft punishment on a free thinking individual was to publicly shame that person to a point where their only options for future employment was somewhere in cleaning industry.

If Biden is elected then one can conclude that America doesn’t have real free speech anymore.

 

This is what kills me too.
Seeing headlines stating something like “liberal protesters clashed with conservative free speech protesters” is like putting a bomb in your brain and blowing it up - that’s like something out of the realities of this universe.

 

It's not censorship, though, because the government would have to be involved for it to be censorship.

 

But all this happened under Trump, not Biden.

 

So, in other words, you want the government to FORCE social media to publish content they don't agree with. That's called propaganda. Welcome to the Prawda.

Would you be okay that government would force Breitbart to publish left-leaning articles? Yes or no? Show your authoritarian colors.

 

I didn't say everything would be peachy. I said the world won't end on Wednesday. Period. Obviously, I have a favorite candidate, who I want to win. However, I HATE these B$ commercials that paint the other candidate as the devil incarnate and tell you that your life as you know it will never be the same again if your candidate doesn't win.

 

Are you serious? Do you believe our president controls all happenings in the country?

 

I don't - but if you think that a Biden win will make this worse, then clearly you do. In fact, it is the basis for your comment.

 

Very well said. Glad you want to join this circus that is the USA

One of my friends who was a history professors used to say that politicians run on fear and emotion because the largest blocks of the electorate don't understand the policy anyway.

 

I figured that you'd not get the point. These platforms are already curating traffic and content. They should be treated the same as every other publisher out there. That isn't "forcing them to provide content". Simple stuff, Frankly, it's astonishing that folks on the left are so adamant about censoring folks. It's like there wasn't so much a slippery slope, it was just jump off the cliff. Tyranny is tyranny. And the left has discovered their willingness to be tyrants.

 

And this is the trap of being an elitist. If you cannot craft a policy that garners public support, the only one to blame is you. And hiding behind "they wouldn't understand it anyway is exactly the elitist ethos that folks chafe against. So, if folks in the elite were that smart, they'd actually package their policy to ensure the public support, not just their personal tyranny.

 

****ing Obama care..

Going to start smoking crack again..

 

A dictatorship, no. Catastrophic harm to democratic institutions like the DoJ, intel agencies, the courts, elections, absolutely yes.

His admin has proven because many institutional norms are based on tradition and the assumption of decency, not on written law, tremendous damage can be done.

 

Insider trading/business as usual?

 

So democrats are lying? You should tell all the lefties

 

More jibberish.

 

I hope your wait to attain what most of us here were born with isn't much longer, and welcome HOME!