If At First You Don't Succeed...

Fresh off her smashing success at the southern border, Vice President Kamala Harris has been put in charge of the administration's latest attempt at violating the Constitution and emulating a certain book by someone whose last name starts with Or- and ends in -well: A "new Internet policy task force... with goals including 'developing programs and policies' to protect 'political figures' and journalists from 'disinformation,' 'abuse' and 'harassment.'" The memorandum that establishes this task force (yay, another committee!), notes:

In the United States and around the world, women and LGBTQI+ political leaders, public figures, activists, and journalists are especially targeted by sexualized forms of online harassment and abuse, undermining their ability to exercise their human rights and participate in democracy, governance, and civic life.

Take note of what's happening here: The government isn't cracking down on on-line harassment and abuse in general, or even the sexualized subset of such. It is, instead, creating a cluster of protected classes that are to receive protections that others won't. The memo goes on to assert that such harassment of women (and, presumably, the balance of that protected group) is sufficiently different from, and more intimidating than, harassment of everyone else that special treatment is warranted.

This aligns with the usual message from progressives: 'Women are just as good as men, but not really.' Ditto for every other traditionally oppressed identity. Whereas liberals of yore (and libertarians forever) argued for equality and equal treatment, the modern Left explicitly embraced unequal treatment, by both government and society overall. This has fostered a cultural stratification, a grievance hierarchy wherein people use their identities to compete for supremacy over those they deem less oppressed than them.

Dividing us up, pitting us against each other, telling us that we cannot ever achieve equality because our skin colors or chromosomes or sexual orientations or ethnic origins or (insert identity marker here) are not the same is definitionally bigotry:

Obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction; in particular, prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

Except that, now, it's not. If you are a member of an oppressed group, you cannot be a bigot, because you don't have power over your oppressors. This, of course, is used to excuse and exculpate wrongs committed by members of those groups, no matter the individuals' relative power. It's also used to justify "scale-tipping" and other disparate treatment by government, when such would normally be a violation of the tenets of equal protection under the law.

So, the government will now swing its sledgehammer at those who "harass and abuse" some Internet users... but not others. While it's not explicitly stated, because doing so would be too obvious, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that political filters will also apply, meaning that Rachel Maddow will be more protected than Sarah Palin.

The aforementioned author gave us a helpful guide:

While the new Ministry of Disinformation is supposedly intended to counter efforts to silence some (but not all) voices via harassment, rest assured that its real mission is content-oriented. It's an attempt to end-run the First Amendment so that criticism of preferred people and narratives can be quashed.

Their oaths of office are, we can safely presume, mere bread and circuses.

I Joseph Robinette Biden Junior do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States[1. So help me God.

I Kamala Devi Harris do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Politicians. Liars. And oath breakers.

It's a reminder that our Constitution is only as good as the people we elect to execute its mandates and uphold its strictures. This business of trying to get around those strictures, whether it be by creativity, subterfuge, outright deceit, or brazen "I dare you to stop me" disregard, has to stop. The only way is for us to pick people who actually esteem the words on that old scrap of parchment instead of looking to beat it.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.