Usually we have to wait until the end of Lent for the torrent of articles by journalists flagellating themselves over their social media addictions. Easter came early (or is it late?) this year, however. Over at The Spectator USA, columnist Bridget Phetasy published an article aptly titled, “Twitter Has Stolen My Life.”

This the first of a couple of articles by Michael Warren Davis, explored by Gus. Michael Warren Davis continues:

 

In it, she meets her aged self on her deathbed. Bridget the Elder asks, “How do you feel about the time you spend on Twitter?” Bridget the Younger gives a mixed report. On the plus side, much of her professional and personal success is owed to social media. She’s an expert at promoting her “personal brand” in the digital age.

But there are downsides:

Well. Where do I begin? Like everyone, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. To be honest, I’ve always been skeptical of it and never really wanted to join in. Twitter is my fix, but you can insert any other social media platform you’re addicted to and what I’ll say will probably be true with minor variations.

The downside is that it robs me of joy.

 

That was my experience, too. I couldn’t have said it better myself: Twitter robbed me of my joy. That’s why, about three or four years ago, I decided to delete all of my social media accounts.

 

I haven’t looked back.

 

I’ve written about my opposition to Big Tech here and elsewhere. In short: social media makes you mean, stupid, impatient, and depressed. It takes a serious toll on your social, physical, and mental health.

Even the upsides given by Ms. Phetasy are cyclical. Sure, Twitter allowed her to flourish as a journalist in the Age of Twitter. But wouldn’t it be better if there was no Age of Twitter at all?

When it comes to social media, we all suffer from a weird kind of Stockholm Syndrome. We accept Twitter as a given and dare not imagine life without it. The most we can do is thank Big Twit for occasionally showering us with its favor. It’s like hearing some apparatchik say, “Yes, the Communist Party killed hundreds of millions of people and stole my humanity. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have gotten that cushy job in the Politburo without it!”

These confessions by social media addicts are always well-received by their readers. Ms. Phetasy’s article is currently the second-most read article on the Speccie website, and I expect it will overtake the first before it disappears into the blogosphere’s vast elephant graveyard. It’s obvious that many (perhaps most) Americans resent social media. But it’s as if they’re stuck in an abusive relationship: they want out, but they’re too afraid to change the locks.

***

Now, if this were only a matter of personal wellbeing, I’d be happy to keep playing up my Luddite schtick. The problem is that Big Tech, having successfully privatized the public square, uses its power to advance the progressive agenda.

Like the averse health effects of social media, this isn’t exactly breaking news. From censoring campaign ads to biased “fact-checking” to curating search results, Silicon Valley is openly working to undermine conservative and Republican causes. Surely, then, the sane thing for conservatives and Republicans to do would be to boycott social media.

And yet we don’t. We have voluntarily handed them the right to censor our political discourse. We know it’s wrong, both for ourselves and for our country. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to do anything about it.

This is why—despite my admiration for folks like Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren, who want to break up the Big Tech monopolies—I can’t endorse their efforts. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram aren’t really monopolies. They don’t use price controls to maintain their market dominance. The service they offer is totally, completely, 100 percent free to consumers.

What Senators Hawley and Warren (like Ms. Phetasy) actually resent is Americans’ total lack of self-control. Almost three-quarters of American adults use social media. If they wanted to, they could simply walk away. But they won’t. They lack the willpower.

Every time I turn on some right-wing television channel or log onto some right-wing website, I hear the conservative masses wailing at the lack of “free speech” on these social-media sites. Guess what, folks? Facebook and Twitter are private companies. So far as they’re concerned, you have no free speech. They’re not bound by the First Amendment. They have no Constitutional duty to represent your “viewpoint.” That’s like walking into a Catholic Church and demanding the freedom to give a sermon praising same-sex marriage. It’s like sitting down at a vegan restaurant and insisting on the right to BYO filet mignon. Private property doesn’t go away just because you find it inconvenient.

In fact, Jack Dorsey could ban Donald Trump, Sean Hannity, and Ben Shapiro from Twitter if he so chose. Why not? It’s his website. If that awesome power alarms you—and it absolutely should—then deactivate your account.

Herein lies the bitter truth. Conservatives lack any whiff of self-discipline. That’s why we can’t organize a boycott to save our lives, even though progressives have been delivering our business leaders’ heads on silver platters for at least sixteen years. It’s why we completely gave up the fight for traditional marriage the moment Obergefell v. Hodges was handed down. (In fact, Dear Leader has been assiduously marketing himself to the LGBT voting bloc in the runup to 2020.) We’re all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

***

Let’s draw a line in the sand. If we conservatives can’t bring ourselves even to delete our Twitter and Facebook accounts, we deserve to lose. If we can’t reclaim the public square from progressive oligarchs, then they ought to rule the day. If we can’t break the ties that bind us to those Silicon Valley moguls—at no cost to ourselves—then we’ll get what we deserve.

“I have not yet begun to fight!” cried John Paul Jones in 1779. Nor have we. We’ve not allowed ourselves to suffer the slightest inconvenience in the defense of our way of life. If we continue giving our implicit consent for the Dorseys and Zuckerbergs to police our political discussions, then we may as well surrender now.

If you God-fearing, freedom-loving patriots really wish to “reclaim the narrative” from the Left, then stop giving them carte blanche to set the parameters of acceptable opinion. And don’t switch to some “alternative” platform, like GAB or Parlor. Stop choosing the lesser of two evils. Make a rule for yourself now: no evil, at any time, for any reason.

Then, delete your accounts. Swear off social media forever. If we can’t make this one small sacrifice—not only for our own good, but for the good of our country—we will lose battle after battle in the Culture Wars. And we will deserve every humiliating blow.

Michael Warren Davis is the editor of Crisis Magazine. He is the author of The Reactionary Mind (Regnery, 2021).

Read more: 
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/conservatives-need-their-own-boycott-social-media/



Here is an extract of the second article by Michael Warren Davis:
…

… . Politics has infected every aspect of American life. You can’t watch a game of football, buy a pair of sneakers, or make pancakes without sending a political message. And it’s not only these United States, either. My wife and I visited Canada for our honeymoon last year; every time a local found out that we were American, all they wanted to do was talk about the president.

What happens when a society becomes 100 percent politicized? I think we’re about to find out, and it’ll be pretty grim.

I used to say, “America is too fat to fight another civil war.” We’ve become the archetype of a bourgeois society, as Irving Kristol called it. Our economy, our politics, and even our culture is “organized for the convenience and comfort of common men and common women, not for the production of heroic, memorable figures.” (He meant that as a compliment.) We call each other fascists and communists because, deep down, we know we’re not really either. If President Trump actually was the next Hitler, everyone who calls him Hitler would be dragged from their beds in the middle of the night by the secret police.

These days, however, I’m beginning to wonder if my faith in the basic intransigence of the middle class wasn’t a bit naïve.

For instance, the Washington Post recently ran a column by Jonathan Greenberg purporting to prove why “Trump would try to run a fascist dictatorship in a second term.” It’s a complete farce. His fifth proof is that, “With Fox News promoting Trump’s lies as truth, the president controls one of the most powerful propaganda machines ever created.”

In case Mr. Greenberg hasn’t noticed, Fox is a private corporation. Its pundits are free to support any politician they like; if they don’t agree, television viewers are free to watch any other channel they like. The fact that Fox hosts four of the five most-watched cable news shows in America might prove that the Administration is using secret technology to brainwash the TV-viewing public into imbibing pro-Trump propaganda… or it may prove that lots of Americans like President Trump. He did win a national election four years ago, after all.

And that’s the thing. The kooky right-wing conspiracy theorists of the Obama Era accused Barry H. of being a crypto-Marxist but they usually let his supporters off the hook, dismissing them as mere dupes. The kooky left-wing conspiracy theorists of the Trump era, on the other hand, accuse Donny J. of openly professing neo-Nazism—and they think his Fox News-watching supporters are neo-Nazis too.

Read more:https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/2020-america-or-1935-spain/


--------------------

The Spectator is a right-wing rag in the same vein as the New York Times is a moderate left-wing rag. They both push agendas. Fox and The Spectator are on the CONservative side of politics, while the liberal media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are on the DemocRATic side… We know what bias to expect. 

For example Jo Biden has put his foot in his mouth once more and the Liberal media has barely mentioned this. On Sara Carter, a CONservative website, and on quite a few European news media it is big news:


Joe Biden said:

“And by the way, what you all know, but most people don’t know, unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community, with incredibly different attitudes about different things,’ Biden said, receiving a slew of backlash for his wording.

If President Donald Trump made this statement, do you think the Democrats and liberal special interest groups would be so forgiving. No way. Not at all. Not by a long shot. 

This isn’t the first time in Biden’s long and colorful political career that he’s made remarks that have made people who heard them do a double take. In fact, this was in line with another seemingly racist and insulting statement made seconds earlier to the same reporter. 


In fact, the NPR interview got even stranger when Biden responded to a question asking whether he had taken a cognitive test. Biden said no and then suggested in a seemingly moment of anger that taking a cognitive test before the presidency, would be like giving the reporter a test for Cocaine prior to the interview.


Why Cocaine? It seemed everyone but the Democrats questioned the disparaging remark.

His apology, however, definitely revealed that his campaign was concerned enough and wanted to get ahead of any fallout. 


‘Earlier today, I made some comments about diversity in the African American and Latino communities that I want to clarify. In no way did I mean to suggest the African American community is a monolith—not by identity, not on issues, not at all.’
                                Joe Biden...


By this shallow apology, Joe digged his own shallow grave deeper…


As leftie DemocracyNow! pushes the line: “The World’s Most Dangerous Man”: Mary Trump on Her Uncle, President Trump, & Why He Must Be Ousted — it also carries on with the 0.005 per cent possibility that Trump might have a tantrum: "What If Trump Refuses to Accept a Biden Victory? A Look at How Electoral Chaos Could Divide Nation…” Meanwhile the left and liberal media won’t mention that Biden isn’t the full quid. 

Trump is still the full quid. He has no sense nor sensibilities about what he does which come from years of holding capitalistic winner-takes-all ideologies. Biden isn’t the full quid. He has no sense nor sensibilities about what he says which come from years of holding patronising ideologies that are outdated. The liberal media, DESPERATE to see trump go, will not go there: there are 70 per cent chances that Biden has dementia at a stage that is not treatable. He can remember stuff, but what he remembers ISN’T CURRENT and is vague. It can only get worse. I will say he is unfit to be president. I could be wrong though.

But this has nothing to do with the Russians, the Chinese or the Iranians who according to the other lying machines — the “intelligence agencies” — are trying to influence the US Presidential elections… Please, don’t make me laugh… Most of the American media (Fox, Breitbart, the NYT, the WaPo), plus most of the social media like Twitter (supporting Biden mostly) and Facebook (supporting Trump mostly) are doing enough of the the bidding for one or both candidates. We also know that the “intelligence agencies” can actually fabricate “Russian/Chinese” IP addresses in woopwoopland, planet Mars, Ukraine or Greenland, and Macedonia…

So chill-out… If you don’t like the social media for what it does to your joy, don’t go there. If you don’t like FOX, switch to CNNNNN... If you don't like Trump, vote for Biden... It's as simple as this.
And trump isn't the most dangerous man. He is a self-absorbed lunatic who has always confused price and value... "too much is never enough?"... As Adolph Leonisky used to say:

Everything has a price, but no value unless we care not to sell.

GL