Sticks & Stones

Free speech, the consolidation of industries, & a new public discourse.

I’m a believer in free speech. And while this goes against the current overshadowing narrative our of our time, I don’t believe words hurt. I think humans have and always will live in a world where others don’t and won’t like them, and everyone has the right to say it, no matter how nasty it gets. Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Remember that saying? Kids of a certain generation were raised by this, and it creates a simple resiliency that has all been lost in our new “safe space” age. And even when the words hurt, I believe humans are far more resilient in the long term that the short term power of pain.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive to be kind. I’m not suggesting I don’t hope for civility and some compromise to help make our society flow better, but if there is a hateful person out there, let’s let them speak their mind so we can know them by their words. Censorship is good at 1. pushing people underground and 2. making a martyr of people that don’t deserve it.

But free speech is anything but alive in todays America. The institutions running the show have crafted deep, complex levels of government sanctioned and government run censorship that not only inhibits certain peoples messages from getting out, but has gone on the offense to make sure we are only fed very specific and pointed thoughts for consideration. If you don’t follow the work of

Matt Taibbi

I can’t recommend it enough. Censorship is real, and in many western countries thinking “different” is leading to jail. We’ve seen recent examples in England and Germany in which people were jailed for simply expressing opinions on social media. This is coming to the US if we are not careful.

Here is a brief problem as I see it in America, and around the world. We have embraced, for better or worse, globalism. That is just a fact at this point. Mineral X,Y,& Z have to be extracted and shipped to a different location to be turned into part B. The same thing happens for parts A, C, D, and E. Then these parts are shipped to another location, often across the ocean again, to be assembled into Product K. It’s then shipped again across the ocean and land continent(s) so that it can be sold to Consumer Q.

This happens in every direction criss crossing the world every day.

There are a handful of companies that control most of this. As we’ve globalized, they have gotten their prices so low, statistically VERY FEW actual small businesses can enter the arena to compete, almost none at any real level.

Stay with me here.

These corporations exist and base their profits on multiple continents. And what we used to think of national loyalty, or nationalism, is no longer a thing. So their best interest rarely exists in just one place. Before globalism set in fully, during the colonial era, this meant bad news for the nations in which the product’s components were extracted. But now the bad news extends equally to the nations in which the products are sold. There is no reason to worry about poisoning or corrupting the population of any given consumer nation, because of one very small plot twist.

Consolidation.

Let’s look at Bayer. Bayer, a German based drug company, makes a drug for Non-hodgekins lymphoma. Bayer recently acquired Monsanto. Monsanto makes the poisonous chemical called Glyphosate which is sprayed on food crops by the millions of pounds/year, in the US alone. This drug has been proven, in court, to cause non-hodgkins lymphoma.

We now have the same company profiting first on giving you cancer, and then treating it. This company also is one of the largest lobbyist companies in the US affecting US policy. You can see how this doesn’t end well. This same story applies to countless other chemicals being used in our food supply, not even to speak of the ones used in our cookware, furniture, and water supply.

The gist of the matter is that the US government, by allowing unlimited corporate influence and lobbying, is no longer a government run for the American people. It is run for and by multinational corporations that often are not even based in the US. The levels of potential conflict of interest are infinite here.

We have been told the last twenty years that we need to think “beyond nations” and that having any sense of nationalism is inherently “racist” which is utter rubbish of course. We are told we need to accept globalism with open arms. And to that point, it is hard to see a path forward without it. Pandoras box has been opened. But to think that we have no right to look out and after our own nation, our own soil, and to strive to make our own land better is ridiculous. In fact, we need to be more focused on what we can do here and less concerned about what others do with their own nations. This is how the world has always operated, and how it always will, and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to conquer their own way forward on other soils.

We can strive to make our own nation better without being racists. We can strive to make things better by focusing more locally. If we do not want glyphosate sprayed on our farm lands, we deserve the right not make that decision as a populous. If we want to know what foods have been sprayed with dangerous chemicals, we deserve that right to know. (Currently the system is backwards, requiring those that DO NOT spray their products with dangerous chemicals to go through a lengthy, exhausting, and expensive process of tracking and explanation, rather than putting the onus on those that DO spray the poisonous chemicals.)

Now add that these same pharma companies that have their best interest in keeping the knowledge of their products not only lobby for control over the regulatory agencies that would keep our products safe from them, but also lobby for censorship laws that direct and control the government influence of what can and can’t be said in public media spaces, we have a recipe for disaster. This is not a dystopian future disaster, it’s a dystopian modern day. It’s current. It is now. The same companies that have lobbied for more control of government censorship are also the leading advertisers of “news” organizations and have a wicked controlling power over the media landscape controlling not only what stories get out, but how they are told and who’s messaging is being cut out.

So in a nut shell, consolidation of companies has lead to our food, media, and pharmaceutical companies all being directly tied, to such a degree that they can silence anyone and everyone that dares to speak out about the dangers being served to the public. That is what we need to know.

RFK JR. gave a speech today that was, to put it mildly, mind blowing. He addressed without notes, and with great nuance, clarity, and specificity, at a level rarely if ever seen in a politician, the problems facing America and the threat to what we as a nation and future generations face. He did so without self aggrandizement. He did so without putting himself at the center of the story. He spoke with clarity many of the root problems we face, and how to correct them. Even if you disagree with his solutions, I can’t recommend enough that you take the time to watch what he says, and listen, and evaluate for yourself what you think about it.

We are so often told in modern media and social media WHAT to think about what other people say, without ever being given the opportunity to hear them in their own words. The parties that be want to shape the narrative. We are told, even when we see for our selves the tragedies unfolding on streets across America with increase in theft, crime, homelessness, and drug abuse, that everything is actually ok. We are told that we only need to trust others to take care of us. But it’s all a lie. A show. And when you actually hear someone address the problem as you yourself know it to be, it feels wild and unusual, because we’ve become so accustomed to being lied to by the media.

But this speech gave me hope. Gave me hope that others are out there who see the problems we all see, are working to converse and support those trying to actually make things better.

What do you think?