With FREE SPEECH Act, Trump Fights Hostile Press To Make America Great!

The momentous Act authorizes only the most truthful reports about the president’s words and activities, which are very impressive.

NEW YORK, JANUARY 8, 2021 — President Donald Trump, the humble but bold New Yorker who will be remembered for uniting a broken country in crisis, was inaugurated in front of record crowds on January 20, 2017. That much, of course, everyone knows — you don’t have to have passed the rigorous qualifying examination for the National Registry of Patriotic Citizens to know that Mr. Trump’s was the largest inauguration in American history.

But when future historians take a closer look at the remarkable 45th commander-in-chief, they may just rule that Trump’s presidency didn’t truly begin until the late fall of 2017, when the formidable leader of the crumbling American democratic experiment finally reigned in a hostile and derisive press that for decades had been allowed to publish nearly anything under the guise of “freedom of the press.”

Speaking in his beautifully appointed Trump Tower penthouse, from which he is anxious to begin a second term bringing peace and prosperity to the American people, President Trump looks, if anything, younger than he did those long four years ago when he first deployed his legendary business acumen to strike the historic deal that would secure America’s future, and wrest it away from the cold clutches of smug, liberal propagandists. Looking out on the shimmering skyscrapers of the nation’s new capitol — Mr. Trump has little patience for the Beltway elitism of the DC swamp — the president muses on the early beginnings of what would become known as the FREE SPEECH Act — Fundamental Right to Examine and Expel Specious Press Engaged in Excessive Criticism and Haters.

“You really have to give me credit,” Trump says, puttering around the room with the gameful grace of a man half his age. Before the president took decisive action to ensure that hard-working, patriotic American officials had a right to ensure the accuracy of press reports on the activities and interests of the government, he said, “[the press] were able to write whatever they wanted to write.”

The president muses on the early beginnings of what would become known as the FREE SPEECH Act — Fundamental Right to Examine and Expel Specious Press Engaged in Excessive Criticism and Haters.

“It’s frankly disgusting,” Trump says, shaking his head as he remembers the months of agonizing tete-a-tetes with unscrupulous reporters who lacked regard not only for the office of the president, but for the president himself, often publishing blatant lies meant to make the fierce new leader appear weak-willed and egotistical. In addition to their many appalling claims about “irreversible” climate change and “deadly” firearms, the press alarmingly insisted that President Trump’s inaugural crowd was not many times larger than that of his scandal-plagued predecessor, Hussein Obama, and that the now-disgraced television presenter Mika Brzezinski, a lying liar, had not once been bleeding badly from the face at a New Year’s Eve party.

Before the FREE SPEECH Act, the president was forced to resort to communicating directly with the people over “Twitter” — the social network that would later become part of a first-of-its-kind exclusive nationwide broadcasting platform allowing patriotic Americans to talk openly about their support for our great country and our beautiful anthem without fear of repercussions from liberal snowflakes. During those first heartbreaking months of his presidency, Mr. Trump found himself unable to release a statement to the fake news media without hearing his beautiful words twisted into false lies. It wasn’t long until President Trump realized, with heretofore unparalleled clarity, that the country’s communications licensing structure could be retooled to authorize only the most truthful reports of the president’s words and activities, which were very impressive and deserving of a great deal of respect — and yet, so often, received none at all.

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It was this stroke of genius that started a nationwide, extremely bipartisan revolution against a wildly unregulated media landscape, with freedom-loving citizens crying out from coast to coast for better news about the real President Trump — not divisive coverage centering criticism from sad detractors desperate to distract the public from their own awful decisions to be impacted by hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters from which they would have been protected if they had not chosen to be so very poor.

It was a troubling time for the president, and he knew the American people deserved better than to witness these partisan attacks on his administration while at the same time seeing disturbing sports broadcasts showing kneeling football players disrespecting the brave American armed forces and the gorgeous American flag, attempting to hide under the cover of unsubstantiated claims about so-called “racism,” an awful scourge that our great Republican president Abraham Lincoln expunged from America more than 150 years ago.

Amid this terrifying manifestation of civil unrest, the then-vice president, Michael Pence, traveled to see his own hometown team play, only to be shocked and repulsed by sight of even more ungrateful, kneeling athletes with no class whatsoever.

Nazis, It’s Time For A Common Sense Approach To Not Getting Punched

In retrospect, Mr. Pence has said, that moment in Indiana was when he knew that the FREE SPEECH Act was a go. He knew, then, that the real American people, who worked too hard to have their Sundays briefly interrupted by the suggestion that racism exists, must be spared from this scene, in many cases broadcast into unsuspecting living rooms, in full view of impressionable children who could be exposed to this dangerous and anti-democratic demonstration of what some identity politics groups attempted to legitimize as “political dissent.”

“I think the president had the right idea,” says incoming Vice President Paul Ryan, who worked tirelessly with Constitutional advocates from the National Rifle Association, Focus on the Family, the Susan B. Anthony List, and others to educate initially skeptical left-leaning lawmakers on the tremendous benefits of a well-regulated media. After a few initial bumps and opposition from small cells of disorganized losers, the Act landed on the president’s desk within months. At the official signing, Trump beamed his signature smile, noting that the day was “huge.”

The rest, of course, is history — including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s historic tie-breaking ruling that cemented these common-sense restrictions on anti-government communications into the fabric of America’s strong legal protections for democracy. The FREE SPEECH Act ruling ushered in an era of unprecedented expansion of American freedoms, striking down the oppressive Voting Rights Act in its entirety and finally allowing the American people to demonstrate their citizenship before voting, as well as ending the long battle over “contraception” coverage that had required employer-citizens to fund the tiny but powerful baby-killing pills that had relegated American women to the workplace, where their failure to thrive nearly laid waste to the American family as we know it.

Trump, ever the coy dealmaker, is reluctant to share too much about his plans for his exciting second term, but he did hint that the signature legislation of the next four years will be about bringing the country together “even more,” in a “huge” way: once and for all ending the contentious party system that has been a source of dangerous ideological schisms since the country’s inception.

“We’re going to make America even greater,” says Trump, idly spinning a gold-plated paperweight in the shape of a truck emoji. “It’s going to be so great. You won’t even recognize it.”

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/nazis-its-time-for-a-common-sense-approach-to-not-getting-punched-in-the-face-d46cf888c6fb/ Wed, 25 Jan 2017 02:43:34 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2323 Read more]]> YES, THIS IS SATIRE. HOW ARE SO MANY PEOPLE DEFENDING NAZIS.

Let me start off by saying that nobody wants Nazis to get punched in the face, and having a Nazi bleed profusely all over a public sidewalk as the result of an unexpectedly inflicted head wound is not something any decent person would condone. Punching Nazis simply because you disagree with their plan to execute a mass genocide is reprehensible and inexcusable.

But this isn’t a perfect world, it’s the real world. And Nazis should consider taking some common-sense steps to avoid being punched in the face, such as never doing or saying anything that would lead anyone on earth at any time for any reason to believe that they are Nazis.

Of course, it’s not fair that Nazis should have to change anything about their behavior or beliefs just to avoid being punched in the face, but if I knew a Nazi personally, I would hope they would heed this advice. You wouldn’t leave an expensive watch sitting on your driver’s seat and abandon your car, unlocked, on a dark street, would you? And then come up shocked to find the watch gone and your car vandalized? I mean, you can’t go around doing, saying, and believing racist things—like quoting Nazi propaganda and Hitler himself—and then express surprise when someone clocks you in the gourd for it. Not that there is anything inherently unconscionable with doing, saying, and believing racist things!

You can’t go around doing, saying, and believing racist things, and then expressing surprise when someone clocks you in the gourd for it.
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For their own safety, Nazis must consider not being unapologetic racists as a means of reducing their risk of getting punched in the face. To be sure, no one should ever have to hide their fundamentally eugenicist philosophy from the world, and certainly Nazis, as much as anyone else, deserve to publicly espouse their belief in the essential inferiority of people of color, Jews, LGBTQ people, the mentally ill, and other non-white, non-able-bodied members of the population whom they intend to kill en masse, like they did during World War II, at the first opportunity without worrying about being punched in the face.

I’m just trying to be realistic. Naturally we’d all prefer for Nazis to be able to do Nazi stuff and be Nazis without suffering any repercussions whatsoever, forever, for the entirety of their lives, for any reason.

In a perfect world, Nazis would be able to walk around espousing genocide as a means of achieving their goal of purifying the human race without fear of being punched in their faces. Nobody wants Nazis to be free to execute their racist extermination plan more than I do! I’m just asking questions: Maybe if Nazis weren’t so into that whole racial-exceptionalism-as-a-justification-for-murder thing, they’d get punched in the face a little less often.

I’m not trying to tell Nazis how to live their lives; I just want Nazis to realize the risk they’re taking when they do and say the racist things that no one should ever punch them in the face for doing and saying. Until the day Nazis can act with the full support of a racist right-wing government behind them in this country, they should mind what they do, how they talk, and where they wear those swastikas.

A t his last-ever press conference as president, Barack Obama fielded a question about the reason for Hillary Clinton’s loss in November. Part of his response concerned left-wing outreach to those Trump voters the left has been self-flagellating over for weeks:

“How do we make sure that we’re showing up in places where I think Democratic policies are needed, where they are helping, where they are making a difference, but where people feel as if they’re not being heard?”

The myth of the unheard Trump voter, ignored and forsaken by a wonky liberal establishment that alone must work to regain the trust of its political opposite, has pervasively taken hold (here, here, and here — also here! And even on Saturday Night Live!) and it is the most tiresome bullshit in a genre known throughout space and time as being the most rife with tiresome bullshit: the American political conversation.

It’s hard to know who the politicians, pundits, and indeed even the current president are actually talking about when they implore progressives to come down from their coastal towers and meet with real Americans, the unheard Americans. Let’s assume that these unheard Americans are those people who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton and who instead ushered in the reign of Donald Trump because a bunch of mean, monocle-sporting opera fans in California (or somewhere like that, the specifics aren’t important) failed to heed their clamoring calls for apple pie and something something the economy.

That means we’re mostly talking about white people. Educated white people, not-educated white people, white women, and, especially, white men. True, economic inequality and anxiety is a real problem in this country, but it’s ridiculous to act as if this is a problem exclusively among mostly white Trump voters — many of whom, it should be noted, are doing just fine financially.

It’s day 48 of the resistance against Trump’s despicable fall to power, and I want answers.

By who, exactly, do these Trump voters feel as if they’re not being heard? Is it the liberal (outgoing) president, whose policies they disagree with? Maybe. Now, I’d argue that it’s not so much that the Obama administration and its would-be Clintonian successor didn’t hear their desire to, say, build a 90 foot concrete wall from San Diego to Brownsville, but rather that they undoubtedly found this suggestion to be a dumb fucking idea, but sure. You say “unheard,” I say “had a fundamental policy disagreement,” but we can agree to unhear with each other on this, I guess.

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By who, exactly, do these Trump voters feel as if they’re not being heard?
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Perhaps these Trump voters feel they are not being heard by our (overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, right-leaning) Congress. That seems plausible! Local elections are more likely to have a direct effect on peoples’ daily lives than anything a president alone can do. I can certainly sympathize! I, too, found an obstructionist Congress that spent most of the last few years bitching about Obamacare without building anything close to a viable alternative to be more than a little frustrating.

Strange, though — Congress is now under complete GOP control, so I guess if it was those elected officials who the Trump voters felt “unheard” by, voting to put more people like them in office is a weird way of showing it. (And if Trump voters felt their right-leaning governors weren’t listening to them either, well, they elected two more right-leaning guvs in 2016, a similarly bizarre reward for an out-of-touch political establishment.)

Maybe the Trump voters feel unheard by the media? After all, there is but one 24-hour international television news network solely dedicated to the proliferation of racist malarkey, rife Islamophobia, unrepentant misogyny, and blatant misinformation in the service of right-wing politics. And indeed, only one national online publication formerly headed up by the racist, anti-Semitic Steve Bannon. (Oh, and about that lefty media — it’s white people, just like Trump voters.)

Did Trump voters feel as if their stories were not being told in mainstream film and television? Did they think their realities were not being reflected back to them on their screens? If so, they ought to get out more. Like, to the movies, at all . . . ever: Both behind and in front of the camera, people involved in Hollywood films are men. Both behind and in front of the camera, people involved in Hollywood films are white. The biggest and most powerful gatekeepers behind the scenes? Work with and for white people.

Trump voters weren’t “unheard” by anybody. The truth is, we had a black president and a woman frontrunner to replace him, and white guys (and a hell of a lot of white women) didn’t like it. People with privilege perceive equality, or even the spectre thereof, as oppression. They, and a number of other people in a position to make it so, declared Trump voters (white people, mostly dudes) the “real” America, and it doesn’t matter if the rest of us bought it. That’s because — and lean in close for this epistemological deliciousness, friends — our cultural centering of whiteness, and in particular white maleness, means that if the mostly-white-dudes who dominate and shape the American political conversation say we’re not paying enough attention to mostly-white-dudes, then we aren’t.

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People with privilege perceive equality, or even the spectre thereof, as oppression.
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Trump voters weren’t unheard by the political establishment — they were friendly with, and liked, their right-leaning representation at the state and congressional levels, so much so that they put more of them in office. Trump voters weren’t unheard by the media — people who look, sound, worship, and believe as they do dominate the airwaves, news publications, and mainstream filmmaking. Trump voters weren’t unheard by liberal elites — they were simply disagreed with by people who rightly identified the powerful intersection of racism and misogyny (and not, it seems, actual economic anxiety) that prompted most white people to vote for Donald Trump.

If we want to talk about unheard voters, we might instead look to the nearly 3 million or so Clinton voters who gave the former New York senator and secretary of state an overwhelming popular victory. Those voters — a racially, culturally, geographically, generationally, and religiously heterogeneous bunch who cannot claim the wealth and breadth of public and historic representation that Trump voters can — are one Hillary Clinton short of being heard in the White House, and, it seems, of being heard by anyone else.

“I married my husband seven years ago.

A close girlfriend of mine was one of my bridesmaids. She got ridiculously drunk at my wedding. She ran around the dance floor like an idiot. She hit on one of my husband’s married friends in front of his wife. She threw up in the bathroom, and one of my aunts had to take her car keys away.

It makes me sick to watch my wedding video because she is everywhere, acting like an idiot. Now she is engaged and planning her wedding, and I feel like I should get stupid-wasted (or act stupid-wasted) at her wedding so she can feel all the hell she put me through.

My husband is not interested in going to her wedding because of her actions at our wedding. He wants to RSVP that we will not be attending and send a card with money, but if I am going to give her a card with money, then I should go to the reception and act like an a — .

What are your thoughts?”

-From “Disturbed” via Ask Amy, Washington Post, 24 November 2016

Dear Disturbed,

It seems a real waste to hold on to a seven-year grudge about someone else’s decision to make themselves look like a complete tool for nothing. Here you have saved up all of this non-refundable ire toward someone you call a “friend,” building anniversary after anniversary of anger, and for what? Simply to let go the chicanery of yore in favor of freeing yourself from a lifetime of resentment based on a few hours’ worth of bad dancing and failed passes to which you have tied the very ruination of your marital memories? Phooey!

We are all the exact same people we were seven years ago; no one has changed or matured in that time, and the memory of your friend’s performance at your wedding is as fresh in everyone else’s mind as it is in yours, which is why your plan to act like a publicly drunken clod as retribution for one evening of poor decision-making is positively foolproof. Everyone at your friend’s wedding will completely understand that the topless woman throwing champagne glasses at the DJ is simply out for bald revenge, as any reasonable person would be, and not really throwing champagne glasses at the DJ, a thing only unreasonable people would really do, and not just ironically do, as you shall.

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We are all the exact same people we were seven years ago.
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Your brilliant plan will be appreciated by all the guests. They will greatly enjoy the patient explanations you will give to all of them for your behavior, lest they think you’re an actual drunk asshole instead of a sober asshole pretending to be a drunken asshole. Everyone will think you charming and cool and see this decision as a very positive reflection on your excellent character, which they will understand to be superior to the bride’s based on your elaborate act of retaliatory subterfuge, a totally chill and normal thing to do.

“We rarely get a response from grandchildren to whom we send carefully selected gifts. I have concluded that it is mostly due to a pathetic lack of manners.

Children need to be trained to express appreciation for what is given to them, and the irony is that emailing is so quick and easy. The pervasive disappearance of even the most basic manners and consideration for others is cheapening our quality of life and sadly breeding some low-class citizens. Good manners are nothing more than the oil that lubricates human interaction.”

-From “Disgusted in Florida” via “Annie’s Mailbox,” 10 December 2016

Dear Disgusted,

Your awful shitbag grandchildren are the fucking worst. They’re ungrateful assholes who actively choose, day after day, not to teach themselves the basic blasted manners their grandparents want them to have. If they weren’t such low-life scumbags, they’d go right the fuck out and buy a goddamned copy of some Emily Post shit and read the fuck up about how to thank the hell out of their gracious and thoughtful grandparents, who have the nicest manners of any people who ever lived, and definitely nicer manners than the assball progeny of your own children, for whose manner-teaching abilities you bear no responsibility whatsoever.

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Your awful shitbag grandchildren are the fucking worst.
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“My live-in boyfriend has not exactly proposed, but he has been dropping hints about ‘looking at rings,’ etc. So I was surprised when I came home with a few things from a bridal expo and he shouted that I was ‘rushing’ him into marriage. Now I’m considering ending it. Thoughts?”

-From “Wannabe Bride” via “Ask E. Jean,” Elle, 9 December 2016

Dear Wannabe Bride,

Thoughts, indeed, are all one can have in this situation, wherein two people may or may not be willing to marry each other and may or may not be on the same romantic timeline and may or may not be ready to obtain wedding-related purchases in the service of the marriage-slash-wedding they are thinking (maybe) about.

The last thing one wants to do when one is considering hitching up one’s legal, financial, and emotional well-being to another human for the rest of one’s life is to have a frank and honest conversation about what the future holds. Instead, potential spouses must engage (before they are engaged) in the delicate art of hint-dropping, mind-reading, and yelling about coupons for buy one, get-one-free wedding DJ services. Only this way can romance — the classical experience of hoping and assuming your intended feels anything like the way you do, or the way you think they do — truly flourish.

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Potential spouses must engage in the delicate art of hint-dropping.
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No one wants to feed friends and family the unsavory story that mutual agreement and loving consent preceded their nuptials. Imagine, years down the road, the embarrassment of telling one’s children that Mummy and Duds were once young, in love, and capable of discussing their feelings with one another. No, the best you can do, Wannabe Bride, is simply continue to want — or, of course, end the relationship, which is the universe’s only other alternative to desiring to grow old and die with the dude.