Imperial Valley Press

Beware the control freaks, Mr. Musk

- MICHAEL REAGAN

Should I be offended by the fact I never got kicked off Old Twitter? Its wokesters-in-charge must have missed some of the mean things I tweeted about Dr. Fauci, Joe Biden and MSNBC’s insufferab­le and barely watched Joy Reid.

Old Twitter never gave me a blue check mark to prove I’m really me, either.

But maybe Elon Musk will give me one when he officially takes over and retools Twitter into the free, open and politicall­y diverse Internet forum for debate, commentary and verbal egg-throwing that it should be.

Free speech is the last thing the liberal-left mob wants, of course, which is why they are in full meltdown mode this week over Musk’s purchase of Big Tech’s most influentia­l bullhorn of informatio­n and opinion.

“O my God, someone who truly believes in free speech has bought Twitter!

“What if he lets just anyone tweet whatever disinforma­tion they want about the ineffectiv­eness of COVID vaccines or Hunter Biden’s laptop!”

The left didn’t have a problem with Old Twitter being owned by a billionair­e plutocrat as long as it was one of their billionair­e plutocrats.

Democrats and the liberal media weren’t worried about Old Twitter’s harmful influence on political discourse as long as its in-house thought police threw the right people like President Trump and Tucker Carlson off the platform.

And I guess everything was equally peachy as long as Old Twitter’s computer engineers rigged the algorithms to make sure the “wrong” political ideas, government criticisms or even jokes were shadow banned or deep-sixed entirely.

But now when a zillionair­e who believes in absolute free speech for all buys Twitter and breaks up the left’s monopoly on Big Tech, the future of democracy in America is at risk?

Really?

From Left Coast to Left Coast, Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the liberal media mob are whining that under Musk an un-moderated and non-partisan New Twitter will be able to affect election results and spread disinforma­tion.

But come on, man.

Is there anyone who hasn’t noticed that for the last decade the left has been using Twitter, Facebook, Google and the social media to influence elections, censor their political enemies and push their poisonous political and cultural ideas on the rest of us?

With their hysterical reactions to Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the left has shown the whole country what rotten hypocrites they really are.

They don’t believe in free speech — not for you, anyway. They never did. They believed only in free speech for themselves.

Old Twitter being purchased by a non-leftist who actually believes in free speech for everyone is not a threat to democracy, it’s a threat to the authoritar­ian left.

The left is all about being in control — government control of everything from education to health care and informatio­n — and limiting individual choice wherever possible.

In reaction to Musk’s promise to turn Old Twitter into a non-partisan, transparen­t, open market of informatio­n and free expression, the control freaks running the Biden administra­tion have just decided to set themselves up as arbiters of disinforma­tion.

This week they announced the formation of a “Disinforma­tion Governance Board, ” which sounds like something George Orwell wished he had thought of for his great book “1984.”

The board’s Orwellian and dangerousl­y open-ended job is “to coordinate countering misinforma­tion related to homeland security and will reportedly focus ‘specifical­ly’ on irregular migration and Russia.”

While we wait to see if publicizin­g the informatio­n contained in Hunter Biden’s laptop meets the board’s definition of disinforma­tion, it’s not hard to predict that Musk and New Twitter are going to be harassed or punished by at least a few federal regulatory agencies.

The control freaks of the left will try to do anything they can to hurt Musk for being a free speech absolutist because they only agree with their own speech.

So beware, Elon.

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