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Most comments against the article and in defense of the comics boil down to the argument, that if you own the channel/media/room you can control what is said in/on it. Fair enough! That's private property, another sacred right in the US constitution. Where does it lead? If one has "dissident" ideas, he can only express it on channels that allow it. In the end, one can always express it in its own home, without public, or in front of a complacent public. That's technically free-speech, but severely constrained. Look at the situation. First there is no dialog. Second, it is no different to a dictatorship - bear with me a minute -. In a dictatorship, you can always express your own ideas in your own home in front of a complacent public. At that micro-level, the situations are stunningly similar. Of course the outcome is different if you try to broadcast dissident or uncommon ideas in a dictatorship, or let's say in the US. In the first case, you risk for your life, in the second, you risk being cancelled. The US government, in most cases, will not limit your speech but powerful groups will do. At the macro level, the situation is different too. In the US, powerful (understand rich) people control the medias and what is broadcast on them: e.g. Facebook (allows violence but no woman breast), the NY Times (can't find the ref: a conservative journalist who joined then left). Ultimately this leads to the formation of blocks. Of course Facebook in itself is made of several blocks of influence, or blocks of common ideas. I believe all major blocks are created around lobbyists with big money, or influence groups already trained to mute dissidents and shout louder than opposing groups. One or the other, any group of importance defends its territory by showing the door to dissidents. This is free-speech according to XKCD. In a dictatorship there is only one group. In the US there are several of them. Still no dialog, no nuance, no complexity. Complexity is the devil for a group of influence, because complexity will dissolve the group. There a physical parallel here with ferromagnetism. That's the reason why complex problems cannot find a solution in the US (and maybe in the world). Complexity will usually not tried being understood, and will soon be interpreted as borderline or altogether dissident, or will be dismissed as pedantry. There is free-speech, but most of it is shouting and territorial behavior. |