Censorship is the weapon of the stupid

I just heard that Switzerland is thinking of banning RT.

Europe has done it. Great Britain has done it. The U.S. has de-facto done it (it’s not by government decree, but by the corporations that de-facto run that country’s media).

Viola Amherd of Switzerland said something about following their lead.

So, let me get this straight: Viola’s principles allow her to buy JSF35 jet fighters from the U.S. and have no problems running U.S. state propaganda (CNN everybody; pay attention), but she has no problem with banning RT.

Once the precedent is set, you can ban whatever else you want. Just anything you disagree with, you just ban it. Just ask the Russians and the Chinese. Oh, you can’t—because you banned them! What a world.

And, hey, now that Switzerland has shitcanned its neutrality, and pledged to follow Europe in all of its sanctions, what else do you have left to lose? Why not go whole-hog and just join the EU, drop the CHF for the Euro and join NATO? YOLO.

Those are some principles you’ve got there, Switzerland.

Principles are rules that apply equally. This is bullshit.

No, if you agree with this, you have no principles.

You seek simple answers to complex problems because you’re simple or lazy or both. You don’t have to have an opinion if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Most of you have the luxury of waiting and seeing.

If you express yourself before you know anything, then you are a fan. You root for a team. You don’t care who plays on your team as long as they win. You don’t care how they play as long as they win. Your team can do whatever it wants and it’s wonderful whereas literally everything the evil other teams do is wrong.

If you’ve ever thought that anyone who disagrees with you is evil, loves Putin, or Saddam, or Qaddafi, or Assad…then you’re part of the problem.

There is no moral high ground there.

So, sure, why not? Humanity honestly kind of sucks anyway.

Lean back and soak in some CNN and feel smugly good about what an awesome person you are, while the effects of the actions you support slosh over the rest of the unwashed masses on this planet, none of whose actual welfares are as important to you as your feeling that you’re improving their welfare.

Paint your face yellow and blue and bellow for the death of Putin while Ukraine is destroyed, Afghanistan starves, Africa starves, and, hopefully, your call for a no-fly zone gives us some atomic fireworks to boost the broadcast numbers and get some real ad revenue going.

Why not just drop down to the same level as the thing that we deem so evil that we’ve decided that we can’t listen to a word that they say about themselves?

This is what we are teaching our children: hate and stupidity. Wish for the deaths of people you don’t know.

Isn’t that what the other team does?

Is no-one interested in holding themselves to a higher moral standard?

Is no-one interested in hearing different opinions? In getting information from different sources?

Are people not concerned that they might be wrong about something? That they might have believed something convenient without proof?

How will they ever know if they only ever hear that thing, over and over again? How does any of this make us better than anyone else?

There is no us and them. There aren’t only two sides. There is only impossibly stupid, childish humanity and the sad few who watch and despair and, occasionally, cry out into a deaf, unfeeling emptiness.