Yes, conservatives can beat the prejudice and blacklists and build our own Facebook and Twitter and Apple and PayPal; of course, we can. The first step, though, is to stop playing the victim and admit that we can.
You want to know what the country of Israel is? The greatest workaround in the history of mankind.
After World War II, and for reasons no one need explain, the Jewish people believed they had no place in a world that rejected and discriminated against them. So what did they do? They created a workaround — the great State of Israel. Their own country.
You want to know what Utah is? Mankind’s second greatest workaround.
Facing discrimination all around the United States, about 175 years ago, the Mormons moved their covered wagons all the way across a mostly unsettled America to create their own workaround, a place where they could live and worship without prejudice. Today, Salt Lake City is still one of the most beautiful cities in the country.
The definition of a workaround is “a method for overcoming a problem or limitation in a program or system,” and since the beginning of time, in ways big and small; in basements, garages, places called NASA, and on the geopolitical front, mankind has been inventing workarounds, has been using ingenuity and sweat to succeed despite obstacles and prejudices that seemed insurmountable — at least, until someone pointed out they are not, until someone refused to quit, until someone stopped whining and said, “We’re gunna do this.”
A workaround in the form of a whole country, y’all.
A workaround in the form of a whole state, y’all.
But you’re still going to sit there and crybaby and tell me we cannot come up with our own Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Instagram, Twitter, Paypal, or whatever-the-hell other platforms these Silicon Valley fascists are using to silence us, persecute us, and discriminate against us.
That’s it? We’re just going to sit here and play the victim because it’s too hard?
Yes, I’ve heard all the excuses coming from the professional quitters and crybabies… Facebook is too powerful, too big, too dug in; we’ll never draw enough people away from it. Same with Twitter, YouTube, Instagram… If we build our own Twitter, they’ll blacklist us on PayPal; if we build our own PayPal, they’ll blacklist our credit cards; if we build our own credit cards, they’ll blacklist our bank… They’ll blacklist our URLs, they’ll remove us from their servers. It can’t be done!!! Now watch me run around in a helpless puppy dog circle to prove it!!!
You’re telling me that the same species that built its own freakin’ country cannot come up with a workaround around Mark Zuckerberg?
Please.
You’re not an American, you’re an American’t — and I’ll trade ten of you for one illegal alien with a dream and work ethic.
Okay, if Israel and Utah are a little too lofty, a little too far away, permit me to use an example everyone can relate to, an example so close you are literally looking at it right now….
I’m talking about alternative media.
In 15 short years, conservatives went from complaining about the establishment media’s open discrimination against us, our ideas, our way of life, and who we are to creating our own media.
We went from playing defense 24/7 to going on the offense, to putting the corrupt media on its corrupt ass.
And we weren’t even the first. The rise of talk radio 20 years ago, of Rush Limbaugh, is a perfect example of a workaround around the corrupt media.
In 1996, Roger Ailes launched a whole cable news network, Fox News, as a workaround around the corrupt media.
And when a group of people was unhappy with Fox News, in 2013, the group launched a workaround called OANN.
Had you told me 20 years ago that right-leaning media would have the capacity and the audience to crush the omni-powerful New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc., I never would have been able to imagine it. But here we are. We’ve done it.
Yes, it took a long time.
Yes, it took a lot of work and risk.
Yes, we had to create an alternative attractive enough to not only compete with the Big Boys, but to literally change the ways in which over 100 million adults consumed their news.
But a bunch of upstarts, a bunch of genius rebels like Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart, beat the bastards.
And we can do it again.
We can do this.
But the first step is to at least admit that to ourselves, to stop the defeatism, to stop the helpless puppy dog circle of our own victimhood.
Hey, I’ll admit I have no idea how to do it, and other than opening people’s eyes to the possibility, I’ll probably have no role in doing it.
But my God, can we please stop mewling about how impossible and difficult it will be?
And no, I am not arguing we stop fighting these un-American Silicon Valley fascists. My proposition is not an either/or. We need to continue to fight for our free speech rights, our fight against their blacklists and discrimination. In fact, that fight must intensify. We cannot allow these con artists, these monstrous swindlers, to capture the public square promising free speech only to pull the rug out from underneath us after that capture is complete.
But at the same time, let’s build our own workarounds, our own Facebook, our own YouTube, our own Apple, and if we must, our own banks, credit cards, and domain registrars.
Fifty years ago, America launched three men into outer space where they traveled almost a quarter-of-a-million miles to an alien moon. Two of those men exited their primary space capsule and entered a smaller one that they then piloted to the surface of the moon so they could walk on it. After walking on the moon, they launched that smaller capsule back into space where they reconnected with the larger capsule for the quarter-of-a million-mile trip back home, and…
This was done with less computer power than most of us carry in our pocket today.
If you want to whine about how hard it will be to create our own social media outlets, how far behind we are — fine. It’s a free country; be as unproductive as you like.
But please don’t tell me we can’t do this — because that’s a lie.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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