Bizarro Trump and his ‘Prevent Online Censorship’ executive order

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executive order

It’s a sad reality that many of our “representatives” in Washington have made “saying one thing while then doing another” a way of life. We see this every election season when they give us their list of promises they have no intention of keeping, but we also see it in the laws they make.

For example, there’s nothing patriotic about the PATRIOT Act nor anything heroic about the HEROES Act. Despite these positive-sounding titles, laws like these usually give us the exact opposite of what was promised.

This reminds me of the publishers of DC Comics who, in the early 1960s, created the Bizarro World comic books.

In popular culture, “Bizarro World” has come to mean a situation or setting which is weirdly inverted or opposite of expectations. Htrae (earth spelled backwards) was the home planet of Bizarro versions of Superman, Lois Lane, and their children. Other Bizarros created included Batzarro and the World’s Worst Detective.

During the Obama presidency, I once wrote about how he had come to represent the new Bizarro President of Acirema (America spelled backwards), and it looks like Bizarro Trump is the clear successor as he abandons liberty while claiming to defend it and embraces tyranny while claiming to fight it.

Trump has always been a threat to the Constitution, beginning with his 2016 campaign to be the GOP nominee. During a rally in February, 2016, he waged open war against the media and the First Amendment with a promise to open up libel laws to make it easier to sue the media for writing “purposely negative and horrible and false articles” in order to “win lots of money” — a threat he has followed through on as president. From then ’til now, he has also gone after private property rights, gun rights, due process rights, and privacy rights.

Bizarro Trump has consistently delivered “weirdly inverted” and “opposite of expectations” policies and executive orders, and has always done so using the “saying one thing while doing another” gambit we’ve come to expect.

Take his recent “Preventing Online Censorship” (POC) executive order . . . please! (apologies to Groucho Marx)

Trump’s executive order calls for an “update” to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and shreds the First Amendment in the process. Using the full weight of the federal government as muscle, the POC declares that government regulation of our speech is “free speech” while calling resistance to government messaging (i.e. propaganda) “censorship” all to feed his egomaniacal dictatorial ambitions.

This call for Section 230 “reform” is nothing new. Trump, with help from Attorney General Bill Barr and a few members of Trump’s bought-and-paid-for Republican Party, have been using the issue as cover as he looks for ways to punish his political enemies while simultaneously creating new ways to give government control of the internet. Bizarro Trump included this goal in Section 5 of the executive order:

In America, the president protects and defends the Constitution. In Bizarro Trump’s Acirema however . . .

 

executive orderDavid Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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