THIS IS TANTAMOUNT, OF COURSE, to RFK, Jr. in charge of health and human services. Or an unelected Musk being in charge of anything governmental.
But there we are.
The Editorial Board of The New York Times, February 28, 2025, amplified on this in “The MAGA War on Speech.” Here are tidbits gleaned from this Opinion piece.
Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times.
The First Amendment. “In 1791,” the Board recounts, “the nation’s founders ratified the First Amendment to the Constitution. It would come to offer protections in the new nation essentially never seen before: the right to ask things of and to criticize the government; to express opinions, popular or not; to assemble peacefully; to practice diverse religious beliefs; and to have a free press that publishes information without fear of censorship or retribution.”
Reading this today, especially the last six words, suggests the word “hypocritical” as an identifier of the Republican Party. Other adjectives come to mind as well.
Free-Speech Crusaders. The Board continues, “President Trump and many of his supporters—from tech leaders like Elon Musk to populist politicians like Vice President JD Vance—have spent the past several years portraying themselves as free-speech crusaders. Capitalizing on the censorial strains of the left, they regularly lecture about the necessity of letting people say whatever they want, even if it’s hateful, asinine or corrosive.”
But the Board recognizes their true sentiments: “The problem is that for all their bluster, these supposed free-speech crusaders have proved themselves consistently intolerant when it comes to words, ideas and perspectives they disagree with. Over the past month Mr. Trump and his allies have embarked on an expansive crackdown on free expression and disfavored speakers that should be decried not just as hypocritical but also as un-American and unconstitutional.”
Orwell Warned of This. The Board writes, “The Orwellian nature of this approach is deliberate and dangerous. This posture is not about protecting free speech. It is about prioritizing far-right ideology — and at times celebrating lies and hate speech under the guise of preventing the criminalization of language — while trying to silence independent thought, inconvenient truths and voices of dissent.”
The Gulf of Mexico. The Board recalls, “When Mr. Trump announced that he was changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, for example, it seemed to be an essentially harmless bit of nationalistic chest-puffery, paling in comparison with the real damage he intended to do to national security, public health, the Civil Service and the rule of law. But then he made it clear that compliance was mandatory.”
To wit, the Board notes, “This month, a reporter for The Associated Press showed up at an Oval Office event and was barred from entering because the news organization continued referring to the gulf by the internationally recognized name it has had since at least the 16th century. That was an editorial decision that The A.P., just like The Times and many other outlets, has every right to make on its own without government interference.”
Have we come to Nineteen Eighty-Four‘s Doublespeak made obligatory in only a few weeks??
Consequences, Many Major. “The National Park Service,” the Board observed, “erased the letters T and Q: from L.G.B.T.Q. references on its website describing the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. More than 8,000 federal websites, in fact, have been taken down or altered to remove concepts derided by the MAGA movement. These include thousands of pages about vaccine research and S.T.D. prevention guidelines, efforts to prevent hate crimes, prevention of racial discrimination in drug trials and disbursement of federal grants and details of environmental policies to slow climate change.”
“Diverse,” a Foul, Dirty Word. The Board notes, “The government won’t even describe its own museum collections as diverse. The word was eliminated from an Interior Department website describing federally owned works of art and natural history, though it has one of the broadest and most significant collections in the world.”
What kind of brainless chicken-shit acquiescence is this???
Free-Speech Absolutism. And what of “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk? The Board observes of his X website, “But nearly immediately he began to demonstrate that the only free speech he championed was his own.”
Other Examples. The Board writes, “The Pentagon began pulling books off the shelves of school libraries used by the children of military families if they violated Mr. Trump’s new rules on not speaking about gender or racial equity issues. Among the titles subject to military review are a picture book about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a book by the actress Julianne Moore about a young girl coping with her freckles.”
The Board concludes with, “Mr. Trump wants to redefine free speech with bans, bullying and fear. It’s never been more necessary to speak up.”
There’s but a single person on “the staff of” SimanaitisSays, and he/I/they concur completely. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025