Let's get oriented for time: it is now some time between one (1) and two (2) am Sunday July 18th. That bizarre creature Psaki has waxed expansively both Thursday and Friday just past as to the probity if not actual sanctity of the Big Tech Censors accepting exact references to what the White House criminal regime deems "misinformation,' for disposition as those censors (Facebook and Twitter) see fit.
Dan Bongino covered her Thursday performance in his Friday podcast ep. 1564), including speculation by him as to the impact on current and future Supreme Court cases her comments may spawn. Then the NYPost ran a column that to my mind simply nailed it. Quoth their contributor Rachel Bovard: "In other words, the platforms have banned debate and inquiry itself." (Ms. Bovard is not indulging in hyperbole; read her piece.)
Five months ago I set about obtaining permission to republish on this blog a longish snippet from a little known piece by George Orwell:
--snip--
From: Bob Bernstein <bob@fanatick.org>
To: info@orwellsociety.com
Subject: Permission to place text on a webpage.
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2021 23:06:54
I have a roughly one thousand word snip from Orwell's piece "Looking Back On The Spanish War," found here:
...that I wish to place on a webpage I own. It is a non-commercial, practically zero-traffic site that I maintain strictly as a hobby. The site is 'Bob2084.branchable.com'.
I will attach the snip I have chosen in a file named: Orwell_Fading_From_The_World.txt
Pls. advise. Is there another "department" at The Orwell Society to which this mail should be addressed?
Thank you.
-- Bob Bernstein
--snip--
Since I had made application to the wrong organization (the Orwell Society very courteously and promptly remedied that), it took some time, but the extract is now on this site here: Orwell On Fact and Reality. Now you understand, from the just-cited title I gave the extract, the sense of pathos -- if that's not too strong a term -- with which I view the constant, escalating flagellation by the current regime of the notion of "fact." My purpose in posting that Orwell extract was to provide a text for thoughts on the fact-checking mania that had already, as of last Februray, attained what I felt was crisis proportions. "Someone," I thought, "has to say something reasonable and proper as to what facts are, and are not, and it might as well be me."
As it turns out I was not equal to the task. I dawdled, going down other rabbit-holes, putting up an mp3 snip from an audio version of an Orwell biography, looking into how academic philosophers now treat of facts, and so on. Fortunately Orwell did not prevaricate in his essay, but, in his hallmark plain-spoken-but-surgically-accurate style, set out some markers that any discussion of facts as they can now appear in the Public Square could benefit from as launching points.
It's now gone past three (3) in the morning. so at this juncture I could not do better than to give that link to Orwell himself again: Orwell On Fact and Reality.