“Freedom of speech is an indispensable part of what makes the USA the greatest country on the planet” a local man was heard saying recently. Cradling his collection of firearms, he added: “All of those liberalcrat snowflakes want to take away our freedom to speak freely when we insult the [redacted] blacks and the [also redacted] women folk, and especially those transexual homos with their bathrooms and their marriages and their AIDS, and something like that would ruin our nation”.
When pressed for details on his voting history, this anonymous suburban hero said this: “I voted for Mr. Trump, because he says things like they is and he’s gonna get tough and crack down on the democucks and show the world that when it comes to freedom, America means business”. When asked about net neutrality, he seemed unsure of what that actually was but was extremely confident that it was way less important than his right to openly spew racial slurs and march in favor of genocides at night with torches. He was also quick to point out that a Nazi got punched in the face that one time, so the other side was just as bad anyways.
His wife, from off to the side, made sure to add her two cents in when she reminded us that Hillary Clinton was way worse and basically a demon since she sent some emails using the wrong address. “Sure, she would’ve opposed laws that would allow for the mass suppression of inconvenient viewpoints on the Internet, but she’d try to discourage white supremacy, and we just can’t have that” were her exact words, practically dripping with venom.
Spoilers:I’m being facetious. Shocking, right?
But if you ask me, it’s a little more shocking how much people have prioritized the right to be awful over actual, massive breaches in human freedoms of communication. It’s appalling, actually. On December 14th, net neutrality laws are expected to be repealed by Trump’s FCC. If this happens, it will allow for discrimination of how Internet services are used, which would allow for, among other things, charging extra for certain kinds of Internet content, attempting to block certain kinds of content entirely with “slow lanes", and generally limiting freedoms of access and speech online.
Hopefully, if this happens, there will be a massive backlash. Based on current apathy though, it wouldn’t be entirely surprising to see that a sports player taking a knee during the national anthem made a bigger wave than destroying the integrity of the Internet.
Go figure.