Pianissimo
If the Information Age was a cross-country road trip, we’ve only been in the car for about an hour. It’s not even a hundred years old yet. We celebrated the quincentenary of the Reformation a few years ago. The invention of the printing press is just a bit older. Roughly speaking, the celebration of the printing press’ quincentenary was the inauguration of the Digital Age. This matters because we are considering the role of the press and how long it has taken in order to establish legally binding codes of ethics and a proper defining of its role as an agent of accountability for the presiding magistrates and institutions. What is unique about the newness of the Computer Age is that we are still figuring out in which drawer we should keep Facebook, Twitter, et al. The present lawsuits, mass exoduses, and censorship debacles draw attention to the reality that we still don’t know what we’re doing.
When information platforms silence opposing viewpoints, rather than logically disarming them, which would require rationale, informed opinions, and being subject to critical scrutiny, the overall message is one of Trinitarian deficiency. The many is sacrificed on the altar of the one. Which is the truth . . . the many or the one? Minimalism and Apple products have taught us to equate aesthetic simplicity with spiritual progress and so most are prepared to go with uniformity. One it is. This is because only Trinitarian thinking teaches us how to successfully hold these competitors in tension.
The potential for the press to do good by functioning as a political watchdog implodes under this tinkering and attempting to produce uniformity of thought. What we are witnessing with big tech censorship is a kind of soft opening for an equality of outcome application to communication rather than the traditional role which leaned more in the direction of equality of opportunity.
This is not to say that censorship hasn’t existed prior to the 2020 election. Of course it has. Anyone who’s read Bernays knows:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
While the Constitution provides freedom from restraint for the press, free countries have recognized the ever-increasing necessity of holding that same press accountable. What a defining mark of the age . . . the procurement of checks and balance for the press. How does this happen? Under the first amendment, the press is granted the same level of protection regarding free speech as that of individuals. Individuals have the potential of “holding the press accountable” but only in issues of defamation via libel or slander. This will most likely evolve over time, but how?
Edmund Burke is attributed with first using the concept of the fourth estate as a means of pointing out the power of the press to function alongside the three shared branches of power as a kind of checks and balance to them. In Europe, the three other houses were the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. In the US, we have the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. As for it being a fourth estate, its number is misleading if, in reality, it has devoured the first three . . . then all is one.
A number of Christians are inclined to not think of big tech censorship as being an inherently moral issue. Noam Chomsky and others have warned that if there are clearly established lines that the public assume to be boundaries for “left” and “right”, then anything outside of those lines will be considered conspiracy. The etymology of the word explains the dilemma. It comes from two words that mean “with whispering”. Why with whispering? Because their stories are not heard. If we could agree that either side of being inbounds regarding information would be something like Pacifica Radio on the left and Fox News on the right, what happens if it was unilaterally agreed upon by people who have it in their power to do so, that one marker should be moved a little further in . . . or a lot further in? What if the goal posts for left and right became Amy Goodman and AOC, respectively? Suspend the disbelief for a moment longer. Doesn’t it follow that true content (truth) could potentially be so far from being within bounds that their voices could only be heard as a whisper, at best? They would be labeled by those inbounds as conspirators. Wasn’t this Goodman’s and Chomsky’s point about East Timor? Regardless of where Christians and conservatives would clearly part ways with both of these stated individuals, the concept of the manufacturing of consent becomes more and more prophetic.
What we see with the 2020 election and the silencing of the President of the United States by mainstream communication and information platforms should be a harbinger of doom for all those who believe in the value of learning from history. Solzhenitsyn warned that if the tyrants can figure out how to keep you from screaming, at least within earshot of the crowd, then they’ve only emboldened their cause. There are a number of ways to keep people from being heard; one of them is to cultivate consent that only inside voices will be listened to.
