I’ve largely avoided writing about Donald Trump for the past few months. I see enough Trump pieces on my timeline, so instead, I write about other things, not necessarily happier things, but definitely other things. But now Trump is the president, I need to vent.
The best thing about America is, without a doubt, the First Amendment. I can't tell you how much I love it. There are few countries on Earth with the same level of freedom we enjoy and often take for granted. Save for shouting "FIRE" in a theater and fighting words, you can say literally anything in this country and no one can do a thing about it. Isn't that amazing? It's the greatest thing this country has to offer its citizens, bar none.
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It's funny that those true 'Muricans who so deeply value freedom tend to be Trump supporters, who campaigned on limiting the First Amendment. That was a rallying cry. Remember this tweet?
By the way, hell yeah I follow him. His tweets are invariably juicy. Anyway, let that tweet sink in for awhile if you haven't seen it before. It's crazy, right? Yeah, it's crazy. Donald Trump wants to strip your "inalienable" rights granted to you upon birth as an American for... burning the American flag. Man, that is ironic. It's so ironic that it hurts. It's so ironic that it terrifies me unlike nothing else, to the point that it keeps me up at night.
But that will come in a few years after Trump has taken a stranglehold on the media. He wants to limit the press' freedom—this should be no surprise to you, as he was literally saying he was going to do that throughout the entire campaign. Now we're seeing it put into action, with press secretary Spicer unloading on the media and telling them what to report on while driving total falsifications down America's throat. Meanwhile, Counselor to the President openly threatened to 'rethink their (the Trump Administration) relationship to the media', as if they are dating. Trump has, in fact, been dropping these threats all campaign because he believes he, as president, has the right to pick and choose who gets to access his administration. Now he has the means to actually do that; his aim is for the truth to be beneficial for him. This concept has killed millions, in the Soviet Union, in Nazi Germany, in North Korea.
Case in point: alternative facts. My jaw dropped when I heard that. It's Orwellian, down to the last letter. It might be the scariest thing I've ever heard any American politician say. The term 'alternative facts' implies that there is no actual truth, but rather the truth you like best. This turns everything murky, from social media to our perception of not only our world but our real selves. At some point, you can't see the truth anymore, and the lies are truth, war is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength.
Use your First Amendment rights. Cherish them. Not everyone else has them.
