Wednesday's Final Word

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a statement Monday acknowledging that Facebook actively censored information on COVID-19 and the Hunter Buden corruption scandal due to direct pressure from the federal government. Facts revealed by Elon Musk through the Twitter Files had already made it clear that government agencies like the FBI, CIA, and NSA were regularly demanding the censorship of American citizens by social media companies, but the letter that Zuckerberg sent to the House Judiciary Committee serves as the smoking gun. The official Republican House Judiciary account on Twitter celebrated this admission as a victory for free speech, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Despite the admission that government actors used censorship to interfere in the 2020 election and silence dissent during the pandemic, no one faces criminal prosecution, and no one is getting fired. The only lesson the Democratic Party and deep state have learned is that censorship works. The GOP is a fake opposition, powerless to prevent abusive manipulation by a modern Praetorian Guard. Once the secret police start rigging elections, you must take swift action or things get bad fast. That is exactly what has happened in the United States, and no one in the GOP seems very interested in holding the FBI accountable. Zuckerberg’s letter revealed that, leading up to the 2020 election, the FBI lied to Facebook executives by claiming that any story about the Biden family’s connection to the Ukrainian energy conglomerate Burisma was Russian disinformation. Facebook took the warning seriously and suppressed the story on its platform, denying millions of voters the information they needed to make an informed choice during the election. Other social media companies took similar actions. Twitter went so far as locking the account of the New York Post for its story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. We now know the story was true, and the FBI knew it was true as well. However, the FBI wanted to rig the election in favor of Joe Biden, so agency officials used their position of power to lie to corporations that control the flow of information in the United States to influence the presidential contest. Zuckerberg's apparent change of heart is, at least theoretically, great news. The billionaire wields enormous influence over how Americans interact with information. He also spent hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020 to reshape local election structures to favor the Democratic Party's machine politics, as Mollie Hemingway outlined in her book “Rigged.” If Zuckerberg now feels compelled to admit his previous bias and commit to neutrality in the upcoming election, it could shift the results of a close contest by itself. Of course, it is entirely possible that Zuckerberg is lying and still sympathizes with the Democrats. However, if he feels pressured to play things closer to the middle, that is significant. None of this should be seen as a win for the GOP and its representatives in Congress. Both FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Director Paul Abbate appeared to perjure themselves on live television during their testimony about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. We now know the FBI acted to influence the election by spreading lies to social media companies, which then censored critical information leading up to the 2020 election. Democrats do not hesitate to bring charges against their political enemies, as shown by their efforts to imprison Donald Trump for the rest of his life on absurdly manufactured charges. Yet even when Republicans have direct evidence of wrongdoing by the FBI, the most their supporters can hope for is a social media post declaring a false victory. This feels like an embarrassing echo of George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech during the War on Terror — though at least in that case, some jihadis were actually killed. Some conservatives may not even know what constitutes a victory at this point, so let's make it clear: A victory occurs when those who violated the law and corrupted institutions critical to the rule of law are fired, impeached, or jailed. Simply revealing that the FBI lied to social media companies to manipulate the election and successfully install the preferred candidate, without any repercussions, is not a victory. This admission shows that the GOP is a fake opposition, powerless to prevent abusive manipulation by a modern Praetorian Guard. Only life-altering consequences will stop the abusive actions of an elite class that feels entitled to shape the nation as its members see fit. To call the FBI a rogue organization would be a misnomer. A rogue actor is one that is no longer operating in accordance with the will of the government. The FBI is not working against the wishes of the American government; it is instead shaping that very government from the top down. The FBI can lie about the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, lie to media organizations and censor critical information to alter the outcomes of elections, and intimidate and incarcerate the political opposition. This is rule by a police force, a reign defined by the ability to lie to and terrorize the American public. By every available definition, this is tyranny. Republicans are clearly afraid to challenge the FBI in any meaningful way. Donald Trump has not helped much either, as he seems more interested in building a shiny new headquarters for the federal police agency than in holding it accountable. Someone in the GOP needs to take this issue seriously, right now. The FBI must be dismantled from top to bottom, and those responsible must go to jail. Without serious action, law and order in the United States will continue to degrade, and civil strife will increase. The right needs real political opposition, not the complicit clown show the Republicans have been running.

To most people following the story, UBI means universal basic income. The proposal, which has floated around under different names since antiquity, took shape in its modern incarnation as a project mainly pushed by British intellectuals favoring (at a minimum) some kind of collectivist floor to capitalist society. Today, this sort of welfare arrangement is more closely associated with tech and tech-adjacent people who see progress in automation as inevitable and/or highly desirable. However, it is also costly because it adversely impacts the relevance or use of most human beings. A lot of people laugh at satanism and even the idea of Satan, but there’s a reason the devil has stuck around in our consciousness to this very day. It is no surprise that the arc of utopian Anglo thinking would end up here. Communism, as formulated by the functionally Anglo Marx and Engels, looked forward to a time when all people became industrially free to toggle among whatever pursuits they preferred whenever they cared to do so. It is but a small leap to posit that the only real path to realizing this utopian collective is for a special class of super-capitalists to build the only kind of industry that could theoretically liberate everyone from the need for work or, indeed, any economic valuation. That agenda (and the worldview behind it) seems very difficult to reconcile or harmonize with Christianity — for many reasons, but perhaps above all because it dramatically encourages looking to the machinery of utopian collectivism (and the people behind it) as the source of all goodness, salvation, and creative power rather than to the Lord of all creation, the triune God. All too predictably, it’s now increasingly fashionable and high-status for AI researchers and technicians to baldly proclaim that they’re building a god to be worshiped as the one true transformer of all people out of their given human form. This is a god that destroys the Christian God by destroying the crown jewel of His creation, the human being. Of course, we’re told, this is a good thing, actually, because what comes next for us is beyond our wildest dreams — in other words, we’re about to become gods, too, and it will be like nothing anyone has imagined. This promise will carry the sting of especially diabolical heresy to those familiar with the millennia-old sacred Christian tradition of theosis, the concept and (highly laborious) practice of working to achieve union with God eventually. That tradition, taught carefully by the Church, has emphasized that the greatest of spiritual risks and harms come from trying to shortcut or speed-run theosis, properly understood as the reunion desired for us all by the immeasurably loving God who created us. The path toward theosis is marked and defined by the utmost patience, humility, discipline, and self-denial — not by (for example) maximizing “mind-blowing” inventions that make it ever easier for people to experience ecstasies and produce fantasies. In sum, the best and oldest Christian teachings have warned the most against what is being pitched to us most aggressively as humanity's ultimate universal achievement. Notably, this warning has great power because it doesn’t order us to stop making advanced tools or using them simply. Its counsel is more difficult and more spiritually purifying. It’s to recognize that the temptation to usurp and replace God is so difficult to resist that our best efforts are doomed to failure without an utterly humble and absolute reliance on God and trust in Him — a round-the-clock watchfulness wherein we focus on stopping temptations at the spiritual door to our hearts before they can get in, take hold, and grow. All this deep and needful wisdom seems to be entirely lost on the loudest and most prominent advocates of universal basic income today, who are really advocating it because it helps accelerate us toward universal bot idolatry.Beneath the hype, advocates struggle to ignore the fact that even the most extraordinary machines are only means to ends outside and beyond them. All machines, all tools, are for something, and the existence and development of these useful devices always ultimately depend on a creator exercising some kind of discernment, judgment, and, it must be concluded, worship. As bleeding-edge technologists increasingly recognize that theology and worship are inescapable no matter how radically machine-making evolves, they must inevitably come to realize that one’s own tool — one’s own creation — can never be one’s god. If you think you’re worshiping tech for tech’s sake, you are deluded; you’re actually serving some other idol, some other facet of God broken off and falsely elevated to spiritually sovereign status. A lot of people laugh at satanism and even the idea of Satan, but there’s a reason the devil has stuck around in our consciousness to this very day. And a lot of people are about to relearn why.

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