Hart: Free speech dies in the first week of the year, and we thought 2021 would be better?

Photo by Tali Arbel of The Associated Press / This Jan. 8, 2021 image shows the suspended Twitter account of President Donald Trump. The social media company permanently suspended Trump from its platform, citing "risk of further incitement of violence."
Photo by Tali Arbel of The Associated Press / This Jan. 8, 2021 image shows the suspended Twitter account of President Donald Trump. The social media company permanently suspended Trump from its platform, citing "risk of further incitement of violence."

Just days after liberal donors from California and New York bought themselves two more senators from Georgia, anger boiled over in Washington D.C. After Trump addressed a "Stop the Steal" rally questioning the integrity of the last election, a small fraction of knucklehead marauders out of the tens of thousands who were there stormed the Capitol building.

When people were shot by "mostly peaceful protesters" in 28 riots over the summer (in which U.S. federal buildings, police precincts and many businesses were set on fire), the riots were "heroic public demonstrations." If the media didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.

Both sides need to be more civil. You do not always get what you want. You can't protest in the streets or on government property whenever you don't get what you want. If that were the case, I'd have spent my entire four years in college protesting outside the Tri-Delt sorority house.

Most at the U.S. Capitol were freedom-loving, fed-up Americans. There was a man with horns in "Braveheart" makeup, a shirtless bearded man with a nose ring and vendors hawking crazy goods. Dems, that is what happens when you call off Burning Man and Bonnaroo in the same year.

Poor Canadians must feel like they are living above a meth lab with a grunge garage band that practices below.

It is clear from the D.C. "protests" that Republicans are not good looters. Not a single one of them got a pair of Air Jordans or a flat screen TV. Right wingers, you must step up your looting game. If I want to see a bunch of self-absorbed thieves running aimlessly around in our Capitol, I will just watch C-SPAN, thank you.

Many in the mainstream media no longer report the news; they narrate with their leftist view of world events. It does not matter what Trump actually says and does; it only matters what Rachel Maddow and the left tell you he meant by what he said.

Surprising the left, Donald Trump won "Most Admired Man in America" in a Gallup telephone poll. But this was weeks ago. When the mail-in ballots are tabulated, Stacey Abrams is expected to win.

Sensing that their bets on Democrats will pay off, tech giants in unison banned Trump from social media. So let me get this straight. We live in a country where Trump can no longer tweet, but he has our nuclear codes?

The Orwellian leftists here quash free speech and any dissenting opinions or humor. It is scary. If you see or read Trump's speech that got him banned, you will see he told the protesters to march "peacefully." Some, who looked like they were auditioning for "Duck Dynasty," did not. It would have been more symbolic if those trespassers had run through the Capitol rotunda and pointed out statues of Democrats who belonged to the Klan.

Democrats need to stop being the party of retribution and hate. They need to come up with some workable ideas to govern. It is really embarrassing that, in the marketplace of ideas, their only move is to damage Trump and anyone who supported his policies. Trump won the country over with his ideas (and by going around the media via Twitter), not his personality.

Google and Apple have banned Parler, an alternative social media site, from their app stores. And oddly at the same time, Twitter permanently banned Trump from its platform. Facebook and Instagram locked the president out of his accounts "permanently." Monkey see, monkey do? Collusion? Perhaps the definition of monopolistic powers executed over our internet?

I am a student of public school history, and I have studied it. In another historic first, Trump is the first president banned by Twitter since our country was founded in 1811.

When the right protests, the left whines and calls it an "affront to democracy." Some even called Trump's no-holds-barred speeches "acts of sedition." I have heard Biden's boring and formulaic speeches, and I have deemed them to be acts of sedation.

Contact Ron Hart, a syndicated op-ed satirist, author and TV commentator, at Ron@RonaldHart.com or on Twitter @RonaldHart.

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