Here is the insidiousness of what is being proposed here.
You don't have to be actively political at all.
In fact you could cease all political affiliation today. You're done.
Retired.
But someone finds your name or photo associated with Trump from when you were?...
That's where we are now.
Its not that you said something so offensive that your employer must have a PR nightmare to manage.
An activist hunting for Trump supporters, which they are actively doing and being encouraged to do from Congress members, finds and outs you.
They put pressure on your company to fire you, claiming they have a secret white supremacist terrorist in their office! What else can your company do?
That's not all. Once they name you, suddenly every service you use gets blasted with your info and demands to ban you.
Listen to what they have told us. They want to hunt down every person who supported Trump without mercy.
These people do not just give up.
It becomes a game of opportunity. How well can you hide yourself? Can you erase your history? Should you be forced to do so?
You think they will distinguish you at a Trump rally in 2016 from the riot? Or maybe you just had a selfie with a Trump sign and posted it on facebook two years ago.
Maybe your mother did and they want to punish YOU to get to her.
They have done this already.
This is what I mean when I say that we cannot separate ourselves from our political affiliation. It is like religion in that it encompasses not only our beliefs and practices but who we are in society.
It cannot be separated out. You cannot simply abandon it at will.
The left has repeatedly told us they consider us bad people as a fundamental truth. Its not so much what *you* have said or done or what *you* have supported.
Its the association they care about.
You are one of us and we are all the same.
They want us eradicated from society.
Its more than Twitter.
Its more than Youtube taking down videos.
Its more than losing followers or having photos on instagram taken down.
Its targeted harassment and suppression of *you* based on who you are and how *they* have arbitrarily defined you.
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Here is my argument for why access to digital services should be considered a civil right equal to access to physical services.
As a Jewish person and as a gay person I am protected under anti-discrimination law (varied for being gay).
A store cannot ban me for either.
A store could not, for example, have a policy that bans 'immoral behavior' on their property and then selectively enforce this only on gay couples who happen to either simply walk in or who hold hands or show affection of any kind.
No liberal perspective would agree.
If this happened to me I would be able to argue that my civil rights had been violated.
Even without official legal protections, this would be enough to file a lawsuit, launch legislation and create public outcry until it was officially illegal to do so.
The left believes bad ideas reproduce in the open.
You let someone share a bad idea and it multiplies with the validation of an official platform.
That makes it 'dangerous' as exposure is like a virus.
They think if you suppress the people with the bad idea, it will suffocate.
It seems simple to them.
Trump incited his followers to commit violence through his rhetoric, ban Trump and you remove the rhetoric.
No one else gets infected.
But then you must remove all those already infected...
Then you must stop the rhetoric from repeating.
Its a simple issue of threat reduction, not speech suppression.
But they refuse to recognize that in doing so they validate the rhetoric, turn it into dogma and it becomes mythology with more and more loyal adherents.
It goes underground.
It grows in power and legitimacy.
If you are not a journalist or writer or if you are not trying to build a public profile right now, please:
- Use a generic AVI and take out your name and location from your profile.
- Turn your privacy settings on facebook off for searches and only let your friends see you.
Your facebook doesn't need to have your employer on it or your town or your phone number. Your friends and family already know who you are.
Same for any other social media you use.
If you use LinkedIn set your profile to private so only your connections can see you.
Basically you do not want to be easily found with a google search of your name.
Its easier than you think and its best to lock down. You don't need an open profile.
The only exception is if you are job hunting. Again, disguise your twitter and its less of an issue.
I believe that a business should be able to conduct itself legally as it pleases. This includes deciding how it associates itself.
But the law is clear on discrimination.
The issue I have is two fold:
1) The laws are not being enforced equally or fairly.
2) The issue of discrimination has become too overwhelming to simply rely on market forces to correct it. We are witnessing multiple massive corporations in charge of huge swaths of the market act together to target individuals belonging to one group.
That is a problem.
I passionately defending the Masterpiece Cakeshop case because I passionately believe a person should not be forced to act against their morality.
I objected to Kim Davis because she denied an eligible citizen access to their legal rights.
We are a group based on our shared moral and ethical beliefs.
We are a being targeted and persecuted for our political affiliation.
Be very clear here.
This is about *who* we are, not any specific action or speech.
What do LGBT groups do?
They organize with a unified message.
They lobby their local and state representatives directly.
They continuously file lawsuits to address perceived concerns.
This is what we must do.
The @Heritage must organize this effort in all Republican controlled states Monday.
Begin with a clear problem statement: Political Affiliation is being used to discriminate against American citizens in employment, commerce, communication and online access.