I almost gagged when I went to my neighborhood newsstand and saw this front page cover on the New York Post.
I thought I was inured to outrageous New York Post front-page headlines, but here the tabloid barely suitable for wrapping fish was promoting an op-ed piece by Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who is facing calls for his expulsion from the Senate for inspiring the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot and supporting overturning the presidential election .
And since the odious Rupert Murdoch owns the New York Post, you can expect Faux Noise to jump all over this.
The entire op-ed amounts to a big whine by the snowflake senator from Missouri. He complains about being muzzled while having is op-ed published on the front-page of the New York Post and sending out a link on Twitter to thousands of his followers.
First he claims that U.S. companies are adopting social credit scores — “the latest corporate import from Communist China, where government and big business monitor every citizen’s social views and statements.”
He notes that his “social credit score” took a big nosedive this month. I wonder why.
So Hawley calls goes on to call this “the latest form of cancel culture” in the U.S. as “corporate monopolies and the left team up to shut down speech they don’t like and force their political agenda on America.”
Of course, it’s a dubious claim that any social media company or corporation has adopted China’s “social credit system.” Twitter, Facebook and other companies have their Terms of Service — which for too long IMPOTUS and his supporters violated with impunity until the companies cracked down after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.
Social media companies have policies barring spreading hate speech, advocating violence and deliberately spreading disinformation which they turned a blind eye to because of the revenue stream.
I never imagined that corporate monopolies and the left would be teaming up to force their political agenda on America. Isn’t that the job of the Republican Party to team up with corporate America to force deregulation and tax cuts on the public.
So then Hawley, a champion of the Second Amendment, goes on to cast himself as a champion of the First Amendment: “For those who still believe in free speech and the First Amendment, this is the time to take a stand.”
Of course, Hawley defended his actions to challenge the presidential electors from Pennsylvania, saying he did it “on behalf of the voters of my state.” He went ahead with his challenge even after the Capitol riot.
Hawley was the first senator to announce his support for a challenge to electors from several swing states, a cynical political ploy to boost his standing among Trump supporters for his own anticipated 2024 presidential bid. And on Jan. 6, Hawley was photographed holding his fist up in support of the pro-Trump mob before they stormed the Capitol.
His mentor former Missouri Sen. John Danforth declared his support for Hawley’s 2018 Senate campaign “the worst mistake of my life.”
“Lending credence to Trump's false claim that the election was stolen is a highly destructive attack on our constitutional government," Danforth said in a statement. "It is the opposite of conservative; it is radical.”
But In Hawley’s eyes he did no wrong: “In my case, it started with leftist politicians demanding I resign from office for representing the views of my constituents and leading a democratic debate on the floor of the Senate.”
In the op-ed, Hawley does not condemn in any way the storming of the Capitol, the deaths and injuries that resulted from the attempted coup, and the threats to the lives of Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers. In fact, he doesn’t mention the Capitol attack at all.
He then whines that a ”corporate publishing house” canceled a book he wrote about political censorhip by powerful corporations. The conservative Regnery Publishing, which has put out books by Ted Cruz, Diamond and Silk, Sebastian Gorka, and Michelle Malkin, among others, quickly picked up the Hawley book.
He also whined that corporate America is canceling his political events. The hotel chain Loews Hotels decided to pull out of a February fundraiser for Hawley’s PAC in Orlando, Florida, after receiving numerous complaints.
So in Hawley’s twisted mind corporate tech titans are conspiring with Democrats to boot dozens of conservatives off social media, expel half the Republican conference from Congress, and create “a democracy to their liking” by eliminating “all threats to the Democratic Party’s unified control of government.”
And it gets worse as Hawley rants about a supposed “alliance of leftists and woke capitalists” who hope “to regulate the innermost thoughts of every American , from school age to retirement.”
So in Hawley’s mind, it’s conservatives who are the victims and now represent the counterculture. I kid you not. And here’s a real howler from his op-ed:
“We need to stand up for the basic principles that join all Americans together — the right to speak freely, to debate openly, and to address our differences graciously without fear of being silenced or punished for dissenting views.”
I wrote this diary because Josh Hawley is a truly dangerous political figure whose views need to be exposed. His every move is calculated, He is a graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School, not some Qanon believer like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene or an ignoramus like Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who probably couldn’t pass the civics test required for immigrants to receive U.S. citizenship.
So here we have it. Josh Hawley now claims he is taking a stand “for those who believe in the First Amendment and the fundamental principles of American liberty.”
This is what conservative media like Fox News will now push: Josh Hawley is not a supporter of insurrectionists but a patriotic defender of free speech.
Of course, Hawley’s claims of victimhood elicited a negative reaction from the left and the right on Twitter.Here are some examples:
Conservative David French of The Bulwark
Jonathan Chait of New York magazine
Joyce Alene, MSNBC legal analyst
Freshman Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of the Bronx
