As you might have expected from a Democratic senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy has come through for the American people. He has a plan to solve every last problem the country has by abrogating free speech and taking control of social media.
At least that’s what he says in his book, Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America. Just look at that title. Half the buzzwords ever spoken, right there. “Crisis” – everything is a crisis to the Murphys of the world. “Common good” – as far as I’ve ever been able to understand, this term only comes up when the Dems want your money. “A Broken America” – well, Senator Chris, who broke it? “Fight for meaning and connection”? I’m trying to picture this, but nothing’s coming up. You can fight for resources, you can fight for your country, you can fight for the heavyweight title, but “meaning and connection”? I dunno.
And I’ll probably never find out because I’m not ever reading this thing. I’m sure I don’t have to explain this to AT readers. This book snuck right past me, and I’m glad it did.
But Murphy is still promoting it four months after publication, most recently on notorious internet nag Jennifer Welch’s podcast “I’ve Had It,” a title with more resonance than she might actually realize.
Murphy presented a parade of insights while Welch watched, smiled, and nodded a lot: Trump is bad. Social media is bad. America is broken. Trump is bad. We must fight for meaning and connection. The First Amendment has to go. Trump is bad.
Murphy’s main target here appears to be social media, which he considers to be even worse than Trump in that, in some way, it brought Trump into being. It also causes isolation, loneliness, disconnection, and interferes with the fight for meaning. How an innovation in personal communication does all this, I have no idea. I suppose it’s in the book.
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Social media was fine when the left controlled it. But then Elon Musk showed up with all his Krugerrands and things immediately fell apart. (Really, October 27 should be celebrated in some way, like July 4 or June 6.) Since Musk liberated the net, there have been repeated attempts to return to the good old pre-X days, including blatant censorship and federal government efforts to shut down opponents of the Deep State with the assistance of Keir Starmer’s staff and the shadowy Sleeping Giants organization. Now, Chris Murphy is calling for the next step: have the government take over the net and run it the way all right-thinking citizens of Connecticut would like.
Of course, this is framed as an action in support of the “common good,” a means of fighting disconnection and loneliness and, above all, assuring that nobody like Donald Trump ever again takes office. If you’re starting to get an image of the Chinese Social Credit system and the cartoon cop who shows up on Chinese screens wagging his finger whenever somebody tries to access a forbidden site, you’re probably right on the money. One thing for sure, you won’t feel disconnected anymore with government agents showing up at your door to interrogate you about your internet habits.
Murphy fails to address this. In fact, he doesn’t go into much detail at all, particularly regarding what the courts would be doing while he’s shutting down the Bill of Rights.
The irony, of course, is that he’s peddling this on a podcast. That is, over social media.
But hey, that’s good social media. Not the evil, antisocial MAGA stuff you’re reading right now.
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Image: Mobil in Mobilus