Free Speech Parsed and Parceled

Truth has always been stranger than fiction, but these days it is more repulsive and vastly more amusing. The revelations it spawns out of nowhere, afflict and reflect everywhere. 

That includes the seaside English town of Skegness.

A man in his late 80s got fined the equivalent of $350, because on a windy day, a plant reed blew into his mouth, and he simply spat it out.  He had made no throat-clearing noise or ostentatious display to get attention.   

He thought he was being pranked. The enforcement officer sternly lectured him about environmental science and civic responsibility.

The perp obviously hadn't been keeping up with the times. In modern England, as in much of the rest of the Western world,  his delinquency merited a sterner rebuke than had he harassed certain campus scapegoats into hiding, trembling with fear, in spider holes.

Here's another vignette from the land of Isaac Newton, Wilberforce, Shakespeare and Churchill, emblematic of  the abiding spirit of the Magna Carta: a woman with some coffee remaining in her cup, was about to board a bus where food and drink are not allowed, so she poured it down a grate.

She got slapped with a big fine also. The more trivial the offense, the harsher the comeuppance.  

It used to be said that when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world, especially our Western allies, catches a cold. Now, the droplets of a revolutionary and much expanded regime of "political correctness" can be launched airborne from anywhere, with the payoff to lovers of liberty being pneumonia or sepsis.

The above-mentioned vignettes from England were no flukes.  Neither is the diametrically opposite phenomenon of grave threats to the survival of society being ignored, rationalized, minimized or even justified.  Bigots and anarchists are sometimes actually rewarded as though they were liberators, not vandals.

In England, the Online Safety Act is being used as a tool for both ideological promotion and suppression.  Free speech protections are more readily available and less subjected to restraint to advocates of bloodshed than to critics on social media who warn, even from abroad, about society's destabilization or even insurrection.

Britain won its fight for life eighty years ago. Now it is struggling against a different, internally begotten blitz. And so is much of the world. 

Freedom of expression is being intellectually gerrymandered around ideological borders.  It abounds, yet it is under siege. 

Whether it is sanctioned or suppressed depends upon who is wielding political power. Presumption of thought has been rendered actionable as a concocted pretext for selective prosecution.  

Some people's movements are sanctioned in the sense that they are approved or at least exempted from corrective intervention. Others are sanctioned in terms of being penalized for creating constitutionally unsupported nuisances. 

Bigotries within and against cultures are seizing lands as though by eminent domain. Leaders of all sides within the realm are implicated in the expropriation.  We have a "litmus test" for every major local, national and global controversy.  

Chances are that AI will be used to interpret brain waves to determine the ideas we harbor, intercept them for analysis of compliance and preemptively foil imaginary plots against our elected dictators and their influencers.

Democracy's viability is at its lowest point since the invention of the flushing toilet.  

But despite all the supposed lessons of history and the teachings of immortal faiths, ancient loathing and rivalry hang on as the driving force of the human condition. Even the shadows of genocide fail to sting or even embarrass some quarters anymore, (although prime ministers in Oceania may make an appearance at public memorials). 

While on the subject of permanence and eternal recurrence, let's consider the durability of the Jeffrey Epstein story. 

I don't believe that the Epstein story, disturbing and compelling as it is, is being pursued on its merits. It does not rate millions of pages and obsessive national coverage over decades, unless a public figure has been shown to be implicated in criminality beyond offensive behavior, such as sex trafficking and exploitation of minors. Weaponing it for ulterior purposes is prurient.

This country is making a very slow recovery from the charade of puritanism . Nobody should change their minds, one way or the other, about Clinton, Trump or anyone else, based solely on photos in a jacuzzi or their name on a passenger manifest.

Neither should we get bent out of shape by the rehabilitation of the White House ballroom, or be baited by President Trump's giving his own name top-billing in the already mistitled Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which should be named exclusively for a great performing artist, not a politician, philanthropist or corporation. 

Rodney Dangerfield or Nicki Minaj would be better choices.

Now that we're past the traditional expiration date of new year's resolutions, let's break open the lockbox where they are buried in our minds' cluttered time capsules, and rescue one resolution that has been gasping for air: to do justice to our "roots." We workers  must become more dogged and less accommodating in  our pursuit of a higher perch on the economic tree.

We don't hear as many stories about our struggles as we do variations on the Jeffrey Epstein theme, but here's a recent one out of America's "heartland." It must presented as allegations, although to me it has a loud ring of plausibility.

The general manager of a Hardees restaurant in Kansas City filed a disability suit against the owning corporation. He had worked 80-hour weeks, because Hardees did not hire support to offset some of his load.

He developed severe anemia and leg pain, was hospitalized and immediately notified his employer. He filed for medical leave because he was under doctor's orders not to work in that condition. 

Because he felt himself a loyal and productive employee and appreciated Hardees for having promoted him earlier, he tried to work at times and tough it out as best he could. Perhaps his diligence backfired, because the corporate district manager took disciplinary action against him for days on which he was absent and known to be on approved medical leave. 

Human Resources was unmoved by the employee's complaint of discrimination.  On returning to work after approximately one month of recuperation, he was sacked on the spot. 

He was told that his approved absences were sufficient cause for termination.  He alleges that Human Resources ignored his multiple inquiries, and that Hardees groundlessly disputed his unemployment claim and also acted to undermine his reputation.

Although this particular case may be deemed apocryphal and anecdotal until settled in court, the point is that innumerable abuses of workers and economic underclasses is as systemic as ever.  And the victims are among all races, ethnicities, religions, genders and so forth.

Let's not be beguiled or led by people who claim they walk in our shoes while keeping their titanic portfolios secret and then preach solidarity from their dachas in the Hamptons. 

Systemic injustice is not time-sensitive, like "tariff dividends," stimulus checks and Metro Cards. We must be "one for all and all for one," no matter which boxes we check.  

Or almost no matter.