Et tu, Brute?
By David Glenn Cox


It cannot help but be noticed that DU has installed a new ratings system allowing readers the option to recommend or un-recommend a given piece. Whether intentional or not this is a system of self-censorship. Since recommends convert directly into readership controversial pieces will be relegated to the cellars of readership.

Anyone who speaks ill of Obama or Clinton no matter how justified or impassioned the reasoning will be liquidated by the imperial thought police. This form of censorship is not unlike C-span, which frames its questions to presupposed points of view. Are corporations good for the economy and the over all work force or are corporation a benign force on the economy? It eliminates true dialog and constricts the level of thought to which household chemicals are most dangerous and stories of my dog Rusty.

There are posters on DU, which I do not read, one in particular because I don’t read DU for political satire. I have no qualms with his work one way or another except for his damn catchy titles that sometimes lure me in before I read who the author is and now I have a means to disqualify his work. To deny it to those of you who might enjoy political satire. Not that I would do that because if I don’t like something I move on if I do like it I will recommend it.

Censorship is an ever-tightening noose, strangling opinion until there is only one. The one that pleases most by offending the least, by dividing into good thought and bad thought. Pro-party, anti-party, pro-Limbaugh, pro-Fox news, Pro-Bush administration. The strangulation of new ideas comes from those who believe that they already have all the answers making all others unnecessary. Or the false belief that we can work our way out of crisis by circling the wagons legislating from the center. Or as Mark Twain once remarked, "Whenever I find myself in the majority I immediately reconsider my position."