A non-political comment. Last week I flew for the first time in several years: JAX-ATL-DEN, then reverse. Has there been some weird cultural change in flying in the last 3 years??? On all four of the flights as soon as we got on the plane everyone (not an exaggeration) slammed their window shades down and were down for the rest of the flight. Not a single window shade was up. I understand the need if on a late evening or early morning flight on the east/west side of the plane needing to close the shades for the incoming sun, but this was not the case. Occasionally, someone would slightly open the shade and peek out for a few seconds, but down it would go again. Due to flying with an ostomy for the first time, I opted for aisle seats….big mistake. I have never been bothered flying, but this was claustrophobic inducing, and for the first time in my life, slightly motion sickness inducing…. a dark long tube that would move unpredictably from pushback to final gate parking. I seemed to be the only one affected. All the other 130+ pax just seemed to accept this new (to me) norm. Window seat for me from now on. Too bad if I have to inconvenience two other people by crawling over them. And to hell with everyone else…my window shade will be open and I will enjoy the view from FL350.
Hope your time in Den wasn’t too bad, meaning I take it you did not go into Denver itself.
I put the window shade down if I want some sleep. I have solved the me or someone else going over others. I fly Business Class now all the time. Worth the extra money.
physicsguy,
A few years ago I noticed flight attendants asking people to do it and I agree, it seems to be the norm now. And I too do not like it. My assumption has been the crew is putting them all down prior to the start of each flight and folks hesitate to raise them. Raising one shade with them all down is very noticeable, so I think people avoid it in order to not stand out.
Airlines are talented at making you feel like cattle.
I haven’t flown in a while. I thought the crew would ask passengers to put shades UP for takeoff and landing. And for a daylight flight, why not look out the window at America beneath?
Re: Window shades down
* To see phones better?
* To see videos better? (Movies/TV are often shot so dark these days.)
* To encourage passengers to sleep? (A sleeping passenger is less demanding.)
I was flying London to Seattle in the 80s. I had the temerity to open my shade flying over Greenland. What a spectacular view. I was asked to close it so people could watch the movie. The movie was Moonstruck. Snore. I refused.
what time was the flight, I remember we flew out of Vegas to Houston around mid night, that was many moons ago
huxley, I’m betting on “to see phones/movies better.” Videos are more real to many people than what’s beyond their screens these days. Says she, sitting here commenting on a computer screen.
To encourage passengers to sleep? (A sleeping passenger is less demanding.)
I heard once that if you order coffee on a plane they give you decaf. Could be an urban legend.
Before the days of in-flight entertainment and cell phones, people were interested in the geography below. It was SOP to point out interesting sights on the ground – Grand Canyon, Yosemite Valley, Colorado River, Mississippi River, etc.
The flight from LAX to SEA had a plethora of interesting sights – Kings Canyon National Park, Yosemite Valley, Lake Tahoe, Mt. Lassen, Crater Lake, MT. Hood, MT. St. Helens, and Mt. Ranier. When possible, we tried to point them out and often got kudos from the passengers. Today, it’s all about inflight entertainment and shutting the shades to ban reality. Our culture has changed, and not in a good way, IMO.
Shirehome,
In Denver for most of the time; my brother lives there. We did visit our old family house in Ward, and then my wife hit for $3000 (!) in Black Hawk on a slot.
On the plane window shade thing: As I mentioned, it was definitely claustrophobic and motion sickness inducing for me. The last time I was motion sick on an airplane was when I was taking flight lessons and the instructor intentionally induced vertigo in me. Yes, and all the other pax seemed totally absorbed in their screens from the get go.
In my daytime flights I don’t think I’ve experienced the shades-down phenomenon, except on a very bright day with a lot of glare.
But J.J., I’ve done that route many many times, either from LA to Seattle or San Francisco to Seattle or Burbank to Seattle – back in the days when Gerard lived in Seattle and I would visit him for extended periods. What a bunch of glorious sights!! I would always do my best to sit on the right side of the plane flying north and the left flying south, the better to see those sights.
In August, legacy leadership at one of the government’s largest Federal agencies made a startling announcement. On September 30th, the end of the current fiscal year, all work by the agency’s records management program will cease for the entirety of Fiscal Year 2026.
This work stoppage was referred to as a “pause” in agency records management. It begins on October 1st.
The justification for this work stoppage was budget cuts the agency is facing in the new fiscal year. But records management is Federally mandated and an essential function of every government agency. It is illegal to “pause” agency records management. Without it, compliance with the Federal Records Act is impossible. This would deprive the American public of their legal right to agency transparency and accountability and also subject the agency’s information to very serious security risks.
Additionally, a stoppage of agency records management would mean a full year without complying with the Privacy Act of 1974. As the only Federal law established to ensure the fair and honest collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of the public’s personally identifiable recorded information, a year-long stoppage of the agency’s records management program would be an egregious violation to the public’s right to privacy.
In their announcement of the records management “pause”, agency officials claim that the agency will still continue its FOIA program. This claim is absurd and insulting to the American people. A FOIA request is a request for agency records. The FOIA program is entirely downstream from the agency’s records management program. If the agency shutters its records management program, the FOIA program will be unable to prove the authenticity, integrity, and provenance of any piece of recorded information that it includes in a FOIA response. Nor would it be able to prove the completeness of FOIA responses. This would render the response entirely useless.
rtwt
@sdferr
Leuder’s article is crap. Pure crap. That you would share it here is unfortunate, and points to you either being lazy or a troll.
Why would I say something so judgemental about the article and blatantly insulting to you?
Leuder never identifies the “major Federal agency.” That’s a massive failure.
@ Jon baker on September 22, 2025 at 3:15 pm said:
Tonight at Sundown starts Rosh Hashanah aka Feast of Trumpets
Thanks for the reminder.
One thing that really impresses me about Judaism is the sheer longevity of their sacred festivals! Does any other religious group have current celebrations of 4000 year old commemorations and worship traditions?
Maybe Buddhism?
I sincerely hope that Hamas doesn’t decide to launch one of their attacks while Israelis are somewhat distracted, as in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
That seems to be an Islamic tradition which the UN has not ever condemned, I don’t think.
Of course, if Israel made a counter-attack during Ramadan, the world would have a monumental pearl-clutching festival.
PS per Wikipedia: since Yom Kippur coincided with the 10th day of Ramadan that year, the war is called the Ramadan War in Arabic, a nice bit of strategic misdirection.
@AesopFan:One thing that really impresses me about Judaism is the sheer longevity of their sacred festivals! Does any other religious group have current celebrations of 4000 year old commemorations and worship traditions?
Maybe Buddhism?
Not without a time machine. Buddha was born some time between 560 and 480 BC. The historical provenance of Judaism dates to about the same time. Hinduism has a little bit older provenance but not much. Nothing in the Chinese religions or history gets much older in terms of documentation.
Now if we’re taking the Bible chronology at face value you can get Judaism older than that, but other religions or cultures can do the same: Hinduism claims literally millions of years, Chinese history and religions claim more than 4000.
The Samaritans are still, just barely, around and they claim that their split with Judaism goes back to the days of the prophet Eli, which would be quite a bit earlier than the Bible chronology. They have their own Torah seems to have diverged around AD 100.
His “about” page there said this: https://thefederalist.com/author/dlueders/
“Contributor: Don Lueders is a Certified Records Manager with more than a quarter-century supporting federal records management at all levels of the government. He is also a documented whistleblower who has exposed the government’s failed electronic records management systems and their costly, often tragic, consequences. Follow him on X @donlueders.”
I have spent my entire career supporting records management at every level of the Federal government, including the White House, all branches of the military, multiple intelligence organizations, and several dozen civilian agencies.
It is impossible to deny that I am one of the country’s leading authorities on Federal records management laws and regulations and the technologies required to comply with them.
Please take me at my word when I tell you that there is absolutely nothing in this article that even remotely resembles the truth. It is, in fact, a mendacious hit piece by the State controlled media, working with dishonest, partisan Federal bureaucrats, with one singular objective: discredit President Donald Trump and his administration.
Over the last 17+ years, the Federal Bureaucratic State has been allowed to capture control of the entire corpus of the government’s digitally recorded information from agency records management programs, who are the civil servants legally responsible for securing that information for its rightful owners, the American people.
If the Trump administration does not completely reform the Federal records management system and recapture control of White House and Federal agency electronic information, they will remain powerless against a Federal Bureaucratic State determined to take them down with lies like those included in this article.
@POTUS
@SecRubio
@SecKennedy
@DOGE
@elonmusk
He has also been featured in The Epoch Times, has an account at LinkedIn, and publishes a Substack “Postcards from Oceania: America’s Winston Smith.”
The article from sdferr is cross-posted there: https://postcardsfromoceania.substack.com/p/a-coup-is-unfolding-at-one-of-the
“This is a treasonous act of rebellion by Federal bureaucrats against a dully elected President & his administration. Is this coup limited to this one agency? Or are others planned for the same time”
Now, he may still be trolling, but the Federalist is not, I think, in the habit of publishing, um, unqualified conspiracy theorists.
So, for now, I’m going to go with “withheld name of agency to protect a whistleblower.”
Let’s see how this develops.
PS to David Foster: please note that I am following the advice from the man you introduced me to in a comment yesterday on the “the Right is the new Jews” post: David Dennison, who stressed the need to do some research before either accepting or rejecting the flotsam and jetsam of the internet.
@ physicsguy > “Shirehome, In Denver for most of the time; my brother lives there.”
Give us a heads-up next time you come over, if you have some free time. The three of us could meet in a secret location and trade conspiracy theories!
I want to complete the excerpt from Leuders’ Substack//twitter article, because it contains the rationale for what the anonymous agency is probably trying to do, and it is massively corrupt. I certainly hope he still has contacts inside the government working on this situation. His final sentence sounds like he probably does.
Shuttering the agency’s records management program is also technically unsustainable. All government information systems have storage quotas. When these quotas are exceeded, information systems begin to break down. To remedy this, agencies can choose to recode their systems to manager higher volumes of information or, in some cases, purchase additional storage space. Either option is very expensive. As a result, agencies have historically deleted large volumes of inactive information to bring their systems back under their limits.
[AF: I wonder who gets to determine what information is “inactive?” I can certainly see deleting routine memos and communications without any consequence, but who gets to decide?]
If the records management program has been shuttered, it will be impossible to legally delete excess information from these information management systems, and they will quickly collapse. This could happen in a matter of weeks. A full year without a functioning records management program is entirely unsustainable.
What is Really Going On Here?
Like many other Federal agencies, this agency is fraught with corruption from Federal employees and the consulting companies who support them. The Trump administration, along with the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has committed to ending agency corruption and terminating government employees who have broken Federal laws.
Career officials and Federal bureaucrats know that the Trump administration and DOGE will not succeed in cleaning up the corruption within their agency if they can be denied access to the information the agency maintains. They also believe it will protect agency bureaucrats from being justifiably terminated by the Trump administration for their misbehavior.
Given that the agency’s records management program is responsible for the management of all recorded information, agency officials knew that shutting down the records management program for an extended period of time would allow agency bureaucrats to seize control of the agency’s entire corpus of recorded information. With this bureaucratic control, incriminating information can be freely destroyed, hidden, or altered. And the Trump-appointed agency leadership, the Trump administration, and DOGE would be powerless to prove the agency’s past corruption.
This is a brazen act of defiance by Executive Branch bureaucrats against a duly elected president. If this had taken place on a ship, it would be called a mutiny. But given it is happening at a Federal agency, it can only be described as a coup.
Are There More Coups Coming?
The coup at this agency raises some very troubling questions. Is it simply the actions of a group of rogue career officials determined to hide years of corruption from a Presidential administration they hold in the deepest contempt limited to this one agency? Or is it part of a much bigger scheme the Federal Administrative State has planned whereby other agencies are planning to shutter their records management programs and seize control of agency information at the start of the new fiscal year?
Either way, we will only have to wait a few more days to know the answer.
Here’s the teaser: another Substack post by Leuders analyzes why Obama took an action in 2014 regarding Federal records management that looked like it was perfectly reasonable, even laudable, but which turns out to be a buried landmine.
Maybe he’s right, maybe not,so tune in to the Conspiracy Theory comment thread to see the exciting details!
The three of us could meet in a secret location and trade conspiracy theories! 😉
**Warning**
I’m going to use some [foul language], in my following theory, or at least I’m going to hint about some foul language.
Jimmy Kimmel, the TV host/comedian, said some horrible things about the death of Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel said these things, I think- either as some jokes, or as some “cool + rebellious” statements.
Public outcry from TV viewers, and from some people in general, made the owners of Kimmel’s show- fire him, or temporarily fire him, for what he said.
So, after the ‘firing’, some Democrats + liberals shouted, “you can’t fire him! That ends his freedom of speech!”
Actually, I believe- no, it doesn’t.
Free speech, like other USA freedoms, are not chaos, nor are they freedoms without limitations.
My freedom to vote for a presidential candidate gives me [one] vote for every, presidential contest.
That one vote, is a limit to that freedom.
Freedom to vote in a presidential contest doesn’t mean my right-to-vote is “100% free + unlimited”.
I get one vote.
Freedom to vote doesn’t mean I’m free to vote for my candidate, 1000 times. That is a limit on that freedom.
Free speech?…Ok, I get, by the USA’s laws, freedom of speech- but that doesn’t mean I can say 100% whatever I like, or say anything that I can think of…100% of the time.
Slander + disturbing the peace, or causing problems in my town…by saying [whatever rude or horrible things I feel like, to anyone- in my opinion, are not freedoms 100% protected by the Federal government or by any government in the USA.
If I walk over to a man in his yard, and he is a 300 pound, short tempered looking man, and say to him:
“Hey! Aren’t YOU a big, fat A__!”,
His reaction might be to take the palm of his hand and [slap me really hard] on the side of my head.
…And if I had acted that badly- getting slapped, or getting my face shouted off, for my very bad behavior- would then be MY fault.
That is truly my opinion.
If I had then called the cops, + told them about what had happened, I’m guessing the’d talk to me and say-
“We can give him a warning for hitting you…possibly, but YOU PROVOKED that kind of reaction from him.
What were you thinking about, when you [did] that?
What did you think would happen, when you decided to talk to him like that?
Did you think he would do nothing?”
Our society has expectations that I will behave in some
good + non-destructive ways, both in public and in private.
The US federal government, + my State’s government, + my town’s government, also have the same expectations of me.
If I say really offensive things to my neighbor, [technically] the law says I have the right to say them.
But the law, in my view, doesn’t give me the right of free speech, so I can- say or do offensive things, and then cause public outrage or turmoil, and NOT face some consequences for my disruptive actions.
My freedom of speech does not give me the right so say any abusive things, or do abusive actions, and [not] have me face some consequences or punishments for my actions.
In my opinion- freedom of speech doesn’t 100% allow- abusive speech, or [speech that causes turmoil, for one or many people].
I am free to say things, there are things that are unwise to be said by: me, by a TV show’s host, or by anyone else- in the USA.
I am given free speech by America’s people, and by America’s government, but I think everyone must learn- the limits of their behavior, and to watch what they say to other people.
In my opinion- Freedom of speech is not a license for chaos, and it isn’t a license to say to people [all] the objectionable things that I can think up.
In my opinion: I am free to say many things, but- there are many things that I will not say to people, because it is wise, or constructive, for me to not say them.
////
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A non-political comment. Last week I flew for the first time in several years: JAX-ATL-DEN, then reverse. Has there been some weird cultural change in flying in the last 3 years??? On all four of the flights as soon as we got on the plane everyone (not an exaggeration) slammed their window shades down and were down for the rest of the flight. Not a single window shade was up. I understand the need if on a late evening or early morning flight on the east/west side of the plane needing to close the shades for the incoming sun, but this was not the case. Occasionally, someone would slightly open the shade and peek out for a few seconds, but down it would go again. Due to flying with an ostomy for the first time, I opted for aisle seats….big mistake. I have never been bothered flying, but this was claustrophobic inducing, and for the first time in my life, slightly motion sickness inducing…. a dark long tube that would move unpredictably from pushback to final gate parking. I seemed to be the only one affected. All the other 130+ pax just seemed to accept this new (to me) norm. Window seat for me from now on. Too bad if I have to inconvenience two other people by crawling over them. And to hell with everyone else…my window shade will be open and I will enjoy the view from FL350.
Hope your time in Den wasn’t too bad, meaning I take it you did not go into Denver itself.
I put the window shade down if I want some sleep. I have solved the me or someone else going over others. I fly Business Class now all the time. Worth the extra money.
physicsguy,
A few years ago I noticed flight attendants asking people to do it and I agree, it seems to be the norm now. And I too do not like it. My assumption has been the crew is putting them all down prior to the start of each flight and folks hesitate to raise them. Raising one shade with them all down is very noticeable, so I think people avoid it in order to not stand out.
Airlines are talented at making you feel like cattle.
I haven’t flown in a while. I thought the crew would ask passengers to put shades UP for takeoff and landing. And for a daylight flight, why not look out the window at America beneath?
Re: Window shades down
* To see phones better?
* To see videos better? (Movies/TV are often shot so dark these days.)
* To encourage passengers to sleep? (A sleeping passenger is less demanding.)
I was flying London to Seattle in the 80s. I had the temerity to open my shade flying over Greenland. What a spectacular view. I was asked to close it so people could watch the movie. The movie was Moonstruck. Snore. I refused.
what time was the flight, I remember we flew out of Vegas to Houston around mid night, that was many moons ago
huxley, I’m betting on “to see phones/movies better.” Videos are more real to many people than what’s beyond their screens these days. Says she, sitting here commenting on a computer screen.
To encourage passengers to sleep? (A sleeping passenger is less demanding.)
I heard once that if you order coffee on a plane they give you decaf. Could be an urban legend.
Before the days of in-flight entertainment and cell phones, people were interested in the geography below. It was SOP to point out interesting sights on the ground – Grand Canyon, Yosemite Valley, Colorado River, Mississippi River, etc.
The flight from LAX to SEA had a plethora of interesting sights – Kings Canyon National Park, Yosemite Valley, Lake Tahoe, Mt. Lassen, Crater Lake, MT. Hood, MT. St. Helens, and Mt. Ranier. When possible, we tried to point them out and often got kudos from the passengers. Today, it’s all about inflight entertainment and shutting the shades to ban reality. Our culture has changed, and not in a good way, IMO.
Shirehome,
In Denver for most of the time; my brother lives there. We did visit our old family house in Ward, and then my wife hit for $3000 (!) in Black Hawk on a slot.
On the plane window shade thing: As I mentioned, it was definitely claustrophobic and motion sickness inducing for me. The last time I was motion sick on an airplane was when I was taking flight lessons and the instructor intentionally induced vertigo in me. Yes, and all the other pax seemed totally absorbed in their screens from the get go.
Instapundit today links to a debunking of a conspiracy theory that Charlie Kirk was shot at close range with a gun disguised as a cell phone.
I have to say I have no idea what to do about people who would find such a thing plausible. I don’t know where they get their priors from: maybe the RAND corporation, under the supervision of the reverse vampires, are putting something in the water.
Tonight at Sundown starts Rosh Hashanah aka Feast of Trumpets.
New post: The Power of Metaphor and Analogy–and the Dangers
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/75114.html
In my daytime flights I don’t think I’ve experienced the shades-down phenomenon, except on a very bright day with a lot of glare.
But J.J., I’ve done that route many many times, either from LA to Seattle or San Francisco to Seattle or Burbank to Seattle – back in the days when Gerard lived in Seattle and I would visit him for extended periods. What a bunch of glorious sights!! I would always do my best to sit on the right side of the plane flying north and the left flying south, the better to see those sights.
Don Leuders, “A Coup is Unfolding at One of the Government’s Largest Federal Agencies” (brief article, 5 min read):
https://x.com/DonLueders/status/1970123792765558956
A clip of the meat:
rtwt
@sdferr
Leuder’s article is crap. Pure crap. That you would share it here is unfortunate, and points to you either being lazy or a troll.
Why would I say something so judgemental about the article and blatantly insulting to you?
Leuder never identifies the “major Federal agency.” That’s a massive failure.
@ Jon baker on September 22, 2025 at 3:15 pm said:
Tonight at Sundown starts Rosh Hashanah aka Feast of Trumpets
Thanks for the reminder.
One thing that really impresses me about Judaism is the sheer longevity of their sacred festivals! Does any other religious group have current celebrations of 4000 year old commemorations and worship traditions?
Maybe Buddhism?
I sincerely hope that Hamas doesn’t decide to launch one of their attacks while Israelis are somewhat distracted, as in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
That seems to be an Islamic tradition which the UN has not ever condemned, I don’t think.
Of course, if Israel made a counter-attack during Ramadan, the world would have a monumental pearl-clutching festival.
PS per Wikipedia: since Yom Kippur coincided with the 10th day of Ramadan that year, the war is called the Ramadan War in Arabic, a nice bit of strategic misdirection.
@AesopFan:One thing that really impresses me about Judaism is the sheer longevity of their sacred festivals! Does any other religious group have current celebrations of 4000 year old commemorations and worship traditions?
Maybe Buddhism?
Not without a time machine. Buddha was born some time between 560 and 480 BC. The historical provenance of Judaism dates to about the same time. Hinduism has a little bit older provenance but not much. Nothing in the Chinese religions or history gets much older in terms of documentation.
Now if we’re taking the Bible chronology at face value you can get Judaism older than that, but other religions or cultures can do the same: Hinduism claims literally millions of years, Chinese history and religions claim more than 4000.
The Samaritans are still, just barely, around and they claim that their split with Judaism goes back to the days of the prophet Eli, which would be quite a bit earlier than the Bible chronology. They have their own Torah seems to have diverged around AD 100.
https://x.com/DonLueders/status/1970207389497327806
@ John S – “Leuder never identifies the “major Federal agency.” That’s a massive failure.”
That is a key omission, certainly, but there may be reasons for withholding that information. However, the article sdferrr linked prefaces the “meat” with a lot of credible information about the Federal records preservation laws and protocols, so I wanted to see who this Don Leuders is.
I looked a more of his posts on X-Twitter, including the information that he wrote this for the Federalist not too long ago.
https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/05/records-management-compliance-at-the-fbi-is-the-key-to-the-case-against-the-russia-hoax-conspirators/
His “about” page there said this: https://thefederalist.com/author/dlueders/
“Contributor: Don Lueders is a Certified Records Manager with more than a quarter-century supporting federal records management at all levels of the government. He is also a documented whistleblower who has exposed the government’s failed electronic records management systems and their costly, often tragic, consequences. Follow him on X @donlueders.”
Leuders blows his own horn here:
https://x.com/DonLueders/status/1925578603451859297
That jibes with his other post at the Federalist from earlier this year:
https://thefederalist.com/2025/05/30/nothing-in-aps-presidential-records-act-hit-piece-on-trump-is-true/
He has also been featured in The Epoch Times, has an account at LinkedIn, and publishes a Substack “Postcards from Oceania: America’s Winston Smith.”
The article from sdferr is cross-posted there:
https://postcardsfromoceania.substack.com/p/a-coup-is-unfolding-at-one-of-the
“This is a treasonous act of rebellion by Federal bureaucrats against a dully elected President & his administration. Is this coup limited to this one agency? Or are others planned for the same time”
Now, he may still be trolling, but the Federalist is not, I think, in the habit of publishing, um, unqualified conspiracy theorists.
So, for now, I’m going to go with “withheld name of agency to protect a whistleblower.”
Let’s see how this develops.
PS to David Foster: please note that I am following the advice from the man you introduced me to in a comment yesterday on the “the Right is the new Jews” post: David Dennison, who stressed the need to do some research before either accepting or rejecting the flotsam and jetsam of the internet.
@ physicsguy > “Shirehome, In Denver for most of the time; my brother lives there.”
Give us a heads-up next time you come over, if you have some free time. The three of us could meet in a secret location and trade conspiracy theories!
I want to complete the excerpt from Leuders’ Substack//twitter article, because it contains the rationale for what the anonymous agency is probably trying to do, and it is massively corrupt. I certainly hope he still has contacts inside the government working on this situation. His final sentence sounds like he probably does.
https://postcardsfromoceania.substack.com/p/a-coup-is-unfolding-at-one-of-the
Here’s the teaser: another Substack post by Leuders analyzes why Obama took an action in 2014 regarding Federal records management that looked like it was perfectly reasonable, even laudable, but which turns out to be a buried landmine.
Maybe he’s right, maybe not,so tune in to the Conspiracy Theory comment thread to see the exciting details!
The three of us could meet in a secret location and trade conspiracy theories! 😉
**Warning**
I’m going to use some [foul language], in my following theory, or at least I’m going to hint about some foul language.
Jimmy Kimmel, the TV host/comedian, said some horrible things about the death of Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel said these things, I think- either as some jokes, or as some “cool + rebellious” statements.
Public outcry from TV viewers, and from some people in general, made the owners of Kimmel’s show- fire him, or temporarily fire him, for what he said.
So, after the ‘firing’, some Democrats + liberals shouted, “you can’t fire him! That ends his freedom of speech!”
Actually, I believe- no, it doesn’t.
Free speech, like other USA freedoms, are not chaos, nor are they freedoms without limitations.
My freedom to vote for a presidential candidate gives me [one] vote for every, presidential contest.
That one vote, is a limit to that freedom.
Freedom to vote in a presidential contest doesn’t mean my right-to-vote is “100% free + unlimited”.
I get one vote.
Freedom to vote doesn’t mean I’m free to vote for my candidate, 1000 times. That is a limit on that freedom.
Free speech?…Ok, I get, by the USA’s laws, freedom of speech- but that doesn’t mean I can say 100% whatever I like, or say anything that I can think of…100% of the time.
Slander + disturbing the peace, or causing problems in my town…by saying [whatever rude or horrible things I feel like, to anyone- in my opinion, are not freedoms 100% protected by the Federal government or by any government in the USA.
If I walk over to a man in his yard, and he is a 300 pound, short tempered looking man, and say to him:
“Hey! Aren’t YOU a big, fat A__!”,
His reaction might be to take the palm of his hand and [slap me really hard] on the side of my head.
…And if I had acted that badly- getting slapped, or getting my face shouted off, for my very bad behavior- would then be MY fault.
That is truly my opinion.
If I had then called the cops, + told them about what had happened, I’m guessing the’d talk to me and say-
“We can give him a warning for hitting you…possibly, but YOU PROVOKED that kind of reaction from him.
What were you thinking about, when you [did] that?
What did you think would happen, when you decided to talk to him like that?
Did you think he would do nothing?”
Our society has expectations that I will behave in some
good + non-destructive ways, both in public and in private.
The US federal government, + my State’s government, + my town’s government, also have the same expectations of me.
If I say really offensive things to my neighbor, [technically] the law says I have the right to say them.
But the law, in my view, doesn’t give me the right of free speech, so I can- say or do offensive things, and then cause public outrage or turmoil, and NOT face some consequences for my disruptive actions.
My freedom of speech does not give me the right so say any abusive things, or do abusive actions, and [not] have me face some consequences or punishments for my actions.
In my opinion- freedom of speech doesn’t 100% allow- abusive speech, or [speech that causes turmoil, for one or many people].
I am free to say things, there are things that are unwise to be said by: me, by a TV show’s host, or by anyone else- in the USA.
I am given free speech by America’s people, and by America’s government, but I think everyone must learn- the limits of their behavior, and to watch what they say to other people.
In my opinion- Freedom of speech is not a license for chaos, and it isn’t a license to say to people [all] the objectionable things that I can think up.
In my opinion: I am free to say many things, but- there are many things that I will not say to people, because it is wise, or constructive, for me to not say them.
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