The single most overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of our society is the fact that immensely powerful people are continuously working to manipulate the thoughts we think about the world.

The power to decree what is “disinformation” now determines what can and cannot be discussed on the internet. It is now in the hands of trained disinformation agents of the U.S. Security State.

Whether mass vaccination was the only way out of the pandemic or not, behaviourally nudging citizens to guilt each other into taking a novel treatment was not the way a civilised society should have acted.

As demonstrated by Fisman, et al., public health models in the hands of the wrong people can result in devastatingly harmful and brutally misleading public messaging. This, in turn, could lead to the introduction of inappropriate health policies.

Mind control is an important aspect of any democratic society. Indeed, Bernays maintains that without the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses”, democracy simply would not “work”.

The more you give politicians the power to regulate information, the more they will use that power to do only rational thing: use that power to preserve their leadership positions. While Democrats may think this will help them, very likely, the shoe will be on the other foot quickly and it will be used against them.

Ellsberg: The rationale that US and Russian leaders use when sabre-rattling is clear: the threat of nuclear war justifies obscene military spending and lines the pockets of arms dealers in both countries.

The deeper battle over Twitter isn’t about free speech at all. That ship has long since sailed. Rather, it’s a fight for control of a key crucible of political consensus-formation, between those who prefer power to be vested in named individuals, and those who prefer to be ruled by self-organising swarm.