Gag orders

If you can't handle the heat, get the fuck out of the kitchen

In a long line of chilling aspects of the coronavirus pandemic (not the least of which is the utter incompetence of the Trump administration), one that has come to light (at least for me) in the last few days is the increasing calls to muzzle criticism...with many of them coming with explicit threats:

• A doctor writing in the Daily Kos noted how he and his fellow healthcare providers are being told to not criticize the hospitals they work for for supply shortages or the inability to adequately protect their workers from the spread of COVID-19...doctors and nurses have been asked to delete posts and tweets under threats of their losing their jobs.
• In an ill-advised but unsurprising move (the NFL is full of racist, old, rich men who worship the moron Trump), the National Football League has decided to still hold its annual draft later this month.  The kicker?  Its idiot sycophant commissioner, Roger Goodell, threatened disciplinary action against any team publicly criticizing his decision.
• While it's understandable that Google would be monitoring ads for scams offering coronavirus cures and elixirs or ones that are disseminating misinformation, it is certainly not understandable to ban ads that are critical of the Trump administration's epic failure to protect Americans from the virus...especially when still allowing the Trump campaign to run highly politicized ads.

Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but the last thing we as a nation need right now is the curtailing of criticism to save corporate bottom lines at the expense of dispensing information that can slow the spread of coronavirus and/or keep Americans safer and healthier.

These kind of gestures reek of totalitarian states like Russia and North Korea, and certainly are not a reflections of a nation that is supposed to be a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee