By Dayo Sobowale
It is a well known maxim in journalism that when’ a dog bites a man it is no news but when a man bites a dog it is news’ . This is the running rule of our discussion of today’s topic and the issues involved. The main news this week was the impeachment of Donald Trump for a second time by the US House of Representatives but given our rule that is no news, because it has happened before. Even the reason given for this second impeachment which is fostering an insurrection in the US capitol was more a political decision than a democratic one. This is because the core grievance of the insurrection was the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and that seemed swept under the carpet by the impeachment executioners. And that really is great news , the sort of news that will not go away for some time but will keep on sticking out like a sore thumb, whether, the Republicans or Democrats like it or even if Trump is again tried in the senate after he had quit office. Which again would be great news because of the novelty of being unprecedented just as Trump has claimed a record of being America’s first president to be impeached twice. Which again is great news regardless of whether you like Trump or not.
What I want to highlight today is the power of the unexpected and unintended consequences in the drama leading to Trump’s second impeachment and the import of that for global democracy, technology and its new found power of silencing world leaders as well as political opponents generally. This phenomenon which showed monopoly of power in the absence of competition in a democracy was so clear as naked raw political power that even German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU leaders who should be celebrating Trump’s exit because he gave them a rough ride in his one term tenure , raised alarm of concern at the way and manner the Tech giants Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook blocked out Trumps’ tweets and his power or freedom of speech just in the twinkle of an eye. More amazingly when Trump’s supporters went to another platform, the Monopolist Tech giants simply removed the software they sold the midget company to further silence those in the aggrieved corner of the US president. How the over 70m voters that voted for Trump can be silenced for the four years of the Biden presidency is going to be real test of the US’ commitment to its core democratic values of free speech, competition and the economic strategy of laissez faire capitalism.
It is obvious that in tackling the big tech giants Trump did not let charity begin at home and he literally put a fire on his thatched roof and went to sleep, with predictable consequences. Trump was busy chasing China and Huawei the Chinese tech giant on security issues and G5 delivery, shouting that American companies should not deal with Huawei because it is being financed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party in China, which is just a way of flexing US technology muscle extravagantly and unjustly. This is because it is an open secret that China funds its state companies amply to face global trade and industrial competition and is using technology massively to police its citizenry and maintain its brand of democracy which West and the US deride but which has given China an enviable level of stability while Western democracies suffer from incessant protests and mobocracy of the type that led to Trump’s second impeachment. Now Trump has been technologically silenced and politically castrated and dumbfounded indeed by America’s top four tech giants who decided on their own that his tweets in protesting what he called a stolen election could lead to further violence and cut his tweets off. Yet these tech giants donated massively to the campaign of the presidential candidate who defeated Trump and would be sworn in on January 20, an event Trump has sworn not to attend because he feels the election rigged him out of office.
It is my candid view that the Democratic Party and the House of Representatives in the US are bent on criminalizing any opinion that the election was rigged. Which to me is bad news indeed because people are entitled to their opinion on the matter. The fact that the Capitol was mobbed on account of this does not make it a lie or make anyone making such claims a mobster or a liar. . That was what the Democrat Chairman on House Rules was trying to establish with Republican Rep Joe Jordan when he asked him to accept that Joe Biden won the election ‘ fair and square ‘and Jordan replied evasively that Joe Biden is president elect and would be sworn in on January 20. Of course the news is abroad amongst Trump’s supporters that the election was rigged and that is their belief and there is no way you can ask them to believe otherwise. For now the news media against Trump always say such charges of a stolen election lack evidence since the courts have turned them down but still people can hold their opinions without being canceled out as being violent because of that. The fact that the Tech giants have silenced Trump can only fuel the suspicions of his 70m supporters that he has been given a raw deal at the polling boots which this time in the pandemic encouraged mail in voting which Trump all along said would make the election rigged against him. Definitely his second impeachment wont silence him on this just as his silencing by the tech giants wont make him silent either.
It is great news however to note that another Tech giant Microsoft has stopped political donations and asked Americans to accept the decision of the Electoral College. This is instructive although it is like closing the stable doors after the horses have bolted But again I do not take anything said by Microsoft seriously since Bill Gates, the founder wondered callously aloud why Africans have not died massively from the pandemic according to projections which can only be satanic projections. One conclusive issue on the powers of big tech giants is that they need to be controlled as they are unhinged for now to derail and disrupt global democracy. In this last US presidential election the pandemic certainly played a grim part in terms of American deaths which rose tragically while Nigerian deaths are under 1500. Which shows God is Great regardless of the foreboding of the Bill Gates of this world and the powers of tech companies to deal with elected leaders and silence them insolently and powerfully as they did to Donald Trump, once the most powerful man in the world as America’s one term 45th president. Once again from the fury of this pandemic Good Lord Deliver Nigeria.
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