Is the U.S. Heading for Another Civil War?

I have been looking at Ghost as an alternative to Substack in the last couple of weeks since a couple of writers have written about this algorithm type of censorship. Medium.com started doing shadow bans and using algorithms to force certain types of articles to the back of the viewing stack so people would have a harder time finding them, versus other articles that they think are more popular. Such as fluff articles about home health, kids, and anything that doesn't have any political overtones.

This is the new United States. Where the first amendment rights to free speech are slowly being choked off in fear of law suits from Trump and his DOJ.

I have been watching this for a few months as Trump starting suing legacy TV media and watching them bend the knee with out of court settlements when they had winning cases.

Other independent newscasters are not bending the knee yet, but how long is that going to last? How long before Trump outlaws freedom of the press and chokes off public free speech?

I'm sitting on the fence right now because I have started picking up more readers on Substack of late and I don't want to have to start over again with something like Ghost. I've decided this week to watch and wait a little longer to see how this plays out. Meanwhile, I think it's time I started promoting this blog page a little more as my alternative in case Substack goes south and capitulates altogether in the coming months.

That's the beauty about having this website hosted on a European server. That means that as long as I don't piss off the Europeans, I can write whatever I want here. At the worst, regarding the loss of free speech in the U.S., this website gets banned in the U.S. But I don't think it will come to that. After all, I can still access RT News from Russia, and other overseas news media for now.

My audio podcast version is being hosted by a European company as well, even though they have a facility in California. I have set up my own email server to further secure myself from the U.S. government. My email server software is from a Taiwanese company, which further isolates me from the U.S. government, I hope anyway.

As I watch the latest censorship of Jimmy Kimmel take place by the Trump government, and the backlash from the media, I think that the United States is heading for a very bad place and I don't see anyone standing up to push back. At least no one of any consequence. There are two governors making a bunch of noise but they're busy taking care of their states and unable to do much to push back on a national level.

And this might be why platforms like Substack and Medium.com are hedging their bets and moving politically charged writers to the back of the reading ques.

I am going to start writing more here in my safe space and promoting this location more as much as I can going forward. I'm going to continue writing on Substack for now and watch to see what happens. If my viewership starts to drop off dramatically, I'll know and and make a decision then. I gave up on Medium.com last year and I no longer count readers there. I do have over a thousand but that figure may be inflated with bots.

I have nearly 250 free subscribers on Substack, and that is a fluid number. I have one paying subscriber, for which i'm thankful for. I earn a whole buck and a half a month from this person after Substack takes their fees off the top. Whoppeee!

I don't know the future and as I watch Trump and his people destroy everything thing the United States stands for, I keep asking myself, what more can I do? I've had people tell me to join an activist group and I'm like, what activist group? There aren't any where I live that are making any noise to get any attention. I have no desire to join a group that sits around when they get together and complain about Trump's latest outrage. It doesn't accomplish a thing if a small handful of people go out to some street somewhere with a handful of signs, and take the chance that Trump's gestapo will roll up and arrest everyone. Numbers mean something. Guerrilla warfare looks heroic but is gruelling and costly. Trust me, I know.

The answer is something that the American people are not ready to do, which are nationwide labour strikes, nationwide corporate boycotts, such as Canada is doing to American imports right now and general mass protests that last for days and days.

As divided as the American people are right now, I don't see any of that happening anytime soon. So, it looks like we get to watch as Trump works his way to a complete authoritarian take over of the federal government, with the support of a bunch of republican led states.

All I can do, like so many others who are seeing this for what it is, is to take care of my family as best as I can and make ready to run if the authorities come for me. That and write my thoughts and observations while I watch it all fall down. Who would have guessed that on the 250th anniversary of the continental United States, the democracy that those revolutionaries fought so hard for would fold like a wet blanket after such a short time, as compared to other past empires. I hope the ghosts of those brave revolutionaries haunt these MAGA republicans for what their giving away.