> The reality is that our position as arbiters of speech is a distortion of the democratic system, and the immune system of democracy, speech, is coming to fix

> The reality is that our position as arbiters of speech is a distortion of the democratic system, and the immune system of democracy, speech, is coming to fix that. I don't know how to square that view with the observation that in the United States, an attack on Congress was perpetrated as a direct result of a runaway lie regarding the integrity of the election process. That's not free speech protecting democracy; that's a mob riled up by unchecked lies directly, physically attacking the mechanisms of their representative democracy. Believe me, if I was observing free speech bringing truth to power and undermining, for example, the lobbying infrastructure, or the massive consolidation of power in megacorporations, I'd be thrilled. The cathedral needs to be corrected if not taken down. But that's not what I'm seeing. I think I'm mostly observing the rich and powerful using their ability to buy content on the various free channels of speech to rile mobs with lies. They're trying to cut the structural constraints on their piece of the cathedral and turn it into, if you will, a High Tower. I'm not thinking about Biden's laptop; I agree with your assessment of that. The amplification of lies about the structure of US elections threatens to undermine the democratic process, and if it crumbles now it's most likely to be replaced with a fascist autocracy.