Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote an article titled “Can Europe Save Us as the Internet and Trump Nearly Kill Democracy? The title of the article is in English. The article is in English and is titled “Cyberspace Plus Trump Almost Killed Our Democracy.
The Chinese translation of the title is inaccurate, leaving out the phrase “our democracy”, which means American democracy. And the Chinese translation also leaves out the subtitle of the article, which is “If we don’t find a solution fast, China will pass us economically. “Perhaps Mr. Friedman should communicate with AG Sulzberger (chairman and publisher of the New York Times) to see how the Chinese version of the New York Times works to ensure that his message is not misunderstood by readers in the Chinese world.
In any case, Friedman’s argument is initially and fundamentally biased and wrong, not based on the discovery of facts and the search for truth. His argument that President Trump is “trying to overturn the results of the last election” is factually incorrect. What President Trump is accusing, and what tens of millions of Americans agree on, is pointing out the fraud in the election and giving ample evidence of it. If the Biden administration and those on the left really want to disprove these allegations, quell the outrage, and bring the truth to the surface, they should immediately appoint an independent prosecutor to conduct a thorough, complete, and uninterrupted investigation into the 2020 election fraud, release the truth to the American people, and then decide the true outcome of this election.
Friedman’s preconceived notion gives the reader the impression that this was a legitimate, clean election and that Trump is trying to overturn this democratic and fair process by illegal means. Nothing could be further from the truth and facts than that statement. Friedman should support Trump’s challenge to the election results and support the independent prosecutor’s investigation if he is not afraid of the truth or willing to uncover it. Unfortunately, the left-wing media, writers, and commentators do not even have such a conscience or the courage to face the truth!
Friedman said that Trump “has been impeached.” Yes, good and righteous people have been treated unjustly, and the halls of democracy have been smeared with hate and jealousy. But the good news is that the farce of impeachment has ended and will forever be nailed to the pillar of shame as a stain on American democracy.
In this biased and framed article, Friedman launched the idea that the so-called Trump “used a weapon that can still be used by others at will.” “That is a zone called ‘cyberspace’ in which we are connected to each other but no one is running the show.” Friedman accused President Trump of “exploiting this zone,” “spreading a big lie,” “undermining trust in our electoral system,” and “and triggered an attack on our Capitol.” So, “we desperately need a solution to the problem of cyberspace.”
It is true that the American people need a solution to the problem of cyberspace, because the manipulated cyberspace has eroded the power of freedom, and the power of democracy, for the American people. Friedman may have forgotten that it was the total blocking of Trump by the mainstream media that forced Trump to open up the space of online media, social media, which allowed him to communicate productively with the American people and the people of the world in the midst of his campaign, in the midst of his first term. The use of social media is said to be the idea of Trump’s 14-year-old son, Byron, a really good boy. Mr. Friedman, who favors freedom of the press and defends freedom of speech, why doesn’t he applaud Trump’s alternative approach? Why not condemn the mainstream media for blocking it? It was Trump’s clever use of social media that showed the American people the dangers of the Washington swamp and the anomalies in the election, thus starting the American people on the road to upholding the dignity of the Constitution and saving America!
The only accurate statement in Friedman’s article is that the Communist Party “has figured out how to project its authoritarian institutions and communist values into cyberspace to enhance its growth and stability. That’s exactly what happened. The real threat to the American people and the people of the world is the authoritarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party. But in following, echoing, and even going along with the mouthpieces, voices, and diplomatic rhetoric of the Chinese Communist Party to attack Trump, to attack conservatism, and to attack efforts to return to American traditions, is His Excellency not dancing with the wolves and with the devil of communism?
If Mr. Friedman really believes that “if we don’t find a solution soon, we will fall behind China economically because the pandemic has dramatically accelerated the digitization of everything, making cyberspace larger and more important than ever before,” can you not see that Trump’s sanctions against the Chinese Communist Party have had an impact on the Chinese Communist Party’s access to technology theft, including cyber technology? cyber technology, and the punishment for technology theft, and the trade and tariff wars against the CCP, are besieging the Chinese Communist regime and are addressing this problem?
Indeed, cyberspace consists of the sum of all computers, hosts, servers, and applications running on the Internet, and the rapid growth of e-commerce was initiated by companies like Amazon, which originally sold books and CDs. But now this cyber beast has moved beyond commerce, entertainment, gambling, and pornography into a world that has a Life and vitality of its own, that can control news gathering, sharing, and the generation and dissemination of public opinion worldwide, outside of governments and under encrypted communication systems, and it controls almost the entire world! Underlying these problems is how to regulate and limit their abuse of power and overreach, how to keep them from hiding behind Section 230 to do as they please, but these are precisely the pressing issues that President Trump has pushed hard and that the Biden Administration has put on the back burner.
Friedman believes that China, the United States and Europe have different strategies for dealing with the cyber domain, and he supports the European approach. Friedman believes that the United States needs to project American democratic values into cyberspace as effectively as China does, so he asks the Europeans to show the United States the way! The EU leadership has proposed a digital services bill and a digital marketplace bill to the European Parliament to ensure that “what will be illegal in the analog world will also be illegal on the Internet. The United States, of course, can observe the European approach, and perhaps may learn from some of these practices. Fortunately, Friedman and the author agree that the CCP’s approach is the worst and most evil, and the author hopes that the CCP will pay the price for blocking the Internet, as Friedman would expect.
If one sets aside Friedman’s false accusations against Trump, one can easily find that President Trump has not stifled American democracy, but on the contrary, Trump and the conservative American public have used the tools of the online world to free themselves from the shackles of the mainstream media, while defending American freedom and democracy. Of course, when this function of the internet was realized and feared by the forces of evil, and they began to brazenly block Trump and conservatives, shut down accounts, and purge videos, their brief contribution to American freedom and democracy immediately dissipated.
The internet did serve to spread the truth, set the record straight, and protect democracy when it was in the hands of patriots and traditional, conservatives. And when the web (web companies, web giants, social media) succumbed to the forces of evil and darkness, to big money and capital, to communist obscenity, the web degenerated!
The Internet itself, invented, created, and built on the basis of protecting Western democracy from the nuclear missiles of former Soviet communism, also served this purpose. But today, it has fallen right into the hands of Chinese communists. People are surprised to find that this is not a loss of the East; but surprisingly, a gain of the East!
The success or failure of democracy lies in whether the people who operate it have a certain degree of morality and are willing to operate according to the fundamental characteristics of the universe, such as sincerity and goodness, or whether they allow fraud, falsification, harming others and deviating from the nature of sincerity and goodness in the case of moral corruption. The ability of the internet to be positive lies in whether the people operating it are pursuing justice and conscience, or following evil and immorality. This is the most critical question of whether the 200-year-old democracy in the United States can continue.
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