THIS current reality is eerily similar to something found within the pages of history.
As if taken directly out of a dictator’s playbook, this regime repeats the tyrannic and despotic leadership that occurred four decades ago. They come after the journalists one by one—suppressing the fundamental rights to information, making the people grow more ignorant with each passing day.
Under the guise of bias reporting and immoral content, the victims fall to the mockery of power-tripping lawmakers along with a personal vendetta waged by a political foe. It is ludicrous enough to question a broadcast institution’s morality out of servile obedience, but it only gets worse after making a baseless decision in order to appease a lapdog that usurps all legalities and goes beyond the constitution.
At the lengths this administration and its underdogs try to avenge their bruised egos, the shutdown is no longer a surprise.
The hearings are nothing but illusory in a fight where the victors are already predetermined. Failing the public they claim to represent, the whims and caprices of the powerful prevail against the livelihoods of eleven thousand individuals.
People clamor to defend the freedom to publish, time after time, and yet, their pleas fall to deaf ears. The persecution of watch dogs—be it a single journalist or an established media outlet—that dare expose amorality and betrayal shall continue until democracy is upended. By then, there will be nothing left to defend: no nation, no government, no people. F DENISSE P. TABOR
