A YouTuber was going on one day about the plague of verificosis threatening to spread to New York, I was mostly agreeing with him; he had his consumer-advocacy hat on and fuck verificosis.

I forgave the first couple of times he namedropped Epstein. The Epstein thing has nothing to do with verificosis and NYCOSA’s proponents had nothing to do with Epstein, as far as I know – and if they did, he would have mentioned it – but I realize how tempting it is these days, when anyone in the political class says they’re doing something For the Children (TM), to reply “oh yeah, we know you looooove children” with a disgusted eyeroll.

…and then he mentioned Citizens United in passing, and WTF does that have to do with anything? Or was he just dropping lefty scare words in at random?

I didn’t finish the video, even though I was still agreeing with more of it than not, because brainrot is contagious.

 

Citizens United, for those who don’t know – and that YouTuber was definitely old enough to know, it was only in 2010 – was a Supreme Court case (more formally, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) that poked a big hole in the McCain-Feingold Act.

And McCain-Feingold was one of the gov’s attempts to try to control political campaigns by deciding who could and who couldn’t advertise or express an opinion in the mass media.

“Citizens United” was the name of a righty nonprofit, and in 2004 it tried to suppress one of Michael Moore’s anti-righty documentaries by calling it “electioneering.” (Bad righties!) They got nowhere. (Good.)

So then the righties made an anti-lefty documentary, which was quickly suppressed; the gov’s excuse for the difference between the two cases was that Michael Moore was only in it for the money and had no political motives. (Bad gov!)

The righties sued. The suit made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled against the gov; part of its reasoning was that while money could corrupt politics, putting this kind of speech-suppressing power in the gov’s hands was arbitrarily abusable as all hell.

Righties loved it, because Citizens United was a righty org talking shit about a lefty.

And lefties hated it, because Citizens United was a righty org talking shit about a lefty.

What, were you expecting a show of principle?

 

If you still think McCain-Feingold was a good idea, imagine the current government having the power to regulate its rivals’ campaign spending.

But it had nothing to do with verificosis.

The way things are going, though, some stupid asshole is likely to suggest a retina-scan requirement to watch a political documentary or get either the adult news or news from non-gov sources, and won’t that be a fun ride?