Maybe Not Every Free Thought Is a Good One

Kanye West—now d.b.a. Ye—rewarded everyone who spent last week praising him as a Free Thinker whose free thoughts scare the wokescold liberals by suggesting on Friday that Sean Combs—currently d.b.a. Diddy—is an agent of "the Jewish people." On Sunday morning, as if to remove all doubt about where he's at, Ye announced that he was going to go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE." When thinking freely goes wrong!

Still, you could find Indiana's attorney general on Twitter Sunday afternoon praising Ye for "his independent thinking, & for having opposing thoughts from the norm of Hollywood." The latter is certainly accurate, grammar notwithstanding, but this is also a fascinating look at the reactionary impulse: he's breaking with The Liberal Elites, so who cares what he said! Well, Indiana AG Todd Rokita did a few hours later: "My post was specifically and clearly aimed at the hypocrisy of the media and Hollywood elites, not anything to do with other comments," he said. "I have an obvious, clear and substantial Congressional and public record of being 100% supportive of the Jewish community and Israel." Well, except for that time you praised that guy's "independent thinking" not long after he declared "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE."

But the Free Thinking was all over the place this weekend, including on Newsmax, where host Dick Morris brought on Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano to tell him he's "too honest, too outspoken, and too independent" for the establishment Republican Party. Mastriano is a Republican who attended the glorious patriotic celebrations of January 6, worked tirelessly to throw out the results of the 2020 election, and has pledged to finish the job of securing Pennsylvania's elections should he be elevated to the governor's office. Pennsylvania, you may remember, is a fairly important state within our ridiculous system for electing presidents, and Morris and Mastriano made no bones about what that meant to them:

"People are always asking me, 'Can Trump come back in '24?'" Morris said, "and I wrote this book saying that he can. But he has to win the governorship in Pennsylvania." Does he mean Trump needs a Republican to govern Pennsylvania well, to show its citizens that the party has a platform that will make their lives better? Hell no. "This is the guy you need to support because he's the key to unlocking honest elections in the swing state," Morris concluded. "Thanks for coming on, Doug."

For the uninitiated, "honest elections" are ones that Republicans win. Democratic victories are fraudulent. (Morris, once a senior adviser to Bill Clinton, has had quite a journey.) In response, Mastriano made it quite clear what this all meant: "I get to appoint the secretary of state," he said, referring to the official who oversees Pennsylvania elections, "and the road to 2024 goes straight through Pennsylvania." This is the strategy that Republicans are pursuing all over the country: take control of elections infrastructure and go from there.

After Trump lost in 2020, Mastriano laid out a tweet thread that explains quite succinctly the course of action he'd pursue in the event that a Democrat were to win. "There is mounting evidence that the PA presidential election was compromised," he said, citing none. "If this is the case, under Article II, Section 1.2 of the US Constitution, the state legislature has the sole authority to direct the manner of selecting delegates to the Electoral College...Therefore, we are introducing a Resolution to exercise our obligation and authority to appoint delegates to the Electoral College." That is, he and his Republican friends in the legislature moved to appoint an alternate slate of electors to vote for Trump even though the citizens of Pennsylvania voted for his opponent.

Maybe this is the kind of excessively honest, outspoken, and independent thinking that has supposedly put off the Republican establishment. Or maybe they just think Mastriano is a bad candidate. A better one would speak more carefully about their future plans, should they be given power over elections, and then act—or be pressured to do so—if the moment to shove a Democrat out of power presented itself.

But maybe the more interesting part of this is the exaltation of Free Thinking as a virtue in and of itself. What if your Free Thinking leads you to Free Thoughts about how a cabal of Jews controls the world? Or to the belief that these shoes look good? What if your independent thinking leads you to believe that you can overthrow the government because you didn't like the result of an election? What if your independent thinking is independent of reality? Or what if it isn't very independent at all? Once you actually start to evaluate a Free Thought on its own merits, it might seem a little less intrinsically virtuous. You might even start to wonder whether the world is really split into Free Thinkers and Sheep! Maybe people have their allegiances and biases, but they're also situated along spectrums of knowledge and critical thinking skills and empathy, and they bring those things to bear when evaluating ideas. And maybe sometimes the lamestream people who say stuff is crazy are...thinking.

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