Crapblocked...

“Iraq has WMDs. AMURRRICA!” – George W. Bush

“They took our jobs” – Literally Hitler

“No Twitter for you, enemy of state!” – Government of India

Yes, these quotes are roughly paraphrased. But they all play upon one thing: Fear.
Fear that unless someone is allowed to have his way with certain free world guarantees, unless someone drops a taxpayer funded smart bomb on a soft target; terrible things will happen to the unsuspecting average person. Children will suffer, food will have too little salt and downloads will be throttled.
Of course, proof and humanity's vestiges of humanity are necessary casualties.

There’s a good chance you’ve not been blocked on Twitter or Facebook. And that the Indian government is still letting people see your adorable kiddy videos on YouTube from when you were six and didn’t realize that people would start to notice if you wore superhero underwear atop your clothes regularly.
However, certain people think that an important part of preventing violence against minorities is blocking Facebook hate pages, Twitter profiles – also ones that mock the PMO (and hopefully that Rick Astley video I’ve seen way too many times).

The world is a lot more connected than it used to be. The actions of any form of government are scrutinized and televised. So I guess the ancient powers that be have to be seen doing something. And the first thing to do when tackling with a problem is to lay blame somewhere – in this case, on the spread of ostensible anti-India sentiment via social networking platforms.

Now the question you want to ask is probably: Isn’t the government doing the right thing by stopping the spread of hate speech and possibly region based violence?
Well, derp, you’re wrong. The question is this: When you suppress freedom of expression and things still don’t come under control, where do you go next?
ecause, you see, things won’t come under control. Not as long as depraved assholes who don’t accept the sanctity of life are actually held accountable. The only thing left to do then will be a further curtailment of whatever behavior that comes up as unfavourable.

There's also the fact that censorship is an inherently flawed concept. The notion of a great big nanny state which decides what’s you can or cannot see starts to have less appeal when you think about the following:

• The Streisand effect
  Any attempt to hide something has the effect of publicizing that very information and getting it to a much larger audience. 
• Gaps in the fence
  There’s very little that can be done to suppress that flow of information on the internet. There are ways to circumvent blocks. And ways to circumvent blocks of those blocks. In fact, the only thing you can’t get around anymore is Yo’ mama.
• Assuming herd mentality
  Mouth-breathers who can get influenced by a non-confirmed piece of information sourced from the Internet can just as easily be influenced by a newspaper or people shouting loudly enough. And by the way, please stop watching those Salman Khan movies. It makes this argument look weak.
• Controversial efficacy
  Case in point, our respective mothers have been deciding what's good for us for the longest time in an effort to make us better people. Yeah, that *totally* worked.

So finally, it comes down to the relatively benign “Sanjeevani Booti, AMIRITE GUYS?” or the whole “STOP RESISTING, CITIZEN! THIS KICK TO YOUR GROIN WILL SERVE THE GLORY OF CHINA!” way of doing things. I would argue that the former can easily lead to the latter once you start calling the destruction of constitutionally protected statuettes by other names like “National security”.

"Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

- Thomas Jefferson, celebrated bad tempered person.

P.s. Yes, there’s a Godwin in the second sentence of this post. I’ll take that congratulatory plaque now.

Not there… The other hole...

When they’re not busy fighting the trials and travails of having an enlarged prostate and/or stealing from us, the people who run this nation like to spend some time reminding us of the relevance they have in our lives.

Usually it’s something benign. “I was streaming that porn and so I didn’t actually have it on my phone and INDIA NEEDS FASTER INTERNETZ LOL” or “Oh this money? Well, my ancestors were all oppressed and I’m taking it to increase their pride in our caste/religion/pony breeding club”. Of course, sometimes they’ll take it a step further and tell us who to hate.

Now don’t get me wrong… I’m all for a little unmitigated hate without reason or justification. All you have to do is say “Salman Khan superstar” and I’ll get an enraged stick-figure mob to eat the entirety of all the Pizza in your locality, come over to your place and offer to treat you to lunch - JUST to watch you dissolve into a puddle of tears. However, I do tend to have a problem with the fact that the reason for why we should hate a lot of things is usually no different from “This is wrong because we don’t do this. We don’t do this because this is wrong”.

A prime example of this is homosexuality. Let me not mince words here. This is an entire group of people who are “going to destroy society as we know it” because... um… well… they're using the wrong holes?

One, this is an issue of individual liberty. If the Government allows itself to decide what consenting adults do without affecting anyone else, where does it stop?

And Two, this has been made an issue of morality. What has been left out is whose fucking morality it is that we're talking about. Is it:

a) the morality of some religion that we must respect because of “religious freedom”? That being the case I’d like to petition that everyone in India wear sequins on Saturdays because otherwise, our true lord the Flying Spaghetti Monster can’t see us properly owing to his divine Myopia.

But I guess this it only matters if the religion is mainstream. One that ensures people who don’t conform to certain rules are hated and ostracized. More so, made to hate their own selves. Yeah. That morality. Got'cha. 

Or;

b) the morality of the public at large? This would make more sense because laws are defined by what people feel is right. For example, it is no longer legal to ensure a woman’s undying love in return for 10 cows and one wooden cart. I’ve checked.
But even in this case, those in power are woefully out of touch with the realities that surround us today. People are not dying, starving, or unhappy because certain men know more than one use for glitter. It's because someone is too friggin’ incompetent to do their job.

History is witness to the fact that whenever someone has had to justify something vile and despicable, he or she has done it in the name of morality. That this clause is invoked whenever some old dude who hasn't gotten laid in sometime suddenly decides he doesn't like how other people are trying to be happy.

The question that needs to be asked then, is simply this… is someone threatening national security, violating the sacred nature of the constitution and completely without a sense of right and wrong because they like want a life with someone with the same genitals?

Of course, since all rants worth their vitriol are incomplete without atleast one Godwin: “We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past ... (few) years.” – Adolf Hitler.

When those who watch over us talk about protecting society, they should first think about not letting us die of corrupt practices and apathy; instead of declaring profound jealousy for the happiness of certain people who have awesome taste in clothing. 

Finally, people who hide behind words like “culture” and “morality” to justify their bigotry and ignorance should be slapped across the face with a large rubber dildo.