But It’s Only Words, Right?

We take a break from our regularly scheduled Halloween season for this brief announcement.

The left is right. Nope my conservative friends, I did not fall down a rabbit hole. Didn’t take the red pill from Morpheus (remember The Matrix?). Didn’t even watch The View, smack my head and say, “Oh Wow, Whoopi and Joy have been right all along!”

None of that. I was reading a story that quoted comedian Dave Chappelle. He was in Saudi Arabia at the Riyadh Comedy Festival and said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”

Saudi Arabia? Yup, the place where you go to prison for a long time if you say something the government, i.e., the king, doesn’t like. Remember a couple of years ago when a teacher was sentenced to death over a social media post? Yeah, THAT Saudi Arabia.

Easier to talk there than the land of the free, home of the brave?

OK, so comedians say things. I get it – that doesn’t make Chappelle right.

But is he wrong? We all heard U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi when she said “there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place . . . for that in our society.” She wasn’t done there though. She said her office would “target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

If that doesn’t absolutely chill you, think again.

Bondi is the top law enforcement official in these here United States – a land I love. When she says she can target you and go after you, those words carry the full weight of the Justice Department, the FBI and more than 100,000 people at her disposal.

Did she later walk those words back? A little. And can you make the case that it was only a few sentences? Sure. Just words.

Those words. Her words. Powerful words. The irony wasn’t lost on me that she’s using powerful words to scare Americans who are doing what? Talking. With words.

Wouldn’t it be neat if we had a time machine and could put Bondi in a room with some guys in Philly around 1776 or so? Wonder how her words would be taken in a room where they decided to make the ability to say “words” the very first amendment?

Let’s be clear. I could not disagree more with the lunkheads who are ripping on the assassinated Charlie Kirk – who was killed for what?

Words. I could not disagree more with a lot of positions my friend on the left take.

But, by God, they have the right to say them.

It’s been said by man, yours truly included, that we are in desperate need of civil discourse in our society. Maybe that’s not possible anymore, I don’t know. How about less hostile discourse?

I sure didn’t like where this country was going when Mr. Biden sat in office. And sorry my liberal friends, but I like the direction a whole lot more now. But things ain’t perfect. They never are. These last few terms, it seems it doesn’t matter who’s in office. What started out as a concern – and is becoming more so by the day – is this idea that if you use your words to say something those in power don’t like, a lot more than words might be coming back your way.

Timmons is a career newspaperman, award winning author and insudtry consultant. He is the group publisher for Moser Community Media’s Central and Limestone newspaper groups which inculdes publications in Cameron, Marlin, Thorndale, Rosebud, Groesbeck, Mexia, and Fairfield. You can reach him at tim@themexianews.com