CMV: If the American left stops winning elections, the American right will stop caring about "free speech".

Something that's just a bit too obviously true for me to ignore it any longer is that when the American right wins an election and maintains power over it's territory, they can't be bothered to care about "free speech" anymore. When Trump was originally kicking it around in his head to run for president, he talked about weakening libel laws in the US so he could sue news organizations that he felt told lies about him. When he won and the left was out of power, the American right didn't bat an eye at it. He still ended up suing to gag people such as Stormy Daniels and Omarosa Manigault Newman and he used his influence to make sure that Amazon dropped one of its best selling books - "Fire and Fury" - that used hundreds of interviews with the White House, Trump, and his own team to paint a picture of just how utterly disastrous his administration was. He threatened to pull the broadcast licenses of news organizations critical of him and blocked people on Twiter just because they had critical things to say about him. His political opponents from Mitt Romney to John McCain were treated as if they were literally hitler just for criticizing Trump. <br><br>The US government just recently gave Amazon cloud computing a huge contract that's expected to be one of the biggest in the short history of cloud computing. I think you can expect Amazon to stop carrying books that are critical of Trump now just as they have dropped books that were critical of trans people. Trump is as much an autocrat as China's Xi Jinping is as far as I'm concerned and the right stopped caring about this issue just as quickly as China did. I think many people on the US right would honestly be happy to live under a totalitarian regime where they don't have to hear criticism of their views anymore and I don't think that's just hyperbole. I think the right is as fragile as a glass egg and it's shocking that they've managed to hold things together as well as they have so far.<br><br>When Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying to Congress and fielding questions about whether Twitter should let political ads on its platform, Ted Cruz from Texas had a response that demonstrates the absolute hypocrisy on this issue as well as anywhere else. "If you consider yourself neutral, my suggestion is you remain neutral." He said. So if Twitter has a political bias, they should allow one viewpoint only from one side. But if Twitter doesn't have a political bias politically, then they should allow one viewpoint only from one side. Choose a side, just don't choose the left. Cruz started his Senate career by filibustering the Senate and reading Dr. Seuss out loud just because he wanted to defund the ACA. He literally shut down the government because one black man was in the White House and he didn't like that. He's one of many that prove this point so well. Cruz's opinion is the mainstream opinion on the right. They literally don't even know what free speech is anymore or when it should be invoked.<br><br>Anyway, I think I've said enough and I can't wait to read what you have to say. Saw this post idea on a similar thread just a few days ago and thought it was a great idea and I couldn't pass it up. Happy to chat with anyone who has a different view on this. I'll be as open minded and fair as I can. Thanks in advance.<br><br>**Edit:** Thanks to everyone who replied. Combined score of 2,299 upvotes and 469 downvotes for a net score of 1,830 upvotes. I think CMV intended to be more short term than this, I still have a lot to read through as I keep getting notified of new comments. I'll try to respond to everyone but it will take me a while as I make sure to take my time and thoughtfully respond to as many as I can.