good one from Ace

Ace's website is ugly as sin—poorly formatted and a pain to look at—but if you see past the exterior, there's often good content there.  Case in point:

What If Deplorables Start “De-Platforming” Leftists From Receiving Skilled-trade Services?

[Buck Throckmorton]

If Monster Tech can aggressively de-platform businesses and individuals for expressing forbidden opinions, then maybe it’s time for skilled tradesmen to respond in kind against the woke left.

Leftists despise working class “deplorables” and seek to punish them for all their disapproved habits—you know—God, guns, motorized vehicles, and voting MAGA. Well, the tradesmen I know are swamped with business right now, so it might be a good time for them to establish their own “terms of service” enabling them to deny services to advocates of cancel culture. We’ve learned from Monster Tech that all you have to do is declare someone’s speech to be “hateful” or state that their speech might “incite violence” to banish someone from receiving service. If a deplorable can be targeted as hate-filled for simply supporting Trump, then a tradesman’s Terms of Service can in turn declare that any visible support for Democrats constitutes hate speech.

Broken down on the side of the road with a Bernie or Biden bumper sticker? Sorry—you’re going to have to find a wrecker that employs all 57 genders and declares all their pronouns. But Earl’s 24-Hour Wrecker won’t be towing your car today. Terms of service, you know.

Broken-down furnace during a deep freeze? Too bad you advocated for a fracking ban on Facebook. That’s a violation of Smith HVAC’s terms of service. It looks like you’ll need to find yourself an HVAC company that can fix you up with 100% renewable energy if you want your heat back on.

[...]

Can such service be denied? The left is already doing it. My county is relaying updates about Covid vaccinations via Facebook. My town posts winter road updates on Facebook. I can’t express my political views on Facebook, or else Mark Zuckerberg might deny me access to life-or-death info regarding roads and vaccines.

As the defenders of Monster Tech like to remind us, if I don’t want Facebook banishing me for having the wrong opinion, then I can just go start my own social-media monopoly. Well, then, it’s not asking too much for the left to go start their own skilled-trade services.

It shouldn’t have to come to this, but we’re already seemingly here. In addition to the de-platformings by tech companies, some banks are refusing service to gun-shop owners, retailers are banishing products from My Pillow, etc. If we can only buy products and services from those within our political tribe, leftists are really going to hate the new rules when they’re in critical need of a skilled tradesman.