Rudy Giuliani says Dominion, the software company that ran the elections in our swing states, is actually a front company for Smartmatic.  The reason this is important is that Smartmatic is a company based in Venezuela and, beyond this, a company known globally for throwing elections.  The Washington Post and other outlets are calling him a liar.  But the outlets also called Joe Biden the president, despite the fact that massive lawsuits, in Pennsylvania and Michigan, over unconstitutional measures and voter fraud, could easily throw the election for Donald.  They know it and won't say it.

One question here is, why not believe Giuliani?  Giuliani is a longtime politician, deeply entrenched not only in the world of voting, but, in a U.S. increasingly harried by government intervention, in the world of business.  He knows more businessmen than actual businessmen do because if businessmen don't know politicians, the politicians can strangle their businesses.  He knows their lobbyists and CEOs and many of their thinkers, tinkers, back-door deal-men, and sleazebags.  Is it unlikely he has no insider information, totally hidden from the public?  Isn't it possible he knows somebody we don't know, who says things we don't hear?

The big media have their ear to the ground, too, but they choose when to put their mouths to the megaphone.  We know they knows things and won't tell us — such as, during a year when blacks were portrayed like candidates in The Hunger Games, that the black-on-white crime rate was actually far worse, or that Donald Trump took big steps in fighting the sexual trafficking of children, or that Antifa is attacking grandmas willy-nilly after MAGA rallies (we have pictures).  The list goes on, and their silence (not to sound trite) is deafening.  They do "all the news that's fit to print," and apparently anything that benefits Republicans, or Trump, or white people, or Bible-believing Christians, or harms the left-wing in any way whatsoever, isn't fit.

Beyond this, there are things big media won't be told.  In fact, a left-wing reporter is probably the last person to hear about it.  We heard investigative reporting is almost dead due to tight budgeting, first of all, but you can't just go up to a front company and ask whether it's a front company for a worse company.  At least you won't get a straight answer, because the purpose of a front company is not to look like the actual company.  The bigger the company, the more accountants and lawyers it puts into hiding it.  And both Dominion and Smartmatic are big companies.  

Consider that The Washington Post had an answer to Giuliani almost immediately.  No deep digging, no following the money, no sleuth's hat and magnifying glass, which could take days and possibly even weeks — just an answer*.  Almost the day after Giuliani said it, an answer.  A call to the company and a quick chat and a thank-you, probably, and the end not just of a potentially inconvenient fact, but a game-changer, an election-swinger, an attack on all electronic voting, an exposé on international corporations, and probably the story of the year — in a year full of big and horrible stories.  Every informed person knows that electronic voting is hackable and bug-ridden — apparently except the people who, in this election, at least, completely benefited from it.  Is this suspicious?  Or lucky?  

This brings us to the second point.  We're telling each other it's not luck, and the fat cats, who clearly benefit from its being "luck," are trying to shut us up.  Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, the three juggernauts of mass communication, have gotten in bed with big media, and now all the news that's fit to print is all the truth that's fit to say.  People are being banned for trying to sift new information and share it.  I've personally seen accounts blocked not when a man threatens violence on Antifa, but when he posts pictures of Antifa using violence against him.  (One man among many, a public celebrity known as Philip Anderson to his friends and KingFreeSpeech to his fans, had his teeth knocked out and was called a n----- by white radicals.  He posted a picture with his face bloodied and teeth hanging and was almost immediately banned from Instagram.  I repeat, one man among many.  I, Hypocrite, a Facebook page that simply posts pictures of leftists being leftists, has been deleted several times and is constantly on the ropes.  Garbage Human, which does exactly the same thing, is gone.)

So the question isn't whether we can trust Giuliani.  The question is what other options do we have than well connected individuals?  How can we just write him off as a conspiracy theorist when anything that benefits the right wing is banned not only from the news, but from sharing with friends?  Nobody with a brain, knowing what we know, could expect anything other than conspiracy.  When your story can't be told, you're plainly being conspired against, and the truth-teller, the story-breaker, the prophet, and the investigator are suddenly not the people we counted on to deliver news for generations, but random men and women, here and there, trusted by fans for delivering it, brave for wading into the maelstrom, putting their lives and jobs and families in danger, shouting dangerous, terrifying messages we need and know we need to survive, and having video evidence to back it — in other words, the kinds of men and women responsible for making big media big in the first place.  Interesting people, intelligent people, people who don't trust rich people, people whose mistrust turns into theorizing about people, into asking questions about people, into spying on people.  Adventurers in mystery and uncoverers of conspiracy.  What we knew in better days as journalists.

These brave folks are all going to Parler and MeWe, and now the giants of big and social media, realizing they're about to be challenged by the new newsmen and women of a distrustful public, are calling for government intervention.  And Joe Biden, if he can pull it off, is going to give it to them.  As we heard from Politico and the New York Times, his plan is to hold companies responsible for things users post — thereby shutting off all refuges of communication to anyone suspicious of the "official" narratives. 

So the exodus has begun.  The question is, are we going to the Promised Land — or is Pharaoh going to drag us back to Egypt?  I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say the safety of our republic depends on whether our aunts are allowed to share silly stories — because in the end, the story that all the bigwigs call silly is the one that's going to make or break us.  

Jeremy Egerer is the author of the troublesome essays on Letters to Hannah, and he welcomes followers on Parler and MeWe.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.