A LIE IS NO LONGER A LIE. A WAR IS NO LONGER A WAR.

All that is left are some wildflowers on the table. Everything else is too hot to touch, too controversial to mention, too bitter a pill to swallow. I have lived under tighter and tighter rules of censorship for years now. I know the freedom to speak freely all too well, and how it feels to lose it. The lines tighten every day and not just here. In the states, what you can and cannot say, where and when are driven by self-righteous mob logic, no matter who decides. It is this wish to control others, to dictate what is allowed and what is forbidden, like children deciding they want ice cream for dinner — this is what makes me shrink back, this is what makes me stare at the flowers on the kitchen table and wonder who this could offend, who would happily draw a line in the sand and say “you have crossed it.”

There is no preferential freedom of speech — it exists or it does not. And right now, we are not just entering an age when every word must be carefully vetted before it passes our lips, no we are up to our necks in this era of isolated group think, and language politics. We do not make wars, we “address conflicts.” Charismatic leaders do not lie any more, they speak “clever and compelling” instead. We do not express the complexity of situations, acts and events — no, we judge them in milliseconds, we levy guilty sentences as easily as we pick our noses —…