Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

It is more useful to think events like the Capitol incident as causing long-lasting damage to democracy, and there is a non-negligible possibility that societal schisms will widen, as opposed to heal. What that will look like in the future is anybody's guess.

I think looking at this issue with the example of "Parler" may be missing the point. The issue worth debating is surely not whether Amazon made the right decision. Of course they did. The issue worth discussing is who gets to make this decision in light of what the decision implies. Due to how much businesses are choosing[1] to rely on companies like Google and Amazon as service providers, these "tech" companies can easily kill other businesses by denying service, without violating any laws in the process.

These "tech" company middlemen are generally not treated like utilities under existing laws but the question is whether they are being treated as such by customers, the public.

1. Perhaps not so much consciously choosing as being persuaded by tech company salespeople and, IMHO, biased "media coverage" (=hype).

Anyone who has studied American history knows that there's been a fairly recent revisionist movement to convince everyone that our republic is actually a democracy. The truth is that this country has always been a republic. The founders of our government hated tyrannical democracy.

Hamilton: "It has been observed by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved, that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."

John Adams: "Democracy, will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes, and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mold itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues, and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."

Adams again: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide."

Ben Rush: "A simple democracy is the devil's own government."

Madison: "Where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure."

Madison again: "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

I could go on and on.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the left has fully endorsed this. Trump lost because turnout was high -- because the left shoehorned executive actions through elections commissions and governors under the guise of COVID. They increased turnout by mailing everyone a ballot. The left fired up their base and increased turnout by promising direct checks into voters bank accounts. They increased turnout by promising free healthcare. The left wants to double down and provide citizenship to 11 million illegal aliens, forever increasing their voter base. And finally, most brazenly, they want to abolish the electoral college to ensure that their coastal majorities can never be overridden.

So no, democracy isn't dying in the US. We're more democratic than we've ever been, and there's no sign of it stopping.

It's the republic that's in danger.

Even if this was an insurrection, I don't see how that means you need to clamp down on freedom of speech.