U.S. - After a week in which four corporations demonstrated their ability to crush all dissenting voices and silence the most powerful human on the planet, liberals of the nation remain unsure why conservatives seem so worried.
"We've heard this song and dance before," said local liberal Janet Bobinski. "They whine and whine about us systematically eliminating their voices and ruining their livelihoods, blah blah blah. This whole time, they have always been free to create their own little conservative media, university, whatever they want - just so long as it's not on this planet. There's no room on Earth for free speech and whatnot, but there's a whole galaxy out there."
Liberals pointed out that they have always made accommodations for the knuckle-dragging idiots around them. Republican actors could always get work in God's Not Dead 7: God Levels Up, originally shot on iPhone but now being re-filmed on Android. Journalists who believed in reporting actual news were free to leave for Fox News, get plastic surgery, become cult leaders, get fired, and start a podcast. Those in the business world who declined to accept the woke gospel could always grow potatoes in their backyard for survival. Conservative professors could still get jobs as lifeguards at the university's lazy river, and conservative students could go be carpenters or whatever it is that uneducated people do.
"Yes, we've finally taken complete control over all the levers of power and can literally silence anyone we want," crowed Bobinski, taking another bite of parfait. "It's true, conservatives and their backward thinking that guided America to freedom and prosperity no longer have any place in any public sphere. But they can always go make their own media, movies, universities, whatever they want. They just can't use any of the taxes they paid us, products made by any corporation, the internet, or say anything out loud, lest we sue them into oblivion."
At publishing time, Elon Musk had responded to the liberal proposal, "Challenge accepted."