Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter is a grave threat to national security. President Biden must treat it as such, before unrestrained hate speech leads to violence.
Biden's best bet is to "allow" a confederate or agency to find him guilt of fraud. Biden should not be see to do this directly. ... in my rarely humble opinion ...
For most of my life, my childhood and young adulthood and mature adulthood, I was a political agnostic and ignoramus. I watched U.S. politicians and federal, state and local officials use “national security” as an excuse for busting heads and committing international crimes extrajudicially all over the world: Korea, Vietnam, the CIA all over Africa, S. America and Asia, Reagan in Libya, Bush 2 and Cheney in Iraq + black sites + the Guantanamo prison, et cetera and ad nauseum.
And now, no longer politically ignorant, I see people making statements in the name of national security that make complete sense.
Greg naming Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter a threat to national security. Trump using the white minority’s hero worship of him to lead them into the January 6 attack and the fallout from that (voter suppression, fake electors, all of it).
It turns out that the people committing egregious crimes in the name of national security are the true security threats. Truman and Eisenhower invading Korea. 5 (FIVE!) presidents in Vietnam. The CIA in practically every non-European country in the world. Reagan in Libya, and on and on.
The political leaders of the United States have waged covert and overt war on people all over the world. NOW they are complaining about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the Republicans complaining the most vehemently are the ones who support sending the U.S. military and the CIA all over the planet for extrajudicial drone strikes (Trump in Iran) and kidnappings (so-called “renditions”) and on and on.
The true threats to national security, never mind international security (ha!), are right here. People like Schmusk and Trump and Kari Lake top the list, they’re the most visible, but every U.S. leader and U.S. official who commits war crimes in another country is complicit. Even Biden, although he is one of the best at minimizing being a hypocrite. The big invaders always seem to be Republicans.
Great response Roland. Reminder, Henry Kissinger is still alive. he, Nixon, and Gen. Westmoreland were the the biggest fucking Vietnam War liars, helping to kill 58,000 men and women, (actually boys and girls).
I only mention Kissinger in that there is still time to hate him since he is alive.
It's fascinating to me that a war that was fought by presidents of both parties is now considered such a mistake that no one can articulate why we even bothered to fight it.
I can articulate it. It’s the deep, abiding paranoia of the early 20th century. My parents and all my relatives were part of that era where core survival fear generated that overpowering paranoia of the unfamiliar. It fueled the Holocaust, and it fueled the internment of Japanese in the US, it drove J. Edgar Hoover, etc. and that paranoia gave us the domino theory.
Drilled into everyone’s brain: “stop the domino affect of communism.”
Defense contractors ruled back then as they do today.
Fortunate sons of government elitists could somehow, avoid the draft.
It took our generation to protest to stop this madness. However, US just spent 20 years in Afghanistan.
Vietnam: American Architects & Engineers = bandits. Known as P A & E. Putting in infrastructure, sewage plants, water plants, roads, air strips, helipads.
Dead young disadvantaged youth was the currency.
Wars keep trucking along when the government can tell lies to perpetuate craziness.
Old, I mean very old age wise, having dick contests. No women making important decisions.
Yes of course. I was just making a sidebar comment on the rape of the term “national security” by presidents over the years and praising you for applying it correctly.
To address your proposal directly:
Of course I am in complete agreement with the source of your arguments. As usual. As always.
We are seeing in stark relief the limitations of the system of private capitalism. Allowing just a few (usually male, white, straight, bigoted) moguls the power to run large or important enterprises, be it Major League Baseball or major utilities, introduces a fatal flaw. Letting power-hungry and greedy individuals (or small cabals of them) run influential enterprises leads to their premature corruption and eventual accelerated destruction.
Twitter reminds me of PG&E. Both need to be publicly owned and operated in order to stay pure and relatively clean and safe.
I still remember not long ago when the latest head of PG&E asked the state of California what they wanted the company to do with itself. Unfortunately I don’t think they heard me screaming at the top of my lungs “TAKE IT PUBLIC.“
Twitter, same thing. Facebook, same thing. MLB and NFL and FIFA, same thing.
You are probably right that it will take the president taking executive action to save Twitter. And ultimately it will take making Twitter public. Turning it into a public utility. Remember that practically all the companies that are currently public utilities started out as private companies. The Internet is a common resource like power and water. It needs to be treated that way.
Biden is not Bernie Sanders. A Bernie Sanders presidency would seriously consider, imo, taking major Internet companies public and stepping in to save Twitter. But Biden, I’m not sure. I don’t know if he has the vision, or the will. His entire career in politics trained him to be a wheeler dealer, which is why we have the Merchant of Death back in action. His heart is in the right place, as we witness all the public good he has done. I am proud of him and pleased he is my president. But he is even older than me, so I’m not sure he cares enough about Twitter, and I’m not sure he would emulate FDR in this matter as he has in so many other areas.
You picked the right horse. But will he choose to run in this particular race, for the good of our country. Bernie might have, to protect Twitter employees and because he has the vision to see a reimagined capitalist system. It’s protecting the targets of Twitter hate, the innocents who receive death threats, that could possibly goad Biden into action.
Take away his power. Biden, expand the meaning of domestic terrorism, and take him down and/or force him to structure Twitter to eliminate hate, sedition, and anarchy. And start fining him. Eliminate his class of vehicle from buyers credit. (Greg’s idea).
Any and all of your recommendations are warranted but I fail to see how Biden would choose to start that war right now. You can already hear Margie and Klannie Oakley shreaking about it while filing impeachment charges. And you can already hear Gym Jordan bloviating about it during the impeachment hearings. Let the magic of the market deal with Musk, leave the politicians out of it.
I feel fairly secure in confidence that the long arm of the Law is going to catch up with those you just mentioned...and relatively soon. The overall conspiracies are vast, but the key actors and connections are revealed in detail now.
There is no magic in the market, especially for a billionaire with outside resources, however dark. His possible foreign connections, both financial and political, represent major intrusions into our public discourse as far as I can see it and do represent a serious national security risk.
President Biden has an official twitter account; perhaps we should direct our voices there on a steady and increasing basis (and the @FCC as well). The 'squeaky wheel' tactic does work. The strength and repetition of the outcry must be present for political action. Include @POTUS and/or @JoeBiden or @WhiteHouse in all your serious posts and retweets as well good examples and evidence of the degradation of tTwitter discourse.
I'm not all that optimistic that DoJ will go after the Congressional ringleaders of the coup, but their hand may be forced by the public release of the Meadows texts that clearly show evidence of sedition. But I do have confidence that Tesla is in trouble and will continue to see a degradation in stock price, especially now that there are more than a few alternative EVs on the market from Nissan to Chevrolet to BMW, Volvo and Mercedes. Why support an increasingly unhinged Elon when you have better choices?
I will not even think about getting excited about justice until these traitors are in cuffs. And that time may never come (although the early returns on Jck Smith are promising).
I think Elon saw the writing on the wall re his competition before anyone else. Maybe he thinks he can't be beat if he burns it down himself. Not that he'd admit it. He's on to his next genius venture.
Gym will bloviate regardless. It's the primary job of the president to keep us safe. Ignoring Musk's takeover and subversion of our most important social media platform is negligence, IMO.
The war to take Twitter down goes on. Will Biden respond more effectively than Obama did to the Crimea invasion of 2014 & the cyber-war vs the US from 2014-2017? If he doesn't, Putin will be deeper into us then ever and we'll know only by new parts of life not feeling quite right anymore.
Dammit, Greg, this is a terrific piece. I’m so frustrated that nearly everyone I know IRL still doesn’t understand what’s he up to and the natsec risks. POTUS needs to take a page from FDR for sure.
$44B to wreck & destroy your main enemy's (what KGB always called the US) unique social medium institution is well within the cost structure for a major missile system upgrade, a fleet of aircraft carriers or similar instrument of aggression. Russia is the only big power whose main investments are in chaos. This looks like a good-sized one.
Yes, a small price to pay for the real bad guys. Whether Elmo is in one the plan or not, I have no idea. He may just be dumb enough to think he's smart enough to run the thing.
Yes, Charles McCarry said that a good covert action simply helps a well-placed person to do something that he already wants to do. A corollary should be that the actor ideally can be helped without even knowing that there's been help or where it came from.
I believe that Musk is another one of Putin‘s pussies; his mission is to continue the cleave of the American public, distract with confusion and false flags and turn us against each other.
Another malignant narcissist being manipulated by a madman. Heaven knows what Putin has on Leon.
Twitter served as a meeting place for like kind, where we could stay updated as to the latest turns of events in TF-ingG’s DC, consider the reasons and investigate who benefited.
If he blows up that bridge, we scatter and lose the power, influence, camaraderie and support that a common mission brings.
This feels as threatening to national security as the Russian ship traveling up and down the East Coast soon after TF-IngG was inaugurated and mid-country flyovers by RU planes barely reported by MSM.
I quite agree. I don't think people who don't use Twitter all the time can properly grasp just how important it is, how influential...and what its hostile capture means.
I am not as threatened by Twitter's demise under Musk. The all-powerful "market" WILL take care of it. When whatever advertisers are left see what it is becoming, they will flee. When the "...journalists, activists, researchers, doctors, diplomats, and heads of state..." FINALLY get the message that it's a real problem, THEY will flee. Musk will be left with Nazis, seditionists, wanna-be dictators, and Dave Chappelle, and oh yes, a $44 billion boondoggle that no one will want, any more than anyone is clamoring to buy MySpace. It's far easier to leave Twitter than to change your phone number. Everyone should LEAVE TWITTER!
I get what you're saying Greg, and I, in spirit, agree with it, but I can't in good conscience agree that Biden should use any political capital over this, and no matter what, he WILL be using political capital, and it will be much more than he should have to use. The feral monkeys in Congress will go after him for "muh free speech," as will conservative media, and conservative voters, and the ones who are STILL out there waiting for it to all burn. We are too, well, "TOO" name it, for Biden to get involved in this. Something like this will help to usher in an ACTUAL red wave in 2024. It would be a BIG DEAL, and something the non-governing party is made for and is very good at -- "if he comes for Twitter, what's next? Telling you what news channels you can watch? Or what newspapers you can read? Or websites you can go to? They do that in China, you know, and I won't. I'll return America to its FREEDOM-LOVING roots for ALL (just the right) Americans!!" The fear-mongers would love nothing more than something like Biden going after Musk because even THEY know that LAPTOP is going to be laughed out of investigatory existence. Let's see what the market can do before we bring in the big guns.
Agree with this almost completely. Maybe completely. Twitter as the forum for public discourse is dead. Musk killed it. Maybe he thinks that when the extremists throw out the Constitution they'll include that part about having to be a natural born American. Not that they'll want a president. More likely he found a new gig that pays better than Tesla and SpaceX, with less work: taking over for Rupert and Donald pipelining disinformation for dictators (real and wannabe).
Biden seems consistently less troubled by the extremists than I've been. Sometimes I wonder whether he's willing to let things get ugly in order to show people the extent to which they can go, so that they'll then return to more docile styles of old. That would reflect more faith in the American people than I have, and their institutions. But I wonder if it's an accurate read on him. Dude is extremely patient. Unnervingly so. Some might say asleep, but our wagon continues to careen on two wheels spewing rocks into the abyss as it edges away from free fall. I'm not big on faith but he seems to be winning so far.
Wish Putin would just get the chop though. That'd help.
I think being older, as is Biden, helps him stay focused on what's REALLY important, and lets the extremists do what they do. So far, it's just a lot of words, and yes, some attacks, but I'm guessing (because I was only 6-10) that 1964-1968 were worse. There were Vietnam protesters, civil rights protesters (both for and against), assassinations, cities ACTUALLY burning, the peace movement, the sexual revolution, and those are the things I can only think of off the top of my head. To Biden, the stuff going on right now must seem not trivial, but not hair-on-fire insane either. My 90-year-old mom regularly says, "I never thought I'd live to see..." and then whatever the outrage of the day is. But God love her, I don't think she was paying much attention to events in the country and the world, especially in the 1940s and 1960s. Granted, she was only 12 when Hitler was defeated, but something? She went to a Catholic high school, so maybe not.
So far Biden is doing very well. There are times though that I wish he wouldn't commit to run in 2024 just yet, but it is what it is. I think I see him more than just the transitional president from the chaos of Trump and see him more now as "ancient wisdom" that we need to keep those wheels on the track. For even though the current situation may not make him as crazy as we might want to see, I think he's VERY aware of it. The right likes to portray him as a doddering old fool, which is good, because they'll never see it coming if it has to.
As for Putin, when news of him falling and "soiling himself" gets out of the Kremlin, it doesn't seem like he'll be there for very much longer. I can't imagine more debasing, humiliating news for him to come out -- he's Trump with a side of polonium, after all. Even if it were a psyop, he'd have thought of something less embarrassing to himself than that. Still, I can't imagine who DARED leak that story... that's the only thing that gives me pause. A quick bout of lead poisoning would be much faster.
Yeah Biden takes a lot of grief as being a doddering old fool but he seems pretty crafty to me. I have not heard that news about Putin. I've wondered if the intensity of Musk's apparent detergent reflects the depth of Putin's panic. That'd be nice.
Several someones with the brains to do so should create a new Twitter that will outdo this dying Twitter. I left the bird as soon as the frat boy bought it. I'm doing what others are now doing, checking into Post as an alternative.
No, it's just the Post. It is slowly coming up to speed and as of last night had over 400,000 on its waiting list. Heather Cox Richardson is on it but hasn't yet posted anything. I'm hearing from a lot of friends we have in common that they are checking into it. It would not be like jumping aboard an already running machine like Twitter, since they are actively working on it as I write this! I'm not familiar enough with it to say much more at this point.
Biden's best bet is to "allow" a confederate or agency to find him guilt of fraud. Biden should not be see to do this directly. ... in my rarely humble opinion ...
Right -- just like FDR did.
For most of my life, my childhood and young adulthood and mature adulthood, I was a political agnostic and ignoramus. I watched U.S. politicians and federal, state and local officials use “national security” as an excuse for busting heads and committing international crimes extrajudicially all over the world: Korea, Vietnam, the CIA all over Africa, S. America and Asia, Reagan in Libya, Bush 2 and Cheney in Iraq + black sites + the Guantanamo prison, et cetera and ad nauseum.
And now, no longer politically ignorant, I see people making statements in the name of national security that make complete sense.
Greg naming Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter a threat to national security. Trump using the white minority’s hero worship of him to lead them into the January 6 attack and the fallout from that (voter suppression, fake electors, all of it).
It turns out that the people committing egregious crimes in the name of national security are the true security threats. Truman and Eisenhower invading Korea. 5 (FIVE!) presidents in Vietnam. The CIA in practically every non-European country in the world. Reagan in Libya, and on and on.
The political leaders of the United States have waged covert and overt war on people all over the world. NOW they are complaining about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the Republicans complaining the most vehemently are the ones who support sending the U.S. military and the CIA all over the planet for extrajudicial drone strikes (Trump in Iran) and kidnappings (so-called “renditions”) and on and on.
The true threats to national security, never mind international security (ha!), are right here. People like Schmusk and Trump and Kari Lake top the list, they’re the most visible, but every U.S. leader and U.S. official who commits war crimes in another country is complicit. Even Biden, although he is one of the best at minimizing being a hypocrite. The big invaders always seem to be Republicans.
Great response Roland. Reminder, Henry Kissinger is still alive. he, Nixon, and Gen. Westmoreland were the the biggest fucking Vietnam War liars, helping to kill 58,000 men and women, (actually boys and girls).
I only mention Kissinger in that there is still time to hate him since he is alive.
IKR? How the FUCK is Kissinger still alive? He was SoS FIFTY years ago and he was old then. "Only the good die young," indeed.
He has not been in direct sunlight, and Van Helsing has not not staked him yet.
It's fascinating to me that a war that was fought by presidents of both parties is now considered such a mistake that no one can articulate why we even bothered to fight it.
I can articulate it. It’s the deep, abiding paranoia of the early 20th century. My parents and all my relatives were part of that era where core survival fear generated that overpowering paranoia of the unfamiliar. It fueled the Holocaust, and it fueled the internment of Japanese in the US, it drove J. Edgar Hoover, etc. and that paranoia gave us the domino theory.
Drilled into everyone’s brain: “stop the domino affect of communism.”
Defense contractors ruled back then as they do today.
Fortunate sons of government elitists could somehow, avoid the draft.
It took our generation to protest to stop this madness. However, US just spent 20 years in Afghanistan.
Vietnam: American Architects & Engineers = bandits. Known as P A & E. Putting in infrastructure, sewage plants, water plants, roads, air strips, helipads.
Dead young disadvantaged youth was the currency.
Wars keep trucking along when the government can tell lies to perpetuate craziness.
Old, I mean very old age wise, having dick contests. No women making important decisions.
I could be wrong, but I was fucking drafted.
Well said, Roland. But: what I propose here is to SAVE lives and does not require any violence at all.
Yes of course. I was just making a sidebar comment on the rape of the term “national security” by presidents over the years and praising you for applying it correctly.
To address your proposal directly:
Of course I am in complete agreement with the source of your arguments. As usual. As always.
We are seeing in stark relief the limitations of the system of private capitalism. Allowing just a few (usually male, white, straight, bigoted) moguls the power to run large or important enterprises, be it Major League Baseball or major utilities, introduces a fatal flaw. Letting power-hungry and greedy individuals (or small cabals of them) run influential enterprises leads to their premature corruption and eventual accelerated destruction.
Twitter reminds me of PG&E. Both need to be publicly owned and operated in order to stay pure and relatively clean and safe.
I still remember not long ago when the latest head of PG&E asked the state of California what they wanted the company to do with itself. Unfortunately I don’t think they heard me screaming at the top of my lungs “TAKE IT PUBLIC.“
Twitter, same thing. Facebook, same thing. MLB and NFL and FIFA, same thing.
You are probably right that it will take the president taking executive action to save Twitter. And ultimately it will take making Twitter public. Turning it into a public utility. Remember that practically all the companies that are currently public utilities started out as private companies. The Internet is a common resource like power and water. It needs to be treated that way.
Biden is not Bernie Sanders. A Bernie Sanders presidency would seriously consider, imo, taking major Internet companies public and stepping in to save Twitter. But Biden, I’m not sure. I don’t know if he has the vision, or the will. His entire career in politics trained him to be a wheeler dealer, which is why we have the Merchant of Death back in action. His heart is in the right place, as we witness all the public good he has done. I am proud of him and pleased he is my president. But he is even older than me, so I’m not sure he cares enough about Twitter, and I’m not sure he would emulate FDR in this matter as he has in so many other areas.
You picked the right horse. But will he choose to run in this particular race, for the good of our country. Bernie might have, to protect Twitter employees and because he has the vision to see a reimagined capitalist system. It’s protecting the targets of Twitter hate, the innocents who receive death threats, that could possibly goad Biden into action.
And in conclusion:
Substack could go the same route. All it takes is some greedy mofos ruining it in the name of making themselves as rich as possible.
Glad I swapped a NYT subscription for the uber cool writings of Greg Olear on substack ❤
Thanks, Helen!
Likewise‼️ Welcome 🥰
Elon definitely is a threat to nat’l security- he’s fast becoming a domestic terrorist, and, at this point, he should have his 🇺🇸citizenship revoked.
Take away his power. Biden, expand the meaning of domestic terrorism, and take him down and/or force him to structure Twitter to eliminate hate, sedition, and anarchy. And start fining him. Eliminate his class of vehicle from buyers credit. (Greg’s idea).
Some guardrails would be nice.
Indeed. The ultimate purpose of hate speech is violence, and here he is.
I just wrote last night at WaPo that I thought it fascinating to see a terrorist organization form in real time. That IS what we're seeing, IMO.
Yes, I see your point. I suppose the same could be said of the Republican Party.
Any and all of your recommendations are warranted but I fail to see how Biden would choose to start that war right now. You can already hear Margie and Klannie Oakley shreaking about it while filing impeachment charges. And you can already hear Gym Jordan bloviating about it during the impeachment hearings. Let the magic of the market deal with Musk, leave the politicians out of it.
I feel fairly secure in confidence that the long arm of the Law is going to catch up with those you just mentioned...and relatively soon. The overall conspiracies are vast, but the key actors and connections are revealed in detail now.
There is no magic in the market, especially for a billionaire with outside resources, however dark. His possible foreign connections, both financial and political, represent major intrusions into our public discourse as far as I can see it and do represent a serious national security risk.
President Biden has an official twitter account; perhaps we should direct our voices there on a steady and increasing basis (and the @FCC as well). The 'squeaky wheel' tactic does work. The strength and repetition of the outcry must be present for political action. Include @POTUS and/or @JoeBiden or @WhiteHouse in all your serious posts and retweets as well good examples and evidence of the degradation of tTwitter discourse.
I'm not all that optimistic that DoJ will go after the Congressional ringleaders of the coup, but their hand may be forced by the public release of the Meadows texts that clearly show evidence of sedition. But I do have confidence that Tesla is in trouble and will continue to see a degradation in stock price, especially now that there are more than a few alternative EVs on the market from Nissan to Chevrolet to BMW, Volvo and Mercedes. Why support an increasingly unhinged Elon when you have better choices?
I will not even think about getting excited about justice until these traitors are in cuffs. And that time may never come (although the early returns on Jck Smith are promising).
I think Elon saw the writing on the wall re his competition before anyone else. Maybe he thinks he can't be beat if he burns it down himself. Not that he'd admit it. He's on to his next genius venture.
Thanks, good sir. I'm curious to see how long the official accounts remain there. When they leave, that's how we know it's over.
Gym will bloviate regardless. It's the primary job of the president to keep us safe. Ignoring Musk's takeover and subversion of our most important social media platform is negligence, IMO.
The war to take Twitter down goes on. Will Biden respond more effectively than Obama did to the Crimea invasion of 2014 & the cyber-war vs the US from 2014-2017? If he doesn't, Putin will be deeper into us then ever and we'll know only by new parts of life not feeling quite right anymore.
Negligence. Agreed, Greg.
Dammit, Greg, this is a terrific piece. I’m so frustrated that nearly everyone I know IRL still doesn’t understand what’s he up to and the natsec risks. POTUS needs to take a page from FDR for sure.
Thanks, Vince. All we can do is keep sounding the alarm.
Great column.
Glad i never signed up for Twitter of Facebook.
Just having email is addictive enough.
Me too (never signed up for FB and Tw). I’m a loner. Substack and texting, that’s pretty much it.
Twitter the social media platform must be considered a Public Utility, and regulated as such
That would be prudent.
Wise, too
You nailed it.
$44B to wreck & destroy your main enemy's (what KGB always called the US) unique social medium institution is well within the cost structure for a major missile system upgrade, a fleet of aircraft carriers or similar instrument of aggression. Russia is the only big power whose main investments are in chaos. This looks like a good-sized one.
A gift that could keep on giving, like an intelligence source that has the kompromat on virtually everyone
The DMs alone.
Yes, a small price to pay for the real bad guys. Whether Elmo is in one the plan or not, I have no idea. He may just be dumb enough to think he's smart enough to run the thing.
Yes, Charles McCarry said that a good covert action simply helps a well-placed person to do something that he already wants to do. A corollary should be that the actor ideally can be helped without even knowing that there's been help or where it came from.
"Muskovite" ftw
Thanks.
We are in the simulation, obviously...
Surely, your well-placed readers can get this in front of people who have the authority to investigate/prosecute? I mean Greg.
On Twitter, I see people trying. We'll see.
💔
So well said, as always.
I believe that Musk is another one of Putin‘s pussies; his mission is to continue the cleave of the American public, distract with confusion and false flags and turn us against each other.
Another malignant narcissist being manipulated by a madman. Heaven knows what Putin has on Leon.
Twitter served as a meeting place for like kind, where we could stay updated as to the latest turns of events in TF-ingG’s DC, consider the reasons and investigate who benefited.
If he blows up that bridge, we scatter and lose the power, influence, camaraderie and support that a common mission brings.
This feels as threatening to national security as the Russian ship traveling up and down the East Coast soon after TF-IngG was inaugurated and mid-country flyovers by RU planes barely reported by MSM.
I quite agree. I don't think people who don't use Twitter all the time can properly grasp just how important it is, how influential...and what its hostile capture means.
You’re right. I just have to take your word for it, and that’s plenty.
Karen i note you said Leon not Elon.
Leon is the Contractor to hire.
You can see his work in the film
THE PROFESSIONAL.
Mathilda is likely a pro by now.
Plenty of work out there.
Something Elon is not.
I am not as threatened by Twitter's demise under Musk. The all-powerful "market" WILL take care of it. When whatever advertisers are left see what it is becoming, they will flee. When the "...journalists, activists, researchers, doctors, diplomats, and heads of state..." FINALLY get the message that it's a real problem, THEY will flee. Musk will be left with Nazis, seditionists, wanna-be dictators, and Dave Chappelle, and oh yes, a $44 billion boondoggle that no one will want, any more than anyone is clamoring to buy MySpace. It's far easier to leave Twitter than to change your phone number. Everyone should LEAVE TWITTER!
I get what you're saying Greg, and I, in spirit, agree with it, but I can't in good conscience agree that Biden should use any political capital over this, and no matter what, he WILL be using political capital, and it will be much more than he should have to use. The feral monkeys in Congress will go after him for "muh free speech," as will conservative media, and conservative voters, and the ones who are STILL out there waiting for it to all burn. We are too, well, "TOO" name it, for Biden to get involved in this. Something like this will help to usher in an ACTUAL red wave in 2024. It would be a BIG DEAL, and something the non-governing party is made for and is very good at -- "if he comes for Twitter, what's next? Telling you what news channels you can watch? Or what newspapers you can read? Or websites you can go to? They do that in China, you know, and I won't. I'll return America to its FREEDOM-LOVING roots for ALL (just the right) Americans!!" The fear-mongers would love nothing more than something like Biden going after Musk because even THEY know that LAPTOP is going to be laughed out of investigatory existence. Let's see what the market can do before we bring in the big guns.
Agree with this almost completely. Maybe completely. Twitter as the forum for public discourse is dead. Musk killed it. Maybe he thinks that when the extremists throw out the Constitution they'll include that part about having to be a natural born American. Not that they'll want a president. More likely he found a new gig that pays better than Tesla and SpaceX, with less work: taking over for Rupert and Donald pipelining disinformation for dictators (real and wannabe).
Biden seems consistently less troubled by the extremists than I've been. Sometimes I wonder whether he's willing to let things get ugly in order to show people the extent to which they can go, so that they'll then return to more docile styles of old. That would reflect more faith in the American people than I have, and their institutions. But I wonder if it's an accurate read on him. Dude is extremely patient. Unnervingly so. Some might say asleep, but our wagon continues to careen on two wheels spewing rocks into the abyss as it edges away from free fall. I'm not big on faith but he seems to be winning so far.
Wish Putin would just get the chop though. That'd help.
I think being older, as is Biden, helps him stay focused on what's REALLY important, and lets the extremists do what they do. So far, it's just a lot of words, and yes, some attacks, but I'm guessing (because I was only 6-10) that 1964-1968 were worse. There were Vietnam protesters, civil rights protesters (both for and against), assassinations, cities ACTUALLY burning, the peace movement, the sexual revolution, and those are the things I can only think of off the top of my head. To Biden, the stuff going on right now must seem not trivial, but not hair-on-fire insane either. My 90-year-old mom regularly says, "I never thought I'd live to see..." and then whatever the outrage of the day is. But God love her, I don't think she was paying much attention to events in the country and the world, especially in the 1940s and 1960s. Granted, she was only 12 when Hitler was defeated, but something? She went to a Catholic high school, so maybe not.
So far Biden is doing very well. There are times though that I wish he wouldn't commit to run in 2024 just yet, but it is what it is. I think I see him more than just the transitional president from the chaos of Trump and see him more now as "ancient wisdom" that we need to keep those wheels on the track. For even though the current situation may not make him as crazy as we might want to see, I think he's VERY aware of it. The right likes to portray him as a doddering old fool, which is good, because they'll never see it coming if it has to.
As for Putin, when news of him falling and "soiling himself" gets out of the Kremlin, it doesn't seem like he'll be there for very much longer. I can't imagine more debasing, humiliating news for him to come out -- he's Trump with a side of polonium, after all. Even if it were a psyop, he'd have thought of something less embarrassing to himself than that. Still, I can't imagine who DARED leak that story... that's the only thing that gives me pause. A quick bout of lead poisoning would be much faster.
Yeah Biden takes a lot of grief as being a doddering old fool but he seems pretty crafty to me. I have not heard that news about Putin. I've wondered if the intensity of Musk's apparent detergent reflects the depth of Putin's panic. That'd be nice.
Several someones with the brains to do so should create a new Twitter that will outdo this dying Twitter. I left the bird as soon as the frat boy bought it. I'm doing what others are now doing, checking into Post as an alternative.
Washington Post?
No, it's just the Post. It is slowly coming up to speed and as of last night had over 400,000 on its waiting list. Heather Cox Richardson is on it but hasn't yet posted anything. I'm hearing from a lot of friends we have in common that they are checking into it. It would not be like jumping aboard an already running machine like Twitter, since they are actively working on it as I write this! I'm not familiar enough with it to say much more at this point.
Okey doke
I am reflecting on your title, “A Bridge Too Far Right.” Poisoning the goose that lays the golden egg. Poisoning Midas.