CSotD: Twittering While Rome Burns
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Horrified hilarity continues to build over at Twitter, and Joy of Tech confirms the ongoing disaster while sarcastically wondering if Himself is learning anything from it.
The conspiracy theory is that Elon Musk decided to piss away $44 billion to acquire a platform worth, perhaps, $25 billion, and then drive it into the ground in order to distract American voters from the pending election.
The fact that this theory makes no sense can readily be answered by asking, “Then what does?”
To answer that question, it’s helpful to remember that the expression, “I have a cunning plan” comes from Blackadder’s foolish, filthy sidekick, Baldrick, whose cunning plans never led to anything faintly resembling success.
It’s entirely possible that Musk had a cunning plan, but it’s equally possible that it made no sense at the time and has not gained any traction since.
The best I can come up with is that he made an incredibly foolish boast and then found himself backed into a corner where he felt compelled to follow through, come what may.
At which point, to paraphrase Vito Corleone, “I never knew until this day that it was Valerie Bertinelli all along.”
For those who missed it, sweet little Barbara from One Day At A Time challenged Musk’s cunning plan to sell verification of identity instead of demanding proof by changing her screen name to “Elon Musk” and posting hilarious parodies of his self-important proclamations as well as pro-Blue political messages His Lordship would never have said.
Proving that the way to get under the skin of a man-baby is to have a pretty girl laugh at him:
The real laugh is that his hysterical reaction is far funnier than anything she could have invented.
Side Note: I had dismissed Bertinelli as “the cute one” on that sit-com until she revealed on-line that the entire family was regularly whipping hubby/dad Eddie Van Halen’s ass at “Guitar Hero.” Which, in retrospect, raises the question, “If Eddie can take it, why can’t you?” which, in turn goes back to the classic philosophical question, “If Sherman’s horse can take it, why can’t you?”
Well, we know Elon can’t take it, though that still doesn’t reveal why the fool strung his fortune out on such an obviously dunderheaded enterprise.
Perhaps, as David Rowe suggests, he’s only a bird in a gilded cage.
Rowe unveils a more substantive, if no more flattering, portrait, outlining what is at stake for America and thus the world in tomorrow’s elections.
Watching Musk self-immolate is amusing, but this pair carry a great deal more weight, and Rowe’s done a lovely job of capturing Marjorie Taylor Greene’s clueless, confident grin as well as Trump’s egotism and a symbol of the rhetoric with which he has stirred division and encouraged violence throughout the past six years.
The latest twist, BTW, is the release of an unredacted report on how the Trump administration directed Homeland Security to find terrorism in the disturbances in Portland, and to assert a connection between the riots and Antifa, despite there being no such link found.
This is all of a piece with the issue raised by Clay Jones, of people — primarily people of color — being denied their right to vote.
Some of this comes through Florida’s arrest of former felons who had been told by the state that their franchise had been restored, and who were then later arrested for illegal voting, while wealthy retirees in the Villages were cheerfully voting both in Florida and then again in the states from which they had originally come.
A more vicious form of voter suppression appears to be happening in Georgia, where a new law allows private citizens to challenge voter registration, resulting in thousands of challenges which voters — many of whom have been voting for years — must address one at a time in order to maintain their rights.
And Steve Brodner addresses a more wide-spread attack on the sanctity of the vote, a move to vote election deniers into key position from which they can dictate which results will be honored and which will be overturned by partisan legislatures and equally corrupt secretaries of state empowered by a possible SCOTUS decision that would uphold the MAGA theory that state courts should not be allowed to oversee elections.
There was a time when having such a hare-brained interpretation headed for the Supreme Court would be met with laughter, but, as Ann Telnaes points out, SCOTUS can no longer maintain in-house control of itself, and Chief Justice Roberts, once seen as a moderating influence among the Court’s factions, cannot even seem to control Virginia Thomas’s dutiful spouse.
Thomas was the sole justice to vote in favor of Donald Trump’s attempt to shield his records from legal scrutiny, but this article from the American Enterprise Institute assures us it had nothing to do with Ginni’s election-denial activism.
That article was written by John Yoo, whose name may seem familiar. He was also the author of the memoranda justifying torture of POWs.
Which always reminds me of John McCain’s opposition to torture, though, of course, he was prejudiced by knowing WTF he was talking about.
Experience must give way to ideology in today’s GOP.
Ruth Marcus has a substantial post-mortem on John Roberts’ tenure as a moderating influence, but, at this point, if he’s not as clueless as he’s portrayed by Telnaes, he is, at best, bailing water with a pitchfork.
In Pros & Cons (KFS), Samuel speaks for us older folks. A decade ago, Barack Obama had just been re-elected and there remained a modicum of hope, despite the clamoring of the hordes at the gates.
Perhaps, however, the problem was less the slavering hordes than the comfortable do-nothings Cathy Wilcox depicts, gently tamping down the childish illusions of the next generation and assuring them that all would be well.
I have some hope for tomorrow — by which I mean Tuesday — in that three of my granddaughters are now old enough to vote, and they were already leading walk-outs and registering voters before they could vote themselves.
If there is hope, it will come from Gen Z, and from reprobates like Clyde, bless their impatient, unforgiving hearts.
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