Thursday, April 14, 2022

Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter

By Jim Geraghty

Thursday, April 14, 2022

 

This morning, Elon Musk announced his intent to purchase all of Twitter outright. If this is a stunt, it’s a stunt where Musk has filled out all the paperwork.

 

There is something indisputably delightful about the way that Musk freaks out elite progressive Democrats, and the way that his full-throated endorsement of free speech absolutely terrifies them. They have grown used to having the power to shut down voices that offend or bother them.

 

(Some of us on the right have a clearer, more full-spectrum view of Musk. There’s a lot to like about his fearless, innovative, Tony-Stark-in-real-life style, particularly Musk’s view on the First Amendment and his opposition to cancel culture; he asked recently, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” But Musk is also way too friendly with the Chinese government, his businesses are built in part on government contracts and subsidies, and he can be erratic in his decision-making at times. He’s a really intriguing, bold, and imaginative guy, but he’s not Tech Jesus.)

 

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s former secretary of labor, who can usually be counted on to offer one of the most unhinged assessments of any given situation, recently wrote that:

 

Musk tweeted that US tech companies shouldn’t be acting ‘as the de facto arbiter of free speech’. . . Musk’s world would be dominated by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science or the common good. That’s Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. And the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth. For the rest of us, it would be a brave new nightmare.

 

You may have noticed that dictators and strongmen are not known for their commitment to free speech. Reich’s evidence that Musk secretly believes in suppressing dissenting voices on Twitter is that Musk blocked him years ago. It is extremely difficult to begrudge Musk for not wanting to listen to Reich any longer.

 

“I choose to not listen to you anymore” is not the same as “I will not let you speak.”

 

For a long time, Twitter’s criteria for acceptable discourse, and what can trigger an account suspension or termination, have seemed vague, arbitrary, ever-shifting, and much more heavy-handed on the right side of the spectrum than on the left. I’ve had many friends get their accounts suspended for what seemed like minor infractions, while we get a persistent stream of “we’re going to put you in the ovens” messages from alt-right maniacs. (I suspect certain trolls behave obnoxiously, get banned, and simply set up a new account under another name and do it again.)

 

Bradley Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, recently wrote a list of ten suggestions for Twitter and Musk that I suspect would benefit Twitter in the long run:

 

1.      “Leave more content up. Twitter has rules about posts, and the bulk of enforcement is done through artificial intelligence. The algorithms err on the side of taking down material that might violate Twitter rules. Instead, they should err on the side of leaving questionable material up until there has been human review.

 

2.      More aggressively screen complaints. Currently, there is too much bad-faith reporting done for the purpose of getting controversial, but legitimate, content taken down. For every 10 content moderators tasked with taking down content, hire a content defender, whose job is to advocate for keeping or putting content back up. Err on the side of speech, not censorship.

 

3.      Create an easy-to-use, rapid, transparent appeals process for takedowns of material, and especially for banned or suspended accounts.

 

4.      Stop caving in to organized campaigns to remove particular speakers. Twitter doesn’t have to take sides in the culture wars. Say nothing, and let the controversy subside.”

 

As Andrew Stuttaford recently summarized:

 

Musk’s politics are, like the man himself, hard to pin down. He has described himself in numerous ways, including “openly moderate,” the inevitable “socially liberal and fiscally conservative,” and even as a “socialist” (although with a characteristically eccentric definition of what that dreaded word means). It’s difficult to miss, however, the libertarian(ish) streak running through a good number of his pronouncements, albeit one lacking the dogmatism so often associated with capital-L libertarians. It’s safe to say that he gets free speech.

 

A Musk-run Twitter would be different — and, at least in this area, almost certainly better.

 

It Is Long Past Time for Dianne Feinstein to Retire

 

Way back on December 10, 2020, I wrote that, “The U.S. Senate is not supposed to be a nursing home.” At the time, The New Yorker magazine had just published a deeply unflattering portrait of Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, suggesting that she was going senile and her staff could no longer hide it.

 

Of course, many of us had noticed the pattern of Feinstein insisting she hadn’t said what she had said the day before:

 

For quite a while now, if you paid consistent attention to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), you would notice that she would make a statement, and then the next day insist she had never made that statement. Back in 2018, during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, I laid out cases where the octogenarian Feinstein had publicly doubted the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford and then later that day issued a statement that she found her credible, changed her explanation of why she hadn’t released a Judiciary Committee transcript, claimed to have been pressured on the decision and then insisted she had never said she was pressured, gave two contrary and opposing answers about a government shutdown, and then said she couldn’t remember why she had hesitated to share Ford’s letter. I noted a Republican senator once told me that it was easier to work with Feinstein herself than her staff; Feinstein would seem amenable in a meeting and then her staff would insist she hadn’t agreed to the discussed solution.

 

Lots of politicians are shameless liars — and that’s bad enough. But videos of Feinstein’s denials that she had said what she had said a day earlier raised the possibility of something even worse: She genuinely didn’t remember what she had said and done not long ago. We can simultaneously oppose Feinstein’s views, hate seeing her reach this condition, and fairly ask if Californians or anyone else were well-served by her remaining in office.

 

Now, nearly a year and a half later, the San Francisco Chronicle did another “expose” on the open secret that Feinstein is far too old to function as a U.S. senator:

 

Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.

 

“It’s bad, and it’s getting worse,” said one Democratic senator. This person said that within the Senate, Feinstein has difficulty keeping up with conversations and discussions.

 

There is spectacularly toxic arrogance when a lawmaker and the lawmaker’s staff agree that retirement or resignation is unthinkable. Does the name David Wu ring a bell? The guy in the tiger suit? He was a Democratic congressman from Oregon who lost his marbles — pardon me, “struggled with mental health issues” is the preferred euphemism. His “senior staffers were so alarmed by his erratic behavior that they demanded he enter a hospital for psychiatric treatment.” But at that point they didn’t say he shouldn’t keep serving in Congress!

 

This has little to do with partisanship or ideology; Feinstein is a Democrat and is likely to be replaced by an even more progressive Democrat. No, this is about ego and not wanting to see anyone new in that office. But Californians deserve an actual senator, not an 88-year-old woman who doesn’t remember conversations from the day before.

 

Oh, and out of curiosity, does the current president have any views on when a person becomes too old to effectively perform the duties of a high-level federal-government office?

 

ADDENDUM: Yesterday, Joy Behar of The View contended that, “The Supreme Court is poised to pass a bill contradicting the New York City State laws . . . they want people running around with guns.”

 

I don’t watch The View. I only see “highlights” when something particularly ridiculous happens, but the show’s biggest problem is not the progressive views of most of the hosts. No, the show’s biggest problem is that it is a show largely about current events, hosted by several celebrities who don’t know much about current events, and who adamantly refuse to learn anything about current events.

 

I mean, there is something aggressively stupid about a person who has strong views about how government should work lamenting that “the Supreme Court is poised to pass a bill.” This morning, I asked my younger son when his classes covered the role of the legislative and judicial branches; he said fourth grade. A room full of properly educated nine-year-olds has a better understanding of how the U.S. government works than Behar.

 

Some of the hosts regularly have no idea of even the basics of the issue that they’re talking about, and for some inexplicable reason, they seem to hate doing any homework on the topics they’re discussing.

 

We’re all born ignorant, but some of us try to do something about it.

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