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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