With some minor edits you could write this piece about Joe Rogan as well. The left drove him and his audience away like they wanted to watch Trump get reelected.
That's mainly why there's no Joe Rogan equivalent on the left. There's no Joe Rogan on the right, either. Joe Rogan has a jumble of politics that 95% agree with whoever the last person he talked to was. That's more or less the mental gymnastics required to go from supporting Bernie to endorsing Trump.
The problem is no one like Joe Rogan can represent a political faction that demands complete compliance and writes people off as terrible if they oppose them on so much as a single issue. The left is the reason there's no "left Joe Rogan," because no one worth listening to will ever meet their stringent purity tests.
Joe Rogan was pro pot, pro gay marriage, pro choice and extremely permissive on just about every social issue. I cant recall what his every thought was on transexualism, but I would hazard he believes we should treat people by their preferred gender expression. He was really of the left. There is no Joe Rogan equivalent because the left had Joe Rogan exactly. The guy voted for Biden. Thats pretty left in my book. He simply was doctrinaire about it. His thinking isnt that disciplined and his interests aren't that focused on the project of The Cathedral or the Blob or whatever you want to call the endlessly interlocked amalgam of causes that is the Global Left. The urge to reorder society to make it perfect doesnt appeal to a lot of people, in any political camp. Democrats in America has just lately become consumed by this quest for Utopia and see anyone who opposes them as stopping them from getting everything they want in life.
Joe Rogan is now Right in the same way he was Left which is to say its a description other people can hang on him but one he doesn't embrace himself. Going from Bernie to Biden to Trump was entirely the work of the puritanical streak dominant in modern leftism.
Was voting for Biden really "pretty left"? He won the popular vote by 4.5 percentage points - that would put a lot of people into the "pretty left" bucket.
I totally agree that Joe Rogan has never really been of "the Left" or of "the Right". He was generally left-sympathetic until enough people from the left made themselves unsympathetic through all the things you describe.
Going from Bernie to Biden to Trump is very easy to explain for me: he's basically sympathetic to the Bernie position, partially shared by Trump, that The People Running The Things are no good and if only someone could get rid of them things would be a lot better. Bernie looked like the man for the task, but then he lost and it was Biden vs. Trump and Rogan unenthusiastically chose Biden. Four years of constant condemnation and mockery from progressives later, and he's unenthusiastically chosen Trump over Harris. I suspect he would have taken Bernie over any of them all along.
I did just argue in another comment that Zuckerberg's realignment was inevitable, because the left and Zuckerberg's long-term trajectories were simply incompatible.
But Rogan? I agree, that was a simple unforced error.
As an old person with plenty of time, I read a lot of blogs, both right- and left-oriented, plus the comment sections. It seems to me, experientially but quite unscientifically, that the leftist sites (particularly the comment sections) use a lot (I mean a whole lot) of scatological and genital references. It almost seems as if they believe flinging poo and grabbing their genitals while screaming in ALL CAPS is a helpful means of persuasion. I personally do not find that to be so.
I did debate in high school and college. The one most important lesson I learned was that the bottom of the ballot said "The team that did the better debating was_____"
It didn't say "the team that was right" or "the team that I morally agreed with", it focused on how good you were at the act itself of persuasion in an opposed discussion. The left is convinced that simply because they are right, they have already won. The teams that take the other side are never honestly opposed to them. Its grating and off putting and creates enemies where people could be persuaded to stay neutral or or even friendly.
This lesson will be repeated as many times as it takes.
And to anyone who wants to add "the right does this too", great. Have fun with that. But it certainly seems like in the judgement of the public, one side does it way worse and way more, and as people weight the choices, they seem to be backing away from leftism as it is currently practiced in America. Maybe they still have the tendencies to be left, and would never find a happy place inside the Republican tent, but that doesnt mean they should be treated as barbarian scum.
On "the right does this too" and which side is worse, I think the distinction isn't in level of vitriol or even frequency, it's in who they're willing to do it to. In the Very Online Left, you win super huge social cred points if you can do it to someone who is already left of center, but just not far enough. Those are the most prized scalps. It's like this sado-masochistic thing where they purity test each other and whoever survives is the winner. (Not the election winner, of course, cos this makes you lose elections. But the comments section winner, for sure.)
I don't see this as much in the Very Online Right, with the exception of MAGA vs. Never Trump, which is just as vitrioloic as progressives vs. normie Dems. But if the topic isn't Trump, and it's just some regular right wing culture war thing, the hardcore folks will still be tolerant of the not-as-hardcore-but-somewhat-on-their-side folks.
I was going to make the same point, but I think it extends past the Very Online contingents. Right wingers tend to either invent an issue or blow it way out of proportion, but then the language they use is that they want to protect YOU from this threat. I will keep those bastards from hurting YOU, dear Normie. And the average person thinks the right wingers are a bunch of assholes, but they are an asshole on their side. Maybe we use this asshole thing to help me out and protect me from this Threat.
Left wingers don't act that way. They will find an issue that most people basically agree on (racism is bad, don't pollute, corporate fraud is dangerous, etc.) but then stake out the most extreme position on that issue. And then they will get mad at YOU, dear Normie, for not being sufficiently committed to the issue. And in fact, the reason this Threat happens is because of YOU not doing enough to stop it. And regular people generally don't like being attacked, and they also start to think there's nothing they can do to please the left winger.
The right winger is over there promising to protect us from things, and here this left winger is blaming me for things. Not too hard to figure out who has the more persuasive pitch, in the abstract.
That's a good take. I'd just add (and it doesn't sound like you disagree) that when the right wingers signal "I will keep those bastards from hurting YOU, dear Normie", they're including close to 50% of the country among "those bastards". It's not just Soros and AOC and Fauci and Rapinoe, it's everyone who votes Democrat.
To be fair, the hard left does this too: all Republicans might as well be fascists. But, as you point out, they add in the Normies, who are complicit with all those fascist Republicans because they... I dunno, still read the New York Times even after [insert outrage-inducing article here]. The hard right are more likely to see Normies as naive but basically decent, much as they were before they bravely gulped down their red pills.
The right is the current home of the "Greed is Good" speech, and Gordon Gecko at least does you the favor of being upfront about it. Elon Musk is selling dreams of Mars and the future while the most famous leftists (I have trouble hear naming any out in public leftist who has similar public persona) are selling endless drama and navel gazing about how awful the past and present is.
This is the question I ask the Dem social media universe daily. What part of insulting, mocking, bullying, and trying to silence half of Americans makes you think it’s a good way to gain new voters?
I didn’t suggest both sides aren’t guilty of the same thing- that was an assumption made. The post was specifically talking about Democrats language.
In fact if you’d read any of my other social media platforms you’d see quite the opposite. No ‘side’ is holier than thou - my ‘issues’ only come in when one side pretends to be. And quite a few people aren’t willing to even meet in the middle on that basic truth.
And it continues. All I hear is how Zuckerberg et al are grovelling cowards before Trump, no one ever seeming to suggest that maybe these corporate titans are not social justice warriors and are finally doing what they want.
Let me make one suggestion, from the libertarian-leaning side. If you implement the sort of Big State that Democrats seem to support, there are a lot of rules and regulations. Even when we try to make those rules as objective as possible, there is wiggle room-- differences of interpretation, vagueness, ambiguity, prosecutorial discretion. And, let’s face it; for decades we haven’t even tried to make the rules objective and clear.
Which means that the party in power has a lot of ability to screw with successful enterprises. Is it any wonder that Zuck sucked up to the left when they seemed ascendant and is now sucking up to Trump? If you find that unseemly, reduce the size and power of the Big State.
Genius! I have argued for years that it is very bad if the president and government in general has a lot of power. It sounds pretty awesome when the people who agree with me are in power, but it suddenly isn't so good when the roles are reversed. If only we had a constitution that intentionally made it hard for the government to be so controlling....
Now congress has abdicated so much power to the president that we are following the path that the founders saw inevitably led to far more suffering.
Hmmm. Maurer's becoming one of those centrist liberals who spend every waking hour blaming liberals for literally everything in the world. So now it's progressive's fault that Zuckerberg is sucking up to Trump because they were mean to him, and he therefore has no choice but to disappear up Trump's arsehole. Obviously, Trump himself was the victim of this mean liberal abuse when he was hanging around the Clintons, and so now cannot be expected to be anything other than a dictatorial egomaniac. Bloody libs- is there NOTHING they won't destroy?
The joke is that this kind of self-flagellation beloved of the centre-left is a weird kind of egomania, a conviction that literally everything is the responsibility of fellow 'libtards', like those on the left-left who put 100% of the blame for Trump onto the 'centrist left' giving people NO CHOICE but to vote for Neo-fascists because they weren't far enough left. As opposed to it being, basically, the fault of people who want to vote Neo-fascist.
Zuckerburg is (technically) a grown-up. His craven grovelling to Trump (or his Damascene Conversion, who knows) is his responsibility. He's not a six year-old- he has moral responsibility for his decisions. Believe it or not, much as this might upset the solipsistic and self-loathing liberal mindset, he's not 'the fault' of people being mean about him on Facebook. He's one of the richest and most powerful arseholes on Earth.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that my priorities — personal freedoms, a higher standard of living for the working poor, action on climate change — are liberal ones. But I also think that the conversations about what Republicans are up to don’t do much at this moment to move us towards those goals, and they’re boring to boot — do you really need another column telling you that Trump is bad? I write a lot about intra-left disputes because that’s where I think the good conversations are.
If there's one thing that's always served the left well, it's their genius for expending 90% of their energy taking lumps out of each other. If only the right could learn some of that, they might just be in with a chance.
I would think a man in your position would recognize Mark Zuckerberg as one of the most mockable people in our celebrity billionaire stable. Are you honestly saying that a select handful of folks went too far?
One of the consistent themes of progressives is that they tend to focus on the role of societal influences on individual behavior, including excusing criminal activity because the criminal actor was marginalized by society.
Now you're here to tell me that Zuckerberg's actions are solely due to him, and not at all due to being marginalized by progressives?
The usual answer is “but he’s RICH!” Seeing anyone as fundamentally a human with human thoughts is a bridge too far. Try to get someone like John to do much as admit that even billionaires are humans. It’s impossible. They can’t do it.
Oh good grief, really? Do you work for Hallmark? But yes, you're right of course, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is "human". I've tried, but as you so perceptively say, I just can't. He's a fucking six-slice toaster.
Come on SVF, surely you can manage better than that.
This column isnt about whose "fault" it is. There is no denial that Zuckerberg has agency here. It's a cri d'couer of sorts to be very aware of what morally superior messaging costs you. There is a tone in large segments of both left (and right) camps that if you disagree with whats "the right thing to do" you are automatically an enemy. Even 10 percent disagreement makes you 100 percent an enemy.
Zuckerberg is just a large and obvious example. The wealth he accumulated came about because of something he (made/stole/got lucky to be at the forefront of) and that wealth literally didnt exist until social media made it possible. The guy is just now entering his middle age. What happened in his story though is that as he was entering the end of his youth and as his empire was reaching its pinnacle, he suddenly found himself growing ever so slightly apart from the leftists he had been wrapped up in. This small sliver of daylight, where as he began to change his thinking even a little bit, immediately started to make him an enemy. I think when part of the blame for Hillary loss was laid at his feet he felt chastised and went "Ok, Ill do what they want me to do" and after eight years of it not being good enough, he said "F It, Im done trying".
Whats important about this column and what it is crucial leftists understand if they want to stop becoming off putting twats about things, is that this story arc is being repeated millions of times over in the lives of middle and working class people. If you found yourself in 2016 being shocked Trump won, and also blamed for it when you really had nothing to do with Hillary being an awful choice for candidate, you suddenly found youself being injured and insulted at the same time. Zuckerberg spent the last eight or so years trying to do everythign needed to be a "responsible" business leader int he eyes of the left, and since the rules of what that means are essentially Calvinball (where white rich people will never ever score a point let alone win), this end was inevitable.
Dont care about Zuckerberg. Insult him all you like. You can run him down. He doesnt mind too much since he has a level of wealth hat would make Cornelius Vanderbilt sit up and take notice. Just remember that millions of voters who see themselves represented by Zuckerberg (and they do exist) see what you say about him and assume you mean it about them. Same for Trump, Harris, Biden et al. The reason you should stop flensing the skin off of heretics is because you create more dedicated enemies than you do cowed subjects. Zuckerberg isnt a martyr but he is being made an example of in leftist circles and the example is "This is what we will do to you if you anger us"
What do you think the logical consequences of that message will be
Yup. There's a reason no one other than his followers ever liked Jerry Falwell. The loudest elements of the left over the past decade or so have behaved like the Moral Majority of the 80s and 90s, and that's no way to win elections.
I was pretty firmly on the left, and this is exactly why I no longer consider myself one. The puritanism of the 1990's religious right is now dominant in the 2020's illiberal left.
What none of the 'don't be mean to people you disagree with because that makes them vote Trump/feel really hurt' camp never seem to answer is why this policy has worked so brilliantly for Republicans. There's a constant refrain of 'be nice and understanding to everyone you disagree with 'cos otherwise you're an arsehole and you deserve to lose. It's funny that this is said by no-one one on the Right, ever. As
I don't know whose "philosophy" that is, exactly. But you're right, of course; it was Trump's thoughtful, sensitive and balanced habit of personal introspection that undoubtedly won him the election, a noble trait that's shared by his team, and the Republican Party in general. If the nasty libs can have the humility to learn that from him, they might be in with a chance.
My guess is that Zuck never wanted to do any of the aggressive content moderation in the first place but caved to the pressure, and now that it's seemingly backfired his former self is doing a victory lap.
The joke is that "former self" was a nasty little fratboy who got unspeakably rich from a site that was for other nasty little fratboys to 'rank' the girls in their college for sexual attractiveness. Sorry, will pointing that out trigger poor Mark to shift yet further to the Right? See, I've done it again. All my fault.
You're mistaken - Jeff hasn't changed. This what normal people are supposed to do after a loss - look inward. Bitching about what the other side doesn't help; you can't control that. So calling out the self-owns that liberals committed (and pointing the way to how it could be done better) is much more helpful than just complaining about the other side. Jeff's responding to the moment.
This would make sense if Liberals ever did anything BUT bitch about other Liberals.
Ask yourself what's been the most successful strategy recently- the endless nazel-gazing and self-loathing of Liberals, or the 'couldnt give a fuck what anyone else thinks' confidence of the Right. Answers on a postcard.
Could you apply this same logic to, say, 1988? Bill Clinton's success in 1992 is widely credited to his willingness to say out loud that voters aren't buying what Democrats are selling, and it's time to repudiate the positions that are turning voters off. If that's blaming his own side, it seems to have been the right call.
You suggested earlier that blaming the progressive left amounts to letting Trump voters off the hook for choosing to vote Trump. I think we can do both though. We can say a bunch of voters made the wrong choice in voting for Trump, while observing that the progressive left's tactics helped them make that choice.
As for the "couldn't give a fuck what anyone else thinks" confidence of the Right... didn't serve them very well four years ago. And it won't serve them well four years from now if they just spend the whole time acting like assholes and the economy doesn't happen to improve a bunch. Bad on-the-ground conditions + unlikeable people in charge = voters kick you out. There's an element of luck in that, since the President has far less influence on "the economy" than voters give credit/blame, but being unlikeable doesn't help things. MAGA may have won this round, but they ain't popular, and they'll shoot themselves in the foot just as readily as any woke inquisitors.
Are you struggling to understand the difference between assessing strategy and determining what could be changed and "navel-gazing"? If you don't understand the difference between those things, then I guess you're going to be stuck.
"His craven grovelling to Trump (or his Damascene Conversion, who knows) is his responsibility"
Sure, but given that he *didn't* bend the knee during Trump 1.0, it still seems worth interrogating what, specifically, motivated him to change course, and "after four years of alliance, the Left turned on him immediately after regaining power" is a difficult-to-ignore part of that story.
Would it be too much to ask that he, as a powerful, educated and intelligent person, has the responsibility to make his moral and political choices based on ethics, reasoning and decency, rather than aligning himself to a neo-fascist because some people were a bit mean to him? Is this kind of whiny, self-pitying moral vacuity that the 'left' is now supposed to defer to in our leading figures?
It's not progressives' fault that Zuckerberg is sucking up to Trump any more than it would be my fault for getting shot after sleeping with a drug kingpin's girlfriend.
Zuckerberg went along to get along, just like a lot of people did during the past 15-20 years. The left had a cultural enforcement arm that it wielded ruthlessly. This also means that the support had a shakier foundation than appeared.
But just like the burst real estate bubble of 06-08 ended the multi-decade Reign of The Finance Bro, the post COVID era through Trump's election ended the Reign of The AWFL Theater Kids which followed 06-08.
Not sure who is going to be ascendent, but we can close the book on this particular era.
"The left had a cultural enforcement arm that it wielded ruthlessly. This also means that the support had a shakier foundation than appeared."
Yup, this. That so many people are turning on the holier-than-thou wing of the left right now says a lot. This is pent up anger and frustration coming out.
I only know her from one thing that overlapped with my spheres of interest. For someone whose self-presentation is very "holding the powerful to account", she sure was in Sam Altman's camp when he was fired as CEO of OpenAI for lying to the board.
Oooh, can you say what about? I’m curious. I have avoided engaging with any of her output, probably because I thought her “devastating glasses” persona might thinly veil major blind spots and rancid hypocrisy (and it would just be par for the course with NYT opinion writers of her tenure).
Start with the owners of Substack, and ask them about Kara. She and her mate Casey are upset that Substack doesn’t moderate content (i.e. cancel / delete) to their liking.
I've been talking shit about Zuckerberg and predicting him turning against the lefties since before it was cool.
But I'm going to argue that it was inevitable that Zuckerberg took a rightward turn, no matter what we did. Because... well, he's not stupid. While Twitter-to-Bluseky socialists rot their brains and convince themselves posting guillotine memes is praxis, there's a strong movement by lefty and center-left guys like Haidt to say, "huh, maybe this social media panopticon thing isn't super-great for us". Whereas a more pro-business has a natural instinct to not regulate things, and social media is indeed a thing.
The cultural dominance of a particular strain of left-wing thought inverted this relationship for a while, but it was never going to last. Zuckerberg probably wishes he didn't have to deal with Donald Trump, but he wasn't crying when he was kyboshing the DEI scold department either.
We both agree that Zuckerberg stopped kowtowing to the wokie weirdos as soon as it became clear their time was in the past. I just don't think this could have happened any other way. It was always going to come to this, and pretending otherwise would have been a mistake. And yes, a mistake an embarrassing number of lefties made, somehow, despite talking a whole lot of shit about him.
Maybe he realized the left have a flat-earth worldview and their policies lead to despair rather than any kind of flourishing for Americans that can't self insulate through their own wealth? Zuck, like many billionaires, fell for the left wave hook, line, and sinker until they applied even the smallest amount of pressure and scrutiny, and as we know, the left claims just never hold up (police brutality, clean energy). Their "big plans" seem to ignore wholesale material realities because they don't fit the narrative. When we naively adopt their policies, chaos ensues.
I listened to Rogan from 2013 to 2020. He was totally apolitical and just talked about guy stuff like hunting, fighting, working out, getting fucked up, etc. During COVID he had good faith skepticism of the leftist mania, and as a result, became a target of the left. Luckily he had truth on his side and survived a decent attempt at canceling him. He's just a bro, but in the era of "toxic masculinity", I suppose that coupled with his smart resilience to brain dead left policies to be an enemy of the left. It's really funny to me to see people just superficially label him as some sort of right winger (same with Musk) simply because he demands better evidence for huge, expensive, and destructive policy initiatives.
Zuck is a total clam, and probably just an opportunist, but I don't think his recent turn is fueled by anything else than his realization that the left is crazy, stupid, and destructive--despite their apparent good intentions.
Musk doesn't have the "I'm just a simple bro" excuse though; he's an insufferable twat who lives with his head completely up his own ass. Rogan is a normal guy who got dogpiled for being a little too successful and a little too independent minded.
I don't get the Musk hate. He obviously a complete weirdo douchebag but one of the most valuable humans to modern society and he has a bull shit radar. I think he went as far as he could trying to be a good blue teamer but everyone has their limits. The attacks from the left just solidified his position against them, and it is infinitely easy to mock the left. I don't know that I've ever met a super high performing person that wasn't a narcissist. Wouldn't want to have a beer with him, but alienating him and doubling down on attacking him was the wrong move.
I don't think trying to turn Musk into your enemy is a politically useful move, but I think there are a ton of legitimate reasons to dislike him.
At the top of my list personally is that he acts brazenly above the law and I think that is bad. He doesn't like SEC rules so he just violates them openly because he is too rich to face consequences. I think that is corrosive to society.
Examples? Gensler's SEC was the most oppressive in history and his tenure there was an abject failure and a total joke. Musk was absolutely targeted by the justice department after not playing ball.
Musk buying Twitter was a godsend to public discourse.
Public discourse has no improved one iota since Musk bought Twitter. All he did was gain control of a tool that makes society worse. My faith that he does not have his finger on the scale at Twitter as much or more than the past leadership is nil.
He allowed people to express their opinions on areas that were silenced before. That's a fact at this point. If it weren't for X and Substack, we would have been stuck with the Biden Press.
You should brush up on SEC regulations on communications with investors. I work for an SEC regulated firm and they are impossible to follow to the letter of the law. They are always changing, and the SEC is handing out 8 figure fines for stepping over red tape (in this case, texting with clients). Musk was definitely careless in communications, but to say he "acts Brazenly above the law" is a stretch. He went astray of the labyrinth of regulations applicable to publicly traded firms, and then corrected.
I think that's mostly fair, except for the bullshit radar part. That bullshit radar of his must have been on the blink when he was spending months promoting the theory that forces of the Left were actively importing illegal immigrants into swing states so that they could give them voting rights and create a permanent Democrat majority that would rule forever more. "If Trump doesn't win, we won't have any genuine elections in the future" is a fair paraphrase of what he said on that Joe Rogan podcast that tens of millions of people listened to. Not much of a bullshit detector considering his get-out-the-vote campaign for Trump featured a huge, steaming pile of bullshit front and center.
I'll grant that Musk does have *a* bullshit detector, it's just very spotty and these days only operates when pointed at woke stuff and biased social media fact checkers.
I don't know that every high performing person is a narcissist - maybe we just don't notice the ones who aren't. But, even granting that, most of them don't spend all day tweeting silly nonsense. Musk chose to show us his inner self, and many people rightly found it off-putting. He kinda reminds me of Tom Cruise in that respect... a once beloved giant in his field who decided he wasn't gonna be held back by PR people any longer and instead showed the whole country his awful personality.
I got nothing against SpaceX, that's a great company. Just like Tom Cruise's performance in Tropic Thunder, top notch. I have no regard for the opinions of the man behind it though.
I don't believe his theory on immigration because I just can't bring myself to be that cynical, but there is far more evidence for it than, say, the evidence that police officers are racist which fueled huge destruction and delegitimized our criminal justice system at the cost of the most vulnerable citizens.
Is it crazier than Joe Biden saying Mitt Romney wanted to "put people in chains"?
Is it crazier than the 1619 project?
Biden had an open border, a welfare state, and was pushing for illegals to vote. Is it true? I don't know. Is there enough evidence to bring it up on a podcast? Definitely.
I certainly agree Biden's "put y'all back in chains" remark was ridiculous, and I know the 1619 Project has been criticized by lots of historians, and I also think the anti-cop rhetoric of 2020/2021 had a huge negative cost.
I also put those in a different category from the specific conspiracy theory Musk was pushing. He claimed that there had been big increases in the illegal immigrant populations specifically in swing states, tweeting a chart of some alleged data from the Department of Homeland Security's own website showing the swing states ranked at the top. And on Rogan's podcast, he said something like "you don't have to take my word for it, you can go find it on the DHS website". Well, I spent a couple of hours trying to replicate the figures he was spreading on Twitter, and they ain't there. Hilariously, the graphic he tweeted actually dramatically underestimated the size of the overall illegal immigrant population. But his big claim that he repeated over and over about swing states having large increases in their illegal immigrant populations, either in absolute terms or relative to other states, was verifiably false.
That type BS angers me more than others, because it's not rhetoric, it's not hyperbole, it's not a misguided opinion... it's a claim of fact stated authoritatively by a person who knows how influential he is and apparently just doesn't give a shit if what he says is true. The "don't take my word for it, go look it up" part is the most infuriating, because he knows barely anyone's gonna do that, and he can't have done it himself cos it's not there. What is there is a direct repudiation of his claim.
Besides that, there's the absurdity in claiming Biden (or whoever) is going to give illegal immigrants the right to vote in a presidential election. Permanent resident aliens can't even vote! How are they gonna do this, exactly, given that it's illegal? Pass federal legislation that would amount to political suicide? Even without the very specific lies, the whole thing is preposterous. As idiotic as Biden's "put y'all back in chains" line was, no one took it literally.
I found his appearance on Rogan to be pretty bad and clearly politically motivate more so than anything he had done in the past. He had a huge dog in the fight getting the dems out because they've been all over him, and I actually believe based on what's come to light from how Biden's admins were going after crypto and tech firms to "play ball" that this was just the start of their desired control over tech. I don't know as much about that issue as you and I'm sure you've done your research, but I still don't think it's any more hyperbolic than what we see from endless influential actors in the political landscape claiming fascism, white supremacy, etc. I suppose we can disagree there. Either way, I still can't get on board with overly demonizing Elon when you look at the body of his work and his intentions.
Don't forget that Musk has Asperger's. People seem to leave that part out an awful lot, but I think it explains a lot of his social media behavior. He literally 'spergs.
As for thinking Musk isn't right wing, he's a fucking supporter of the German Fascist Party, a man even Steve-Fucking-Bannon has described as "racist". Christ knows what you WOULD describe as right-wing. I guess it hasn't been invented yet.
Well that was a pile of brainless Trumpist claxon-sounding, a whole sausage-string of knee-jerk cliches and alt.right brain farts without a fact or hint of a intelligent, rational argument. Nothing. Nada. Just basic Trumpy ranting balls. Well done.
Social Media is an addictive drug. McFuckface is a drug dealer. He even dresses like one now. Drug dealers weren't put on Earth to encourage us to do the right thing and live lives of high moral character. They are here to sell more drugs. And, as a good businessman, he realized that pretending to be the good guy drug dealer wasn't the best business model. Have you seen Threads? The election last year proved the fascists were winning. If you don't like it, quit scrolling Insta all day. But we all know you can't stop. He's already got one side hooked, so the logical move is to expand the business on the other side.
Ah, but fear not, Jeff is out there on the front line defending the little victim, as he follows in the wake of the rising global neo-fascist movement, punching down any remaining Libs as a noble act of resistance, like a gleaner in the wake of the scythers.
I just hope that in Europe, where some truly vile people are gaining power, the left has the courage to follow Jeff's lead and use this historical moment to punch down on what remains of the left. They sure, right now, must be the target of our fury. After all, fighting fascism is boring, whereas snarky group infighting is hilarious.
These are good points. I bet Zuck's looking at X's userbase and Bluesky's userbase and smartly realizing he has a shot at peeling off a chunk of the former but not much with the latter.
But Jeff's also got a point that by now he'll be deeply resentful of the latter as well.
With some minor edits you could write this piece about Joe Rogan as well. The left drove him and his audience away like they wanted to watch Trump get reelected.
That's mainly why there's no Joe Rogan equivalent on the left. There's no Joe Rogan on the right, either. Joe Rogan has a jumble of politics that 95% agree with whoever the last person he talked to was. That's more or less the mental gymnastics required to go from supporting Bernie to endorsing Trump.
The problem is no one like Joe Rogan can represent a political faction that demands complete compliance and writes people off as terrible if they oppose them on so much as a single issue. The left is the reason there's no "left Joe Rogan," because no one worth listening to will ever meet their stringent purity tests.
Joe Rogan was pro pot, pro gay marriage, pro choice and extremely permissive on just about every social issue. I cant recall what his every thought was on transexualism, but I would hazard he believes we should treat people by their preferred gender expression. He was really of the left. There is no Joe Rogan equivalent because the left had Joe Rogan exactly. The guy voted for Biden. Thats pretty left in my book. He simply was doctrinaire about it. His thinking isnt that disciplined and his interests aren't that focused on the project of The Cathedral or the Blob or whatever you want to call the endlessly interlocked amalgam of causes that is the Global Left. The urge to reorder society to make it perfect doesnt appeal to a lot of people, in any political camp. Democrats in America has just lately become consumed by this quest for Utopia and see anyone who opposes them as stopping them from getting everything they want in life.
Joe Rogan is now Right in the same way he was Left which is to say its a description other people can hang on him but one he doesn't embrace himself. Going from Bernie to Biden to Trump was entirely the work of the puritanical streak dominant in modern leftism.
Was voting for Biden really "pretty left"? He won the popular vote by 4.5 percentage points - that would put a lot of people into the "pretty left" bucket.
I totally agree that Joe Rogan has never really been of "the Left" or of "the Right". He was generally left-sympathetic until enough people from the left made themselves unsympathetic through all the things you describe.
Going from Bernie to Biden to Trump is very easy to explain for me: he's basically sympathetic to the Bernie position, partially shared by Trump, that The People Running The Things are no good and if only someone could get rid of them things would be a lot better. Bernie looked like the man for the task, but then he lost and it was Biden vs. Trump and Rogan unenthusiastically chose Biden. Four years of constant condemnation and mockery from progressives later, and he's unenthusiastically chosen Trump over Harris. I suspect he would have taken Bernie over any of them all along.
I mean Trump himself went from Clinton to Trump. He has no real discernible overall political ideology either.
I did just argue in another comment that Zuckerberg's realignment was inevitable, because the left and Zuckerberg's long-term trajectories were simply incompatible.
But Rogan? I agree, that was a simple unforced error.
As an old person with plenty of time, I read a lot of blogs, both right- and left-oriented, plus the comment sections. It seems to me, experientially but quite unscientifically, that the leftist sites (particularly the comment sections) use a lot (I mean a whole lot) of scatological and genital references. It almost seems as if they believe flinging poo and grabbing their genitals while screaming in ALL CAPS is a helpful means of persuasion. I personally do not find that to be so.
I did debate in high school and college. The one most important lesson I learned was that the bottom of the ballot said "The team that did the better debating was_____"
It didn't say "the team that was right" or "the team that I morally agreed with", it focused on how good you were at the act itself of persuasion in an opposed discussion. The left is convinced that simply because they are right, they have already won. The teams that take the other side are never honestly opposed to them. Its grating and off putting and creates enemies where people could be persuaded to stay neutral or or even friendly.
This lesson will be repeated as many times as it takes.
And to anyone who wants to add "the right does this too", great. Have fun with that. But it certainly seems like in the judgement of the public, one side does it way worse and way more, and as people weight the choices, they seem to be backing away from leftism as it is currently practiced in America. Maybe they still have the tendencies to be left, and would never find a happy place inside the Republican tent, but that doesnt mean they should be treated as barbarian scum.
On "the right does this too" and which side is worse, I think the distinction isn't in level of vitriol or even frequency, it's in who they're willing to do it to. In the Very Online Left, you win super huge social cred points if you can do it to someone who is already left of center, but just not far enough. Those are the most prized scalps. It's like this sado-masochistic thing where they purity test each other and whoever survives is the winner. (Not the election winner, of course, cos this makes you lose elections. But the comments section winner, for sure.)
I don't see this as much in the Very Online Right, with the exception of MAGA vs. Never Trump, which is just as vitrioloic as progressives vs. normie Dems. But if the topic isn't Trump, and it's just some regular right wing culture war thing, the hardcore folks will still be tolerant of the not-as-hardcore-but-somewhat-on-their-side folks.
I was going to make the same point, but I think it extends past the Very Online contingents. Right wingers tend to either invent an issue or blow it way out of proportion, but then the language they use is that they want to protect YOU from this threat. I will keep those bastards from hurting YOU, dear Normie. And the average person thinks the right wingers are a bunch of assholes, but they are an asshole on their side. Maybe we use this asshole thing to help me out and protect me from this Threat.
Left wingers don't act that way. They will find an issue that most people basically agree on (racism is bad, don't pollute, corporate fraud is dangerous, etc.) but then stake out the most extreme position on that issue. And then they will get mad at YOU, dear Normie, for not being sufficiently committed to the issue. And in fact, the reason this Threat happens is because of YOU not doing enough to stop it. And regular people generally don't like being attacked, and they also start to think there's nothing they can do to please the left winger.
The right winger is over there promising to protect us from things, and here this left winger is blaming me for things. Not too hard to figure out who has the more persuasive pitch, in the abstract.
That's a good take. I'd just add (and it doesn't sound like you disagree) that when the right wingers signal "I will keep those bastards from hurting YOU, dear Normie", they're including close to 50% of the country among "those bastards". It's not just Soros and AOC and Fauci and Rapinoe, it's everyone who votes Democrat.
To be fair, the hard left does this too: all Republicans might as well be fascists. But, as you point out, they add in the Normies, who are complicit with all those fascist Republicans because they... I dunno, still read the New York Times even after [insert outrage-inducing article here]. The hard right are more likely to see Normies as naive but basically decent, much as they were before they bravely gulped down their red pills.
There's plenty of meanness to go around, but if you do it while wearing a "BE KIND" t-shirt people remember it better.
The right is the current home of the "Greed is Good" speech, and Gordon Gecko at least does you the favor of being upfront about it. Elon Musk is selling dreams of Mars and the future while the most famous leftists (I have trouble hear naming any out in public leftist who has similar public persona) are selling endless drama and navel gazing about how awful the past and present is.
This is the question I ask the Dem social media universe daily. What part of insulting, mocking, bullying, and trying to silence half of Americans makes you think it’s a good way to gain new voters?
I reckon it's all performative, not persuasive.
Yep. Americans are now addicted to rage. I’m glad I grew up in a time before all this division. At least we know it existed.
It's a good thing Trump and his chums never indulge in "insulting, mocking (and) bullying", or your observation would be confused, not to say absurd.
I didn’t suggest both sides aren’t guilty of the same thing- that was an assumption made. The post was specifically talking about Democrats language.
In fact if you’d read any of my other social media platforms you’d see quite the opposite. No ‘side’ is holier than thou - my ‘issues’ only come in when one side pretends to be. And quite a few people aren’t willing to even meet in the middle on that basic truth.
Maybe extremely unflattering biopics are just the Left’s love language?
It is. I just can't understand why "Less Fuckable Rupert Murdock" refuses to take the hint.
And it continues. All I hear is how Zuckerberg et al are grovelling cowards before Trump, no one ever seeming to suggest that maybe these corporate titans are not social justice warriors and are finally doing what they want.
Let me make one suggestion, from the libertarian-leaning side. If you implement the sort of Big State that Democrats seem to support, there are a lot of rules and regulations. Even when we try to make those rules as objective as possible, there is wiggle room-- differences of interpretation, vagueness, ambiguity, prosecutorial discretion. And, let’s face it; for decades we haven’t even tried to make the rules objective and clear.
Which means that the party in power has a lot of ability to screw with successful enterprises. Is it any wonder that Zuck sucked up to the left when they seemed ascendant and is now sucking up to Trump? If you find that unseemly, reduce the size and power of the Big State.
Genius! I have argued for years that it is very bad if the president and government in general has a lot of power. It sounds pretty awesome when the people who agree with me are in power, but it suddenly isn't so good when the roles are reversed. If only we had a constitution that intentionally made it hard for the government to be so controlling....
Now congress has abdicated so much power to the president that we are following the path that the founders saw inevitably led to far more suffering.
If only!
Life is a mystery
Hmmm. Maurer's becoming one of those centrist liberals who spend every waking hour blaming liberals for literally everything in the world. So now it's progressive's fault that Zuckerberg is sucking up to Trump because they were mean to him, and he therefore has no choice but to disappear up Trump's arsehole. Obviously, Trump himself was the victim of this mean liberal abuse when he was hanging around the Clintons, and so now cannot be expected to be anything other than a dictatorial egomaniac. Bloody libs- is there NOTHING they won't destroy?
The joke is that this kind of self-flagellation beloved of the centre-left is a weird kind of egomania, a conviction that literally everything is the responsibility of fellow 'libtards', like those on the left-left who put 100% of the blame for Trump onto the 'centrist left' giving people NO CHOICE but to vote for Neo-fascists because they weren't far enough left. As opposed to it being, basically, the fault of people who want to vote Neo-fascist.
Zuckerburg is (technically) a grown-up. His craven grovelling to Trump (or his Damascene Conversion, who knows) is his responsibility. He's not a six year-old- he has moral responsibility for his decisions. Believe it or not, much as this might upset the solipsistic and self-loathing liberal mindset, he's not 'the fault' of people being mean about him on Facebook. He's one of the richest and most powerful arseholes on Earth.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that my priorities — personal freedoms, a higher standard of living for the working poor, action on climate change — are liberal ones. But I also think that the conversations about what Republicans are up to don’t do much at this moment to move us towards those goals, and they’re boring to boot — do you really need another column telling you that Trump is bad? I write a lot about intra-left disputes because that’s where I think the good conversations are.
If there's one thing that's always served the left well, it's their genius for expending 90% of their energy taking lumps out of each other. If only the right could learn some of that, they might just be in with a chance.
I would think a man in your position would recognize Mark Zuckerberg as one of the most mockable people in our celebrity billionaire stable. Are you honestly saying that a select handful of folks went too far?
One of the consistent themes of progressives is that they tend to focus on the role of societal influences on individual behavior, including excusing criminal activity because the criminal actor was marginalized by society.
Now you're here to tell me that Zuckerberg's actions are solely due to him, and not at all due to being marginalized by progressives?
The usual answer is “but he’s RICH!” Seeing anyone as fundamentally a human with human thoughts is a bridge too far. Try to get someone like John to do much as admit that even billionaires are humans. It’s impossible. They can’t do it.
Oh good grief, really? Do you work for Hallmark? But yes, you're right of course, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is "human". I've tried, but as you so perceptively say, I just can't. He's a fucking six-slice toaster.
Come on SVF, surely you can manage better than that.
This column isnt about whose "fault" it is. There is no denial that Zuckerberg has agency here. It's a cri d'couer of sorts to be very aware of what morally superior messaging costs you. There is a tone in large segments of both left (and right) camps that if you disagree with whats "the right thing to do" you are automatically an enemy. Even 10 percent disagreement makes you 100 percent an enemy.
Zuckerberg is just a large and obvious example. The wealth he accumulated came about because of something he (made/stole/got lucky to be at the forefront of) and that wealth literally didnt exist until social media made it possible. The guy is just now entering his middle age. What happened in his story though is that as he was entering the end of his youth and as his empire was reaching its pinnacle, he suddenly found himself growing ever so slightly apart from the leftists he had been wrapped up in. This small sliver of daylight, where as he began to change his thinking even a little bit, immediately started to make him an enemy. I think when part of the blame for Hillary loss was laid at his feet he felt chastised and went "Ok, Ill do what they want me to do" and after eight years of it not being good enough, he said "F It, Im done trying".
Whats important about this column and what it is crucial leftists understand if they want to stop becoming off putting twats about things, is that this story arc is being repeated millions of times over in the lives of middle and working class people. If you found yourself in 2016 being shocked Trump won, and also blamed for it when you really had nothing to do with Hillary being an awful choice for candidate, you suddenly found youself being injured and insulted at the same time. Zuckerberg spent the last eight or so years trying to do everythign needed to be a "responsible" business leader int he eyes of the left, and since the rules of what that means are essentially Calvinball (where white rich people will never ever score a point let alone win), this end was inevitable.
Dont care about Zuckerberg. Insult him all you like. You can run him down. He doesnt mind too much since he has a level of wealth hat would make Cornelius Vanderbilt sit up and take notice. Just remember that millions of voters who see themselves represented by Zuckerberg (and they do exist) see what you say about him and assume you mean it about them. Same for Trump, Harris, Biden et al. The reason you should stop flensing the skin off of heretics is because you create more dedicated enemies than you do cowed subjects. Zuckerberg isnt a martyr but he is being made an example of in leftist circles and the example is "This is what we will do to you if you anger us"
What do you think the logical consequences of that message will be
Yup. There's a reason no one other than his followers ever liked Jerry Falwell. The loudest elements of the left over the past decade or so have behaved like the Moral Majority of the 80s and 90s, and that's no way to win elections.
I was pretty firmly on the left, and this is exactly why I no longer consider myself one. The puritanism of the 1990's religious right is now dominant in the 2020's illiberal left.
You clearly haven't seen the news since 1989.
Clearly! I don't even recognize the names Jeff lists in the article. Not sure what got me to check out this comments section at all, but it seems fun.
What none of the 'don't be mean to people you disagree with because that makes them vote Trump/feel really hurt' camp never seem to answer is why this policy has worked so brilliantly for Republicans. There's a constant refrain of 'be nice and understanding to everyone you disagree with 'cos otherwise you're an arsehole and you deserve to lose. It's funny that this is said by no-one one on the Right, ever. As
“I refuse all introspection until the world around me is literally perfect.”
Wonderful philosophy. And empirically, clearly a winning one! Keep going.
Overwrought exaggeration is fun, but also, you know....stupid.
I don't know whose "philosophy" that is, exactly. But you're right, of course; it was Trump's thoughtful, sensitive and balanced habit of personal introspection that undoubtedly won him the election, a noble trait that's shared by his team, and the Republican Party in general. If the nasty libs can have the humility to learn that from him, they might be in with a chance.
My guess is that Zuck never wanted to do any of the aggressive content moderation in the first place but caved to the pressure, and now that it's seemingly backfired his former self is doing a victory lap.
The joke is that "former self" was a nasty little fratboy who got unspeakably rich from a site that was for other nasty little fratboys to 'rank' the girls in their college for sexual attractiveness. Sorry, will pointing that out trigger poor Mark to shift yet further to the Right? See, I've done it again. All my fault.
You're mistaken - Jeff hasn't changed. This what normal people are supposed to do after a loss - look inward. Bitching about what the other side doesn't help; you can't control that. So calling out the self-owns that liberals committed (and pointing the way to how it could be done better) is much more helpful than just complaining about the other side. Jeff's responding to the moment.
This would make sense if Liberals ever did anything BUT bitch about other Liberals.
Ask yourself what's been the most successful strategy recently- the endless nazel-gazing and self-loathing of Liberals, or the 'couldnt give a fuck what anyone else thinks' confidence of the Right. Answers on a postcard.
Could you apply this same logic to, say, 1988? Bill Clinton's success in 1992 is widely credited to his willingness to say out loud that voters aren't buying what Democrats are selling, and it's time to repudiate the positions that are turning voters off. If that's blaming his own side, it seems to have been the right call.
You suggested earlier that blaming the progressive left amounts to letting Trump voters off the hook for choosing to vote Trump. I think we can do both though. We can say a bunch of voters made the wrong choice in voting for Trump, while observing that the progressive left's tactics helped them make that choice.
As for the "couldn't give a fuck what anyone else thinks" confidence of the Right... didn't serve them very well four years ago. And it won't serve them well four years from now if they just spend the whole time acting like assholes and the economy doesn't happen to improve a bunch. Bad on-the-ground conditions + unlikeable people in charge = voters kick you out. There's an element of luck in that, since the President has far less influence on "the economy" than voters give credit/blame, but being unlikeable doesn't help things. MAGA may have won this round, but they ain't popular, and they'll shoot themselves in the foot just as readily as any woke inquisitors.
Are you struggling to understand the difference between assessing strategy and determining what could be changed and "navel-gazing"? If you don't understand the difference between those things, then I guess you're going to be stuck.
I don't think John Holland is struggling at all.
"His craven grovelling to Trump (or his Damascene Conversion, who knows) is his responsibility"
Sure, but given that he *didn't* bend the knee during Trump 1.0, it still seems worth interrogating what, specifically, motivated him to change course, and "after four years of alliance, the Left turned on him immediately after regaining power" is a difficult-to-ignore part of that story.
Would it be too much to ask that he, as a powerful, educated and intelligent person, has the responsibility to make his moral and political choices based on ethics, reasoning and decency, rather than aligning himself to a neo-fascist because some people were a bit mean to him? Is this kind of whiny, self-pitying moral vacuity that the 'left' is now supposed to defer to in our leading figures?
Sorry, just saying that will have triggered another monomaniacal trillionaire into the arms of Trump. I KEEP doing this, I'm SO sorry.
It's not progressives' fault that Zuckerberg is sucking up to Trump any more than it would be my fault for getting shot after sleeping with a drug kingpin's girlfriend.
That analogy says a lot about you, literally nothing about that situation being discussed.
Zuckerberg went along to get along, just like a lot of people did during the past 15-20 years. The left had a cultural enforcement arm that it wielded ruthlessly. This also means that the support had a shakier foundation than appeared.
But just like the burst real estate bubble of 06-08 ended the multi-decade Reign of The Finance Bro, the post COVID era through Trump's election ended the Reign of The AWFL Theater Kids which followed 06-08.
Not sure who is going to be ascendent, but we can close the book on this particular era.
"The left had a cultural enforcement arm that it wielded ruthlessly. This also means that the support had a shakier foundation than appeared."
Yup, this. That so many people are turning on the holier-than-thou wing of the left right now says a lot. This is pent up anger and frustration coming out.
Can I request an essay about Kara Swisher? Smart tech reporter, but with *major* blind spots and rancid hypocrisy.
I only know her from one thing that overlapped with my spheres of interest. For someone whose self-presentation is very "holding the powerful to account", she sure was in Sam Altman's camp when he was fired as CEO of OpenAI for lying to the board.
Oooh, can you say what about? I’m curious. I have avoided engaging with any of her output, probably because I thought her “devastating glasses” persona might thinly veil major blind spots and rancid hypocrisy (and it would just be par for the course with NYT opinion writers of her tenure).
Start with the owners of Substack, and ask them about Kara. She and her mate Casey are upset that Substack doesn’t moderate content (i.e. cancel / delete) to their liking.
Zuckerberg's definitely bringing the "masculine energy" with that chain.
Definitely need a guest column written by Zuckerberg’s chain
1. My sides are hurting.
2. You may be on to something.
I've been talking shit about Zuckerberg and predicting him turning against the lefties since before it was cool.
But I'm going to argue that it was inevitable that Zuckerberg took a rightward turn, no matter what we did. Because... well, he's not stupid. While Twitter-to-Bluseky socialists rot their brains and convince themselves posting guillotine memes is praxis, there's a strong movement by lefty and center-left guys like Haidt to say, "huh, maybe this social media panopticon thing isn't super-great for us". Whereas a more pro-business has a natural instinct to not regulate things, and social media is indeed a thing.
The cultural dominance of a particular strain of left-wing thought inverted this relationship for a while, but it was never going to last. Zuckerberg probably wishes he didn't have to deal with Donald Trump, but he wasn't crying when he was kyboshing the DEI scold department either.
We both agree that Zuckerberg stopped kowtowing to the wokie weirdos as soon as it became clear their time was in the past. I just don't think this could have happened any other way. It was always going to come to this, and pretending otherwise would have been a mistake. And yes, a mistake an embarrassing number of lefties made, somehow, despite talking a whole lot of shit about him.
All these folx comparing Zuck to Hitler as though Genghis Khan is somehow out of the running. Fucking ridiculous.
I deeply researched "Hitler McFuckface", and found no previous examples. So please start the trademark process, Jeff.
I think it’s because McFuckface is a Scottish surname while Hitler is a German first name. You don’t see that combination very often.
Maybe he realized the left have a flat-earth worldview and their policies lead to despair rather than any kind of flourishing for Americans that can't self insulate through their own wealth? Zuck, like many billionaires, fell for the left wave hook, line, and sinker until they applied even the smallest amount of pressure and scrutiny, and as we know, the left claims just never hold up (police brutality, clean energy). Their "big plans" seem to ignore wholesale material realities because they don't fit the narrative. When we naively adopt their policies, chaos ensues.
I listened to Rogan from 2013 to 2020. He was totally apolitical and just talked about guy stuff like hunting, fighting, working out, getting fucked up, etc. During COVID he had good faith skepticism of the leftist mania, and as a result, became a target of the left. Luckily he had truth on his side and survived a decent attempt at canceling him. He's just a bro, but in the era of "toxic masculinity", I suppose that coupled with his smart resilience to brain dead left policies to be an enemy of the left. It's really funny to me to see people just superficially label him as some sort of right winger (same with Musk) simply because he demands better evidence for huge, expensive, and destructive policy initiatives.
Zuck is a total clam, and probably just an opportunist, but I don't think his recent turn is fueled by anything else than his realization that the left is crazy, stupid, and destructive--despite their apparent good intentions.
Musk doesn't have the "I'm just a simple bro" excuse though; he's an insufferable twat who lives with his head completely up his own ass. Rogan is a normal guy who got dogpiled for being a little too successful and a little too independent minded.
I don't get the Musk hate. He obviously a complete weirdo douchebag but one of the most valuable humans to modern society and he has a bull shit radar. I think he went as far as he could trying to be a good blue teamer but everyone has their limits. The attacks from the left just solidified his position against them, and it is infinitely easy to mock the left. I don't know that I've ever met a super high performing person that wasn't a narcissist. Wouldn't want to have a beer with him, but alienating him and doubling down on attacking him was the wrong move.
I don't think trying to turn Musk into your enemy is a politically useful move, but I think there are a ton of legitimate reasons to dislike him.
At the top of my list personally is that he acts brazenly above the law and I think that is bad. He doesn't like SEC rules so he just violates them openly because he is too rich to face consequences. I think that is corrosive to society.
Examples? Gensler's SEC was the most oppressive in history and his tenure there was an abject failure and a total joke. Musk was absolutely targeted by the justice department after not playing ball.
Musk buying Twitter was a godsend to public discourse.
Public discourse has no improved one iota since Musk bought Twitter. All he did was gain control of a tool that makes society worse. My faith that he does not have his finger on the scale at Twitter as much or more than the past leadership is nil.
He allowed people to express their opinions on areas that were silenced before. That's a fact at this point. If it weren't for X and Substack, we would have been stuck with the Biden Press.
What about his BS about the offer to take Tesla private and his refusal to comply with the restrictions placed on his communications after that?
You should brush up on SEC regulations on communications with investors. I work for an SEC regulated firm and they are impossible to follow to the letter of the law. They are always changing, and the SEC is handing out 8 figure fines for stepping over red tape (in this case, texting with clients). Musk was definitely careless in communications, but to say he "acts Brazenly above the law" is a stretch. He went astray of the labyrinth of regulations applicable to publicly traded firms, and then corrected.
I think that's mostly fair, except for the bullshit radar part. That bullshit radar of his must have been on the blink when he was spending months promoting the theory that forces of the Left were actively importing illegal immigrants into swing states so that they could give them voting rights and create a permanent Democrat majority that would rule forever more. "If Trump doesn't win, we won't have any genuine elections in the future" is a fair paraphrase of what he said on that Joe Rogan podcast that tens of millions of people listened to. Not much of a bullshit detector considering his get-out-the-vote campaign for Trump featured a huge, steaming pile of bullshit front and center.
I'll grant that Musk does have *a* bullshit detector, it's just very spotty and these days only operates when pointed at woke stuff and biased social media fact checkers.
I don't know that every high performing person is a narcissist - maybe we just don't notice the ones who aren't. But, even granting that, most of them don't spend all day tweeting silly nonsense. Musk chose to show us his inner self, and many people rightly found it off-putting. He kinda reminds me of Tom Cruise in that respect... a once beloved giant in his field who decided he wasn't gonna be held back by PR people any longer and instead showed the whole country his awful personality.
I got nothing against SpaceX, that's a great company. Just like Tom Cruise's performance in Tropic Thunder, top notch. I have no regard for the opinions of the man behind it though.
I don't believe his theory on immigration because I just can't bring myself to be that cynical, but there is far more evidence for it than, say, the evidence that police officers are racist which fueled huge destruction and delegitimized our criminal justice system at the cost of the most vulnerable citizens.
Is it crazier than Joe Biden saying Mitt Romney wanted to "put people in chains"?
Is it crazier than the 1619 project?
Biden had an open border, a welfare state, and was pushing for illegals to vote. Is it true? I don't know. Is there enough evidence to bring it up on a podcast? Definitely.
I certainly agree Biden's "put y'all back in chains" remark was ridiculous, and I know the 1619 Project has been criticized by lots of historians, and I also think the anti-cop rhetoric of 2020/2021 had a huge negative cost.
I also put those in a different category from the specific conspiracy theory Musk was pushing. He claimed that there had been big increases in the illegal immigrant populations specifically in swing states, tweeting a chart of some alleged data from the Department of Homeland Security's own website showing the swing states ranked at the top. And on Rogan's podcast, he said something like "you don't have to take my word for it, you can go find it on the DHS website". Well, I spent a couple of hours trying to replicate the figures he was spreading on Twitter, and they ain't there. Hilariously, the graphic he tweeted actually dramatically underestimated the size of the overall illegal immigrant population. But his big claim that he repeated over and over about swing states having large increases in their illegal immigrant populations, either in absolute terms or relative to other states, was verifiably false.
That type BS angers me more than others, because it's not rhetoric, it's not hyperbole, it's not a misguided opinion... it's a claim of fact stated authoritatively by a person who knows how influential he is and apparently just doesn't give a shit if what he says is true. The "don't take my word for it, go look it up" part is the most infuriating, because he knows barely anyone's gonna do that, and he can't have done it himself cos it's not there. What is there is a direct repudiation of his claim.
Besides that, there's the absurdity in claiming Biden (or whoever) is going to give illegal immigrants the right to vote in a presidential election. Permanent resident aliens can't even vote! How are they gonna do this, exactly, given that it's illegal? Pass federal legislation that would amount to political suicide? Even without the very specific lies, the whole thing is preposterous. As idiotic as Biden's "put y'all back in chains" line was, no one took it literally.
I found his appearance on Rogan to be pretty bad and clearly politically motivate more so than anything he had done in the past. He had a huge dog in the fight getting the dems out because they've been all over him, and I actually believe based on what's come to light from how Biden's admins were going after crypto and tech firms to "play ball" that this was just the start of their desired control over tech. I don't know as much about that issue as you and I'm sure you've done your research, but I still don't think it's any more hyperbolic than what we see from endless influential actors in the political landscape claiming fascism, white supremacy, etc. I suppose we can disagree there. Either way, I still can't get on board with overly demonizing Elon when you look at the body of his work and his intentions.
Don't forget that Musk has Asperger's. People seem to leave that part out an awful lot, but I think it explains a lot of his social media behavior. He literally 'spergs.
As for thinking Musk isn't right wing, he's a fucking supporter of the German Fascist Party, a man even Steve-Fucking-Bannon has described as "racist". Christ knows what you WOULD describe as right-wing. I guess it hasn't been invented yet.
Well that was a pile of brainless Trumpist claxon-sounding, a whole sausage-string of knee-jerk cliches and alt.right brain farts without a fact or hint of a intelligent, rational argument. Nothing. Nada. Just basic Trumpy ranting balls. Well done.
Social Media is an addictive drug. McFuckface is a drug dealer. He even dresses like one now. Drug dealers weren't put on Earth to encourage us to do the right thing and live lives of high moral character. They are here to sell more drugs. And, as a good businessman, he realized that pretending to be the good guy drug dealer wasn't the best business model. Have you seen Threads? The election last year proved the fascists were winning. If you don't like it, quit scrolling Insta all day. But we all know you can't stop. He's already got one side hooked, so the logical move is to expand the business on the other side.
Ah, but fear not, Jeff is out there on the front line defending the little victim, as he follows in the wake of the rising global neo-fascist movement, punching down any remaining Libs as a noble act of resistance, like a gleaner in the wake of the scythers.
I just hope that in Europe, where some truly vile people are gaining power, the left has the courage to follow Jeff's lead and use this historical moment to punch down on what remains of the left. They sure, right now, must be the target of our fury. After all, fighting fascism is boring, whereas snarky group infighting is hilarious.
These are good points. I bet Zuck's looking at X's userbase and Bluesky's userbase and smartly realizing he has a shot at peeling off a chunk of the former but not much with the latter.
But Jeff's also got a point that by now he'll be deeply resentful of the latter as well.