"So it's not surprising that we find ourselves with a New Twitter that's essentially the same as the old Twitter, just with more tolerance for right wingers and their culture war quagmires."
I'd say even that much is an improvement, considering how many people on the left are considered "right wingers" because they (pick as many of these as you like)...
1. Feel that Lia Thomas competing against cis female competition that she easily trounces isn't fair, along with other examples of why maybe when it comes to sports we shouldn't be treating trans and cis women as literally in the same league;
2. Thought that maybe Ivermectin could be effective against Covid;
3. Looked at the Kyle Rittenhouse case and concluded that he was not, in fact, guilty of premeditated murder since he never shot anybody who wasn't coming after him;
6. Says anything bad about the vaccines or Fauci. The same Anthony Fauci who should, in fact, be prosecuted, although I'm not holding my breath for that.
And I could go on. NGL, I find myself having way more common ground with people who see themselves as on the right than I do with people who see themselves as on the left these days.
That's because if I talk to somebody on the right, we're gonna agree that the Twitter Files are important and the furthest thing from a "nothingburger", we're gonna agree that when Tucker or Jimmy Dore or anyone else says we shouldn't be sending infinite money to Ukraine that they're speaking the truth, we're going to agree that protests such as the Freedom Convoy should not be criminalized, we're going to agree that January 6th, 2021 wasn't a coup and definitely wasn't worse than 9/11, we're going to agree that the aforementioned Fauci is a lying POS, etc.
Granted, there are people on the left who agree with most or all of that stuff too, but if you pick a random person who is at least nominally a lefty and try to talk to them about these issues, there's at least a 50/50 chance that you'll get somebody who worships Fauci, who believes that all white people are born racist and that we should spend every waking moment trying to be "less white" (whatever the fuck that means), who thinks that anybody they've been told is a white supremacist must be one and therefore should be lynched, who hates Assange for "giving us Trump", who unironically repeats Azov Battalion slogans, who wants the book thrown at the truckers because they believe all the smears against them, etc.
But, regardless of all of that, here's what I find interesting. Interesting in a sad and depressing way, but still interesting.
If Musk is, in fact, still in bed with the establishment and not in any hurry to get up, get dressed, and flee back to his own house while vowing that he'll never get that drunk again...then that means he, like Trump, is doing most of what the establishment wants him to do. He is helping the establishment out an awful lot...but no matter how much he does for the establishment, all it takes for him to be portrayed as worse than a quintillion Hitlers is for him to even *slightly* go against the establishment by saying "Yeah, I think President Trump should be allowed back on Twitter." Just like all it took for Trump to also be portrayed that way was for his rhetoric to be anti-establishment even if his actions were pro-establishment, or for him to make hawkish decisions but stop short of being as hawkish as the Deep State and MIC wanted him to be.
Also similar to how AOC didn't vote the way Pelosi wanted her to on the Iron Dome funding, and how Pelosi dressed her down on the House floor even though her vote wouldn't have made the slightest difference to the outcome. Not even purely *symbolic* opposition to the establishment is tolerated. At least not on the side that supports Democrats.
An observation of Caitlin's I agree with far more than what she says here went something like:
"Everybody saw the workers rise up and take over Russia, and for the last century they've been doing their best to prevent workers anywhere else from doing the same thing in other countries."
Unfortunately, they've done a good job. They've done it using propaganda, and they've done it using intimidation when the propaganda doesn't work. I don't like the chances of the workers coming together and rising up again in the US, Canada, or anywhere else, no matter how badly they're mistreated and screwed. I would love to be wrong but, in my usual pessimistic fashion, I'm worried that these countries have made themselves revolution-proof.
"An observation of Caitlin's I agree with far more than what she says here went something like:
Everybody saw the workers rise up and take over Russia, and for the last century they've been doing their best to prevent workers anywhere else from doing the same thing in other countries."
I have a diametrically opposing view, and with that I couldn't possibly disagree more.
The so-called October Revolution was financed with $20.000.000.- in gold from Jacob Schiff at the behest of Rothschild. Trotskiy brought the gold to Petrograd via the Norwegian America Line's D/S "Oslofjord". The rest is, as they say, history.
Then again.....
"You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism created the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrator."
- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn -
On the other hand..... The killing of the 6 million people that mattered during the 30's and 40's by Germany is something we hear about constantly. Censorship and falsification of history is nothing new.
They are definitely working on it, with all the diligence one would expect of managers trying to close a window and clinch a new contract. The architecture of the Internet has evolved to separate online social labor from its conditions by encoding the distinction between producer and consumer roles into the infrastructure. For example, under the not entirely false pretext of protecting their customers' computers against exploitation and spam generation, very few residential ISPs pass traffic to a customer's web ports, or from the customer to a non-customer's mail ports. Customers must often pay extra for that privilege, if the ISP is even in a position to offer that privilege to residential subscribers. Or, one must send their traffic through intermediary machines, again subject to the ISP or other party providing them, and subject to the intermediary refusing to carry particular traffic they don't like.
It's a situation, and the task for the(ir) adversary, in this case, dissidents and particularly the technologists and culture hackers among us, is to mitigate or exploit that situation, or some other, in our favor or in their disfavor. There are countless possible strategies, but I don't think we have that many tries left before they are ready to launch the big arrow attacks against unauthorized knowing and inaugurate the Long Night.
"So it's not surprising that we find ourselves with a New Twitter that's essentially the same as the old Twitter, just with more tolerance for right wingers and their culture war quagmires."
I'd say even that much is an improvement, considering how many people on the left are considered "right wingers" because they (pick as many of these as you like)...
1. Feel that Lia Thomas competing against cis female competition that she easily trounces isn't fair, along with other examples of why maybe when it comes to sports we shouldn't be treating trans and cis women as literally in the same league;
2. Thought that maybe Ivermectin could be effective against Covid;
3. Looked at the Kyle Rittenhouse case and concluded that he was not, in fact, guilty of premeditated murder since he never shot anybody who wasn't coming after him;
4. Refuses to parrot the narrative on Ukraine;
5. Refuses to accept Robin DiAngelo as a prophet full of infinite wisdom https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility
6. Says anything bad about the vaccines or Fauci. The same Anthony Fauci who should, in fact, be prosecuted, although I'm not holding my breath for that.
And I could go on. NGL, I find myself having way more common ground with people who see themselves as on the right than I do with people who see themselves as on the left these days.
That's because if I talk to somebody on the right, we're gonna agree that the Twitter Files are important and the furthest thing from a "nothingburger", we're gonna agree that when Tucker or Jimmy Dore or anyone else says we shouldn't be sending infinite money to Ukraine that they're speaking the truth, we're going to agree that protests such as the Freedom Convoy should not be criminalized, we're going to agree that January 6th, 2021 wasn't a coup and definitely wasn't worse than 9/11, we're going to agree that the aforementioned Fauci is a lying POS, etc.
Granted, there are people on the left who agree with most or all of that stuff too, but if you pick a random person who is at least nominally a lefty and try to talk to them about these issues, there's at least a 50/50 chance that you'll get somebody who worships Fauci, who believes that all white people are born racist and that we should spend every waking moment trying to be "less white" (whatever the fuck that means), who thinks that anybody they've been told is a white supremacist must be one and therefore should be lynched, who hates Assange for "giving us Trump", who unironically repeats Azov Battalion slogans, who wants the book thrown at the truckers because they believe all the smears against them, etc.
But, regardless of all of that, here's what I find interesting. Interesting in a sad and depressing way, but still interesting.
If Musk is, in fact, still in bed with the establishment and not in any hurry to get up, get dressed, and flee back to his own house while vowing that he'll never get that drunk again...then that means he, like Trump, is doing most of what the establishment wants him to do. He is helping the establishment out an awful lot...but no matter how much he does for the establishment, all it takes for him to be portrayed as worse than a quintillion Hitlers is for him to even *slightly* go against the establishment by saying "Yeah, I think President Trump should be allowed back on Twitter." Just like all it took for Trump to also be portrayed that way was for his rhetoric to be anti-establishment even if his actions were pro-establishment, or for him to make hawkish decisions but stop short of being as hawkish as the Deep State and MIC wanted him to be.
Also similar to how AOC didn't vote the way Pelosi wanted her to on the Iron Dome funding, and how Pelosi dressed her down on the House floor even though her vote wouldn't have made the slightest difference to the outcome. Not even purely *symbolic* opposition to the establishment is tolerated. At least not on the side that supports Democrats.
An observation of Caitlin's I agree with far more than what she says here went something like:
"Everybody saw the workers rise up and take over Russia, and for the last century they've been doing their best to prevent workers anywhere else from doing the same thing in other countries."
Unfortunately, they've done a good job. They've done it using propaganda, and they've done it using intimidation when the propaganda doesn't work. I don't like the chances of the workers coming together and rising up again in the US, Canada, or anywhere else, no matter how badly they're mistreated and screwed. I would love to be wrong but, in my usual pessimistic fashion, I'm worried that these countries have made themselves revolution-proof.
"An observation of Caitlin's I agree with far more than what she says here went something like:
Everybody saw the workers rise up and take over Russia, and for the last century they've been doing their best to prevent workers anywhere else from doing the same thing in other countries."
I have a diametrically opposing view, and with that I couldn't possibly disagree more.
The so-called October Revolution was financed with $20.000.000.- in gold from Jacob Schiff at the behest of Rothschild. Trotskiy brought the gold to Petrograd via the Norwegian America Line's D/S "Oslofjord". The rest is, as they say, history.
Then again.....
"You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism created the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrator."
- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn -
On the other hand..... The killing of the 6 million people that mattered during the 30's and 40's by Germany is something we hear about constantly. Censorship and falsification of history is nothing new.
They are definitely working on it, with all the diligence one would expect of managers trying to close a window and clinch a new contract. The architecture of the Internet has evolved to separate online social labor from its conditions by encoding the distinction between producer and consumer roles into the infrastructure. For example, under the not entirely false pretext of protecting their customers' computers against exploitation and spam generation, very few residential ISPs pass traffic to a customer's web ports, or from the customer to a non-customer's mail ports. Customers must often pay extra for that privilege, if the ISP is even in a position to offer that privilege to residential subscribers. Or, one must send their traffic through intermediary machines, again subject to the ISP or other party providing them, and subject to the intermediary refusing to carry particular traffic they don't like.
It's a situation, and the task for the(ir) adversary, in this case, dissidents and particularly the technologists and culture hackers among us, is to mitigate or exploit that situation, or some other, in our favor or in their disfavor. There are countless possible strategies, but I don't think we have that many tries left before they are ready to launch the big arrow attacks against unauthorized knowing and inaugurate the Long Night.