I find it utterly baffling how smart people can be so single-minded as to not see the bigger picture. Last week X/Twitter Owner Elon Musk took the Neocon/Davos war machine head on. On two critical issues Musk put himself in the line of fire.

Those issues are the use of Starlink by the Ukrainian military to gtarget civilian populations in Russia in support of their war and Musk’s intention to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for damages over their campaign to control the narrative on Twitter.

Musk forced ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt into a series of uncomfortable interviews in the controlled corporate media that made him look as hyperbolic and irrelevant as people like Joy Ann Reid, Keith Olbermencsch and Bill Kristolnacht.

And yet still I have to see the good guys talk about the coming technological ‘pocky-clypse,’ because Musk himself has, generously, controversial (and slightly nutty) views on technology’s cost/benefit profile for humanity at large.

I say this knowing full well that Musk’s research into brain-chips etc. are things I fundamentally believe have far more downside than up.

This black-pilled and supposedly populist wing of alternative media and their insistence that Musk is nothing more than a fake benefactor for humanity has now jumped the shark, in my opinion.  

While I have no desire to submit to the “evil” of ‘biometrics’ on X (nee Twitter) and turning it into the very Fourth Industrial Revolution Minority Report style platform that we’re all rightly afraid of, I also have little problem with real people choosing how they prove their identity in public and within the context of something Musk owns.

To only focus on the downside of this while not seeing the other side of the equation is myopic in the extreme, especially coming from people who have no issue using Face ID on their iPhones.

Skepticism in all things political is a net good today. I’ve written about how important it is to flip the old adage, “Trust, but verify,” on its head. Don’t give anyone in a position of power the benefit of the doubt about what their real agenda is.

Musk is no different.

“Distrust, but verify,” is still the rule of the day. I can take his fight with the ADL and his restricting Starlink’s use by Ukraine on face value, but I also acknowledge that he may have ulterior motives with both of the technologies he controls.

Do I trust Musk? No.

Do I think he’s in a titanic battle of oligarchs to keep the lines of communications between us open while immense pressure is exerted at the governmental level in the run-up to the all-important 2024 US Presidential election?

Yes.

So, I can look at Musk’s situation from multiple angles, praising him for the good he’s doing now but also still be distrustful of his potential to rise to Bond Villain status.

That said, he’s done an awful lot of good in recent months since walking into Twitter, kitchen sink in hand.

As I said back in May when Musk compared George Soros to Magneto on CNBC:

Musk has been subject to this since the day he walked into Twitter with a kitchen sink in his hand.

Every globalist tit-sucker and wannabe-brownshirt, but I repeat myself, threatened Musk with extinction. The EU threatened to ban Twitter. The Biden administration began official investigations.

It was all so breathlessly repeated in the compliant media one would have thought going long smelling salts would have been good investment advice for every case of the fucking vapors these people had.

Think back to the so-called “Discord Leaks” and the ruinous press conference with Dept. of Defense Spokesman John Kirby. We had ‘reporters’ openly asking how they could help the DoD suppress information about the war in Ukraine.

As I argued in my blog about this issue, the media was openly simping for the regime, torching what remained of its credibility to announce to the world they have joined that team against us.

If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, go read Whitney Webb’s Twitter feed and you’ll see my point writ large. It’s a shame but from where I sit Whitney is falling into the classic libertarian trap of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And we all know, failing Rothbard’s First Law of Politics leads to the the ghetto of political irrelevancy.

So, by pointing out anything Musk does being in our favor, we’re simping for him now because he may one day try to mandate biometrics to prove who we are LARPing as on Twitter?

Crimea river.

Yes, Musk is building X/Twitter into something many may not be comfortable with. Yes, he may even be doing it for reasons that are ‘nefarious.’

Anyone calling for you to leave the world’s most powerful communications platform at this moment in time isn’t giving you good advice.

Been there, got the Gab account, sabotaged my own voice for years.

Dark Knights?

Now, think clearly about those two major fights Musk took head on this week which are openly anti-Davos to their core.  These are two current third rails of internet politics: Ukraine and “The Jews.”

Musk is under insane pressure from the Neocon press over his refusal to allow Starlink to be used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces for military purposes to escalate the war with Russia. Musk’s comments have made it perfectly clear that he understood what their goals were, to force a retaliation from Russia that would give the Neocons the casus belli they are desperate to generate to bring on World War III.

Somehow, this anti-war stance by a company CEO not wanting to be dragged into a conflict killing thousands of people on both sides, in this instance civilians, is not something worth commending or even commenting on because Musk makes most of his money from the Dept. of Defense.

I guess being anti-war and on the side of humanity isn’t enough. there can be no disagreement about how we end the war or protect free speech. Only the purists get to make those calls.

What’s the rule I always bring up when it comes to those with power?  Praise them when they do the right thing even if you don’t like them and lambaste them when they do wrong.  Too many on the black-pilled side of the liberty resistance have forgotten first principles here.

Musk has been under sustained pressure since taking over Twitter from all sides of the ‘bad guy’ aisle. It’s not a LARP as many want you do believe.

That he may have plans which are not in line with our ultimate goals is worth remaining skeptical about. This is a given.  It’s the same treatment I give Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve.

It’s the same way I treated Donald Trump.  

I’m beyond this bullshit of demanding the people who fight my enemies be White Knights. Political paladins beyond reproach.  It’s puerile and counter-productive. It betrays a lack of both maturity and willingness to engage with the real world.

Instead, I argueto accept that people are messy and complicated. Cheer them on in their pursuits which align with your interests.  Deal with the Devil in front of you, not the Devil standing behind him.  

I’m consistently amazed at the lack of strategic acumen that cannot see that Musk fighting Davos weakens both of them, making it easier for us to take on the New Boss (Musk) after he helped you defeat the Old Boss (Davos)?

Just Call it the DL, not the ADL

The kicker for me this week, however, on Musk was his encouraging and piling on the #BanTheADL movement that sprang up on Twitter.  Whether Musk helped seed this thing into existence or he just piggy-backed onto it is irrelevant.  

For the first time in its history, the ADL was forced into the open and defend itself in the media outside of the Alex Jones/Art Bell set.  This is a monumental thing.

And it should be applauded.  

Does this open up the floodgates to allow ravening hordes of alt-right dimwits to say a bunch of hateful (and mostly inaccurate nonsense) on Twitter?  Yes.  Will a lot more people be dumb and take the bait to help Davos Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino squelch them under her proposed, “lawful but awful” rule.   

Yes. 

But that shouldn’t deter constructive criticism of the ADL itself, whose tactics are beyond reprehensible, especially given their deep ties to government agencies themselves.

So, TL;DR, Musk going after the ADL in order to loosen the overall reins of control over what is acceptable speech on Twitter is an unqualified good thing.  It helps expose to millions of people (even if he doesn’t follow through with his lawsuit) how the Twitter sausage is made behind the curtain.

What you do with that newfound ‘freedom’ is up to you.

Don’t Take the Bait, Be the Fisherman

So, don’t fall for the trap.  Keep your criticisms of certain groups of protected people constructive and you won’t get the ban hammer.  In fact, it’s in your best interest if your goal is communicating what you see as the truth to those who disagree with you.

How you say something is far more important than what you actually say.  If you haven’t learned that lesson yet, get a dog.  Better yet, get a really empathetic dog like a shepherd or a livestock guardian.

You’ll find almost immediately that you can’t lie to your dog.  If you want to get them to do what you want you can’t yell at them.  They simply shut down and get afraid.  They are perfect mirrors of your state of mind.

So, guess what folks?  No one here or on Twitter knows you any more than what you post. You have the platform to reach far beyond yourself with wit, humor, and pointed criticism.  Why would you waste that immense opportunity with drivel that is nothing more than selfish rage-peddling.  

The only person you are persuading in that moment is yourself.  

The only person you are serving in that moment is yourself.

No one really wants to hear this but Yaccarino’s not wrong when she says that “freedom of speech doesn’t guarantee freedom of reach.”  Strictly speaking, as a libertarian who believes in property rights fully, you have a freedom of speech on your property which you control.

The government does not have the legal right to curtail that or on government property. Of course, Twitter exists in a gray area when it comes to section 230, definitions of ‘the commons,’ and the like, so I will defend your right to say what you want, but that doesn’t mean I condone your methodology either.

Being reasonable in our use of our language in order to be most effective is not being a cuck, either.

I’m a free speech absolutist, but I also retain the right here, for example, to curtail your speech if I deem it at odds with the goals of this blog, my business, and constructive discourse.  

If Musk wants to limit the abuse of those using anonymity, bots, and billions in unearned wealth by evil oligarchs to put controls on X/Twitter by creating identity verification systems that is his right. It is also his burden if people decide, as Whitney rightly implores if that doesn’t work for you, to go somewhere else.

Musk didn’t have to enjoin these fights. And, if anything, his taking them on is another checkmark in the column of his being on the right side of the issue, even if it is in service of his larger agenda.

It exposes the vast amount of resources spent to rob you of your ability to speak.  

That should empower you, not to start screaming like the dead-enders on Zerohedge’s about the ‘J O O S’ or whatever code you think is cleverly getting around the censors, but to start talking about the real issues and the real reasons behind why they try to bludgeon us into silence with cries of “racism,” “sexism,” “ageism,” “transphobia,” “misogyny” and yes, “antisemitism.”

These are tactics within the overall strategy of robbing you of your right to speak.

And there is no better platform to counter them on than Twitter, for all of its myriad faults.  

Lies are expensive, the truth sells itself. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL is living proof of that.

Moreover, think about what Musk’s crusade against the ADL says about what’s really going on behind the scenes.  He’s in a strong enough position now to actually do this and let it flourish.  Stop for a moment and understand that if he was fighting for his life or a 12-D chess playing quintuple agent for Davos he wouldn’t have done this.

He gave it the imprimatur of acceptability that literally no one else on the planet could have given it.  

But apparently that’s not good enough for those caught in the purity spiral of their own personal pathologies.  

There’s Always a Bigger Fish …

Like it or not there has always been a line between acceptable and unacceptable public speech.  The goal of the commentator, comedian, editorialist, etc. is to walk right up to the line and fuck around to find out.

Then it’s the job of everyone else to follow him to that line and expose the hypocrisy of the gatekeepers, rally folks against them, and mock their pathetic attempts at social control.

If that’s too much work, go to Nostr or Gab or whatever.  No shame. If you aren’t up for the fight, but just need a release valve, go for it.

For those who can’t see that the fight against the ADL isn’t directly tied to stopping WWIII and are more worried about Musk’s moronic fantasies of putting chips in our heads and becoming the New Boss, well fine.  

Musk isn’t a savior nor is he a White Knight.  He’s a guy with deep issues and his own spergy ideas of what technology can accomplish.  Whitney has doubted Musk’s intentions with Twitter from the beginning.  It’s always been a grift to her.  Maybe, that’s all she can see.

She may not even be wrong that Musk buying Twitter was a grift all along. But, something like Twitter out of the hands of certain oligarchs and in the hands of other oligarchs becomes something different.

Better? I think so. Perfect? Far from it.

Honestly, with Musk at the helm, Twitter is usable for the first election cycle since 2016.  Will things get incrementally worse for the next few months?  Likely.  Will Musk have to make deals to keep SpaceX and/or Starlink up and running?  Likely also yes.  

But don’t think for a second that Nostr or Truth Social or Gab are going to be anything other than digital ghettos that Davos and the ADL are happily opening up to you to retain your purity while limiting your voice even more than you could imagine.

The battleground of ideas is where the normies are. They are on Twitter/X.  Your tools are your presentation and how you walk the line.  Getting around Yaccarino’s limits on your reach are child’s play. 

Irrelevancy is your reward for remaining a child.   

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