January 12, 2021

"Trump’s Twitter feed... was a window into his deranged and disordered mind. The insults, grandiosity, lies, threats, bigotry and incitement..."

"He was a menace to the world, but he was a genius of the genre: nasty, irreverent, oddly addictive. It will be strange to revert to humdrum, cautious political platitudes after drinking the wine of uninhibited, free-association populism. Here are some recent tweets by President-Elect Joe Biden. 'In 10 days, we move forward and rebuild — together.' 'In 2020 we’re going to build a brighter future.' 'I’m filled with fresh hope about the possibilities of better days to come.'"

Writes Nicholas Goldberg (LA Times via Yahoo News).

Maybe people will drift away from social media. How did we get so caught up in it in the first place? Trump was part of a wave of excitement over Twitter, and with him banished — along with other vivid voices of the right — it might not have any energy at all. Why look? What's there? An old man babbles about his fresh hope of a brighter future?! If you don't have people to bounce off of, what will you tweet about? 

I remember when Twitter first got started. I already had a successful blog, but I thought this "microblogging" should work for me. But almost immediately, I saw how much it depended on going back and forth with other people who were right there next to you on the platform. I was used to sole possession of my blog's front page, and I could choose to interact with commenters on the comments page or link to other blogs, but I had a sense of this being my own place. I liked that. I'll embed a tweet here if I want to go after something I see over there. 

But I've watched Twitter develop. It's so full of journalists and politicos who snap back and forth, and Trump fit right in and amped everything up. It's so fast and vicious and crazy. Now, he's going to be extracted? Who will the lefties — the people who are left (in 2 senses) — engage with? Each other?

Do I hope the whole place falls flat? I hate the censorship. And if it falls flat as a consequence, that's poetic justice. 

230 comments:

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narciso said...

No walker hired george bushs wife and lizmIr(why i have no idea)

narciso said...

Lizmair (who had a grand mal freakout when fired) then went to work against trump.

Qwinn said...

"but it's hard to achieve when the base is so wedded to a partisan narrative that considers "the left" tantamount to evil."

Tantamount?

Cool, maybe *you* can finally explain to me the non-evil reason for why Cuomo, Murphy, Wolf and Whitmer forced COVID patients into nursing homes, when there were plenty of other facilities for them available.

cubanbob said...

I never joined Twitter or Facebook. But I just joined Parler the day before it was shut down. My wife and I were Fox News only before the election. Now we don't even watch Tucker or Hannity all that often. We ourselves mean nothing but if there are a lot people like us the left media world will start to feel it soon enough. I suspect Parler will get back in action soon enough. Perhaps they will find foreign servers and eventually non Google search engines will start to thrive. These companies have overplayed their mark. One thing these Silicon Valley geniuses have figured out yet that there are a lot of foreign governments who would like to take them down a few notches. The Europeans mouthing free speech bromides are most likely planing antitrust action against those American companies. Kowtowing to the Democrat Party and the CCP will in years to come be seen as a very bad move. As BB King sang, never make you move too soon.

Michael K said...


p.s. Your 130 million figure is inaccurate.


OK What is it?

Iman said...

Retreating further into the echo chamber as they become increasingly marginalized from society. It’s just another form of identity politics with all the emotionality and tribalism that entails. Trump was an avatar in the culture war. A means for a declining demographic cohort to make its voice heard after finding most traditional routes cut off to them.

What a crock of shit.

J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

OK What is it?

Depending on whose list you use and when, it's about 200 million. If it were 130 million, that would be less than the total ballots cast in 2016.

J. Farmer said...

@Iman:

What a crock of shit.

Devastating riposte. Thank you.

Qwinn said...

You know what would have been less evil than forcing those COVID patients into the nursing homes?

Leaving them abandoned in the rain on gurneys in an empty parking lot somewhere.

At least only they would have died.

I mean, the USS Comfort and the Javitz Center were there, ready to take patients, but eventually went completely unused. You know why? Trump provided them, upon request, in record time. They were made icky by contact with OrangeBadMan. Best to let old people die than for him to get any credit.

Yeah, it's just that darn *narrative* is what makes us think they're tantamount to evil. Otherwise all the evidence would point to their being just swell fellas and gals.

Qwinn said...

Actually, it had little to do with not letting Trump get credit, though that was certainly convenient. It had to do with racking up enough deaths to scare everyone into letting the lockdowns go beyond "two weeks to flatten the curve", enabling everything that followed, including facilitating sufficient voter fraud to achieve complete control of the entire government, with vast amounts of money donated by Big Tech.

Narayanan said...

chuck said...
they are muy opposed to mass immigration.

I'm so old I remember being taught that the steel and coal industries had recruited immigrants in order to break the unions. I'm sure immigration also served the garment industry well.
-----------==============
happens when you buy into downward inflexible wage structure and implement by /law/

you can create both a politically division -
exploitable subset unions v business and
dependent subset (welfare dependents)

Iman said...

It’s what that turd of an obituary for Trump supporters as if written by a clueless, leftwing academic deserved, J. Farmer.

Ralph L said...

that would be less than the total ballots cast in 2016.

Counted, not necessarily cast.

The Gipper Lives said...

Did you ever see a Trump supporter bring a crowbar, a gas mask, a helmet, a clothes-change or a shield to an event? No. But I can show you a hundred riots where Antifa did exactly that. Including the riot at the Capitol. Complete Frame-up.

They stole the election and overthrew the People.

They framed the President and his supporters.

They censored him and told us we can't talk about it or else.

But our God has defeated the Liar and his children.

And McConnell thinks this will all go away? Is he mad? It's just beginning.

Readering said...

Loon.

Readering said...

Trump reveals himself. Harder without twitter and youtube.

J. Farmer said...

@Iman:

It’s what that turd of an obituary for Trump supporters as if written by a clueless, leftwing academic deserved, J. Farmer.

What about the white working class demographic did I get wrong?

Lurker21 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lurker21 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lurker21 said...

Mitch: Impeaching Trump won't make people love you.

Liz: Impeaching Trump won't make your reptilian father less repellent.

Adam: Impeaching Trump won't make people stop getting you confused with Aaron Schock.

Lurker21 said...

He was the CANDIDATE, not an issue.

People weren't voting on the issues. They were voting against Trump. So he was the issue.

People who didn't like Biden and didn't agree with him on the issues were voting against Trump, so Trump was the wedge issue that made them vote for Biden.

But I'm not here to argue semantics.

wendybar said...

BIDEN: "No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, there wouldn’t — they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol."

And there's Joe saying the Capitol police are racist. They have been treated differently. BLM gets streets and plazas named after them, and the monetary support from all the corporations who are aghast that there was a few broken windows.

gadfly said...

It is time we expand our thoughts about how to address the assault on the Capitol. The president of the United States took an oath to uphold the Constitution, then did everything he could to override the outcome of the election — including fomenting insurrection. I hear the Democrats calling for accountability and Republicans calling for healing. It is not a binary, either/or situation. It is both/and. Healing comes through acknowledgment of the wrong, accountability for the wrong done, reparation for injury caused, personal commitment for a change of mind, heart, language and action, and then forgiveness. Accountability and healing are not opposites but connected as a whole.~Eileen Wallace, St. Charles, Minn.

In substance, US president Donald Trump’s first speech [on March 1, 2017] to a joint session of Congress differed little from his “American carnage” inauguration message on Jan. 20.

US citizens still live in “an environment of lawless chaos.” Infrastructure is still “crumbling.” Industries are still “dying.” And the country still suffers a “terrible drug epidemic.”~
Max de Haldevang, Quartz Geopolitics reporter

Biden's tongue got in his way again, I guess, which is far more important in some opinions given than Don Trump's crazy, sick, incompetent and completely dishonest mind. Trump's coup attempt needs to result in a real prison stay stretching until the day he dies.

Rusty said...

Blogger Readering said...
"Loon."
BOO!

Lewis Wetzel said...

Healing comes through acknowledgment of the wrong, accountability for the wrong done, reparation for injury caused, personal commitment for a change of mind, heart, language and action, and then forgiveness.
So when does America get an apology from the Dems for Crossfire Hurricane?

Chick said...

I would like to see the Government make Twitter a mandatory app; all citizens legal and illegal must have it installed on at least one of their endpoint network devices, and each citizen must access Twitter at least once a day, for at least 15 minutes. The Supreme Court will approve, the Executive will threaten the nation. It will work. Harmony will reign.

SensibleCitizen said...

Like it or not, Jack Dorsey is this era's Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. Just as the moralist Edison tried to block the production of offensive music from his phonographs, Dorsey is trying to block conservative messaging from his platform.

Verizon can't refuse you service because they don't like what your saying over your cellphone. Nor can Zoom block your meeting.

Twitter users can choose to participate or not; censorship for the sake of the user is unnecessary. And third-party apps or Twitter apps can be made available for blocking conservative messaging if someone is allergic to it.

At its core, Twitter and YouTube should be open platforms free from any censorship short of child porn or snuff films.

jnseward said...

Facebook has removed my post and banned me for 30 days. Here is the offending post:

The Democrats may be right. Because of social media, it may be that free speech has become too dangerous to be allowed. If somebody with a lot of followers says that the election was stolen, or all white people are racist, it can lead directly to violent unrest. If climate change is a real existential threat, then climate denialism threatens life on earth. If Donald Trump is Hitler then supporting him will bring about a second holocaust.

Expressing political opinions on twitter and facebook has so divided the nation that we may be close to the point where the two sides can no longer live with each other. Perhaps all speech other than expressions of loyalty to the government and love for all men and women, as well as all of the multitudinous other genders, should be banned.

FullMoon said...

Splanky said... [hush]​[hide comment]

I would like to see the Government make Twitter a mandatory app; all citizens legal and illegal must have it installed on at least one of their endpoint network devices, and each citizen must access Twitter at least once a day, for at least 15 minutes.


Maybe ring bells throughout the nation, and everybody face D.C.?

hstad said...

I shorted "Twitter" several weeks ago and "am in the money". Will sell my options in a week +! Look for share price below $30 per share by March, 2021. This is not a growth stock, despite the current 25x multiple. They are losing customers right and left. Their profits have plummeted vs. 2019. No growth in subscriber base and "woke" actions is not a good business model. Thank God for competition!

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