Thursday, April 28, 2022

How big of an asshole is Elon Musk?

Jesus Christ:



It is so fucking tiring to hear people think it's incredibly clever and meaningful to spew stupidity like, "Hey, I'm annoying both sides equally, that means I must be right!"

Fuck, but that's a stupid take. Here, let me give an example.

Let's say white nationalists and anti-Semites insist that all Jews should be put to death, without exception. Now imagine that liberals and progressives disagree entirely, and take the position that that is disgusting bigotry and totally unacceptable in a civilized society.

According to Elon, he should take the position that, OK, only some Jews should be put to death, thereby enraging both sides to the same extent.

Christ, what an asshat.

4 comments:

MgS said...

Libertarians tend to think they are much more clever than they actually are. In reality, it's little more than "equality of opportunity" thinking in conservative circles - it only makes sense from a singular, and rather narrow perspective.

Musk is going to find the problem as intractable as Jack Dorsey did ... for the same basic reasons: his frame of reference has enormous blind spots.

Anonymous said...

Up next, Elon Musk will invite the KKK to speak about race relations - 'cause that's his stupid logic.


Political discourse is toxic because the voice of the batshit crazy is amplified. Most of the batshit crazy are the far right.

Yes, Elon is an asshat.

Anonymous said...

Another problem with this “enlightened centrist logic” is that it implies facts don’t really exist unless those facts are in the middle of two opposing sides. If one side politically started arguing the sky is yellow, and only “sheeple” believe the “woke media narrative” that says otherwise, People like Musk would be crapping on anyone who argues the sky is actually blue for being woke cancel culture SJWs and the truth must be the sky is green because that is some kind of middle ground. This logic also assumes that because there are two political “sides” in the US, they just always be equally right and valid point not through Twitter arguments - not science or facts or research or data or evidence - can we come to some common middle ground. These are idiotic on their face. Both sides are not equally extreme or right or wrong on countless issues. And even if they were, to assume the middle must de facto be the right position is also idiotic and completely illogical.

Purple library guy said...

To be fair, technically, Musk is not saying that the middle is CORRECT. What he is actually saying is still stupid, but that isn't it. So for instance, he's not making claims about the sky being green etc.
What he is saying is that, to be politically neutral, his institution has to come up with things to do that equally infuriate the (two) main political formations. So for instance, for the post office to be politically neutral, if one political camp is strongly associated with drug smuggling, say, and the other is not, the post office has to find something that the other camp does do and make that a crime so as to search and interfere with the mail of both camps equally.
I might argue that what he actually needs to do is come up with some kind of more-or-less objective standards and enforce them in a disinterested fashion. It so happens that pretty much any plausible behaviour standards one might come up with are going to hit the modern right more than the modern, um . . . not-quite-as-right? And indeed that violating civilized standards of behaviour is actually part of their ideology, so it's hard for them to stop. But, you know, too bad.

Meanwhile, just to note that the two "sides" Musk is talking about have nothing to do with the actual limits of political discourse, I'd like to note that I personally favour expropriating Twitter and all other "social media" platforms without compensation, taking them public, and having them run by a large committee selected by lot from the population at large to avoid regulatory capture.