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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30018 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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So... did it land? No I don't think so.

I've seen people argue that this isn't about trying to sway the voters, but laying the groundwork for after the election. For example, from a commenter over at Instapundit:

Trump will be arrested if he wins. The DNC and Deep State will not allow him to take office. They're laying the groundwork for public discourse now and are planning it internally. Harris would not be allowed to call him a fascist, and all the rhetoric from retired generals and "experts" all over the air waves.

I've seen similar arguments elsewhere. As a YouTube commenter once put it, Weimar Germany made the mistake of letting Hitler and the Nazis into the government just because they won elections, and we must never repeat that mistake ("Never again!"). This proves Trump wants to be Hitler — this time, for realsies, trust us! — and so, to defend Our Democracy and countless millions of American lives, we must stop him from returning to the White House, no matter what it takes.

The rules, the Constitution, prohibit this? It's time to get Schmittian — "sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception" — and "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." In this "state of exception," the 'rules' take a backseat to the very survival of our nation against Hitler 2.0. (And besides, the written Constitution hasn't described how our government is actually constituted and functions for at least a century — it's a dead letter.)

Of course, my primary theory is that all of this is for show, and "the fix is in," as they say. Get ready for eight years of Harris. To give some quotes from one of my favorite commenters (one "L") over at the Dread Jim's blog:

So, you rightoids ready to sit in the corner and watch while elite human capital takes home another election?

…

You have crucial states openly announcing that they won’t be reporting counts until several days afterwards and you honestly think you stand a chance? I knew rightoids were low IQ but even I’m surprised by ignorance of that level.

…

Again, doesn’t matter if they exclusively counted votes while utterly shitfaced. You have no institutional means to stop them saying the total is whatever we want and no ability to use force. You’re done, simple as.

And my favorite in the thread:

It literally would not matter if there wasn’t a single genuine voter for Kamala in any of those states. The vote is whatever the people counting the vote say it is. Guess who those people are?

By the way, there’s not a single mechanism or institution that would ever support any kind of challenge to the results. Musk can say whatever he wants, in the short time he has before prison, and it doesn’t mean anything.

Edit: another proposed theory I'm seeing — this isn't about persuading voters, this is dogwhistling for the crazies to get the job done this time. From another Jim commenter:

Surrounded by a crowd of mystery meats, roasties, some pale cucklords who look vegan, and one hoary and hoarse Obongo, she once again attempts to meme Trump into being Hitler (who himself endured lots of assassination attempts, as many people remember), and pretty much begs — she might as well go down on her knees, as she is used to — everyone to just kill that cracker. There’s very little nuance here. It’s open season from now on until Order is Restored.

Maybe you shouldn’t get your news from the Dreaded Jim?

I’d take the other end of those bets at favorable odds. Slight chance of Trump doing time, I guess, but it’s not like we’d ever agree on whether it was deserved.

Would you mind giving me confidence levels on your predictions of:

  1. Trump won't be declared the winner;
  2. If Trump is declared the winner, he'll not take office;
  3. If Harris takes office, Elon Musk will be arrested in the next year?

Prediction market links:

  • Trump disqualified after being elected (5%)
  • Elon arrested, some very schizo results on this one. Apparently half his expected probability of arrest is between 2026 and 2030? This market looks to be trading on a "well it has to happen SOME time" theory. Honestly, I think these are bizarrely high - it kind of makes me want to open an account.

First one seems pretty unlikely*; what's the lizardman's constant for Manifold?

The second one... well, the obvious motivation for somebody (not necessarily the USA) to arrest him would be "to get enough leverage on him to get him to sell/give Twitter to someone more pliable" (this being akin to rubber-hose cryptanalysis or the Pierre-sur-Haute fiasco, and lawfare without custody being insufficient to the task due to his fuck-you money), although that would be such a huge heel move that I couldn't even begin to guess at the repercussions.

*The problem is that to resolve positive, the SCOTUS has to rule him disqualified, and that means they have to pack the court in less than three months (because this SCOTUS won't do that unless he commits obvious treason, which he has no reason to do as President-elect, and if Trump takes office the court can't be packed against him).

For Twitter? Not his immensely valuable, industry leading industrial and tech companies? The one that isn't making any money, that's hemorrhaging users, that runs off advertising that's in steep decline?

  1. Elon Musk doesn't actually own a majority stake in Tesla.
  2. My understanding is that Tesla and SpaceX owe a significant chunk of their value to Elon Musk's leadership, which means one can't just steal them out from under him without causing much of that value to disintegrate.
  3. As @Corvos noted, at the governmental scale money is less relevant than power, and there's power in Twitter (which is, of course, why Musk bought it in the first place). There is particularly power in Twitter to make or break a full set of the big platforms for censorship purposes - in other words, if one supports or opposes SJ (though in the latter case, one presumably would be cheering Musk; as Zvi put it, "Musk spent $44 billion dollars so the rest of us didn’t have to. That’s pretty sweet").

The one that isn't making any money, that's hemorrhaging users, that runs off advertising that's in steep decline?

And this is different that the situation all legacy media finds itself in... how, exactly?

Twitter is the Voice of America. Owning it is a big deal, because "allowed to run C&C servers for your human botnets" is what the First Amendment is designed to let you do, just like how the Second is there to make sure you always have the ability to kill your fellow citizens, the Fourth is so that your fellow citizens' ability to discover and prosecute crimes against them is severely curtailed, the Fifth is so that even if they don't find shit they can't torture you into confessing, etc.

Elon Musk has the Voice of America, a fleet of privately-owned ICBMs (and the only company with the ability to produce them these days), and the infrastructure for a parallel worldwide communications network with extremely limited 'lawful intercept' [read: end-run around 4A] capability that is relatively easy for individuals to access yet very hard for any state actor to destroy.

The Constitution, and the human rights it enumerates, are really fucking extreme when you think about them for more than 5 seconds. It is good to possess those rights.

Elon Musk has the Voice of America, a fleet of privately-owned ICBMs (and the only company with the ability to produce them these days), and the infrastructure for a parallel worldwide communications network with extremely limited 'lawful intercept' [read: end-run around 4A] capability that is relatively easy for individuals to access yet very hard for any state actor to destroy.

And yet at any time, ten police officers can walk into the SpaceX headquarters, have him arrested with evidence the CIA can fake, and that’s that. And there’s nothing Musk could do about it. So where does the real power lie?

Look at how much of a change to the tone of politics buying Twitter had compared to starting Truth Social. Controlling the moderation strategy of the world’s most important social media company is (for short term politics at least) vastly more important than rockets or electric cars. Actual monetary profit is irrelevant.

I'll take the other end of the imminent musk imprisonment bet.

Relevant: From the Wall Street Journal: "Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin":

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.

The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.

At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said two people briefed on the request.

…

At the same time, the contacts also raise potential national-security concerns among some in the current administration, given Putin’s role as one of America’s chief adversaries.

Musk has forged deep business ties with U.S. military and intelligence agencies, giving him unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs. SpaceX, which operates the Starlink service, won a $1.8 billion classified contract in 2021 and is the primary rocket launcher for the Pentagon and NASA. Musk has a security clearance that allows him access to certain classified information.

…

The billionaire’s conversations with Putin and Kremlin officials highlight his increasing inclination to stretch beyond business and into geopolitics. He has met several times and talked business with Javier Milei of Argentina, as well as former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whom he defended in an acrimonious online debate.

Putin is on a different order of magnitude. The Russian leader has created an authoritarian system that oversees fraudulent elections and the assassinations of political opponents, for which President Biden called him a “killer.” With keys to one of the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenals and growing territorial ambitions in Europe, Putin has become the U.S.’s chief antagonist.

…

In the past year, Musk and Russia’s interests have increasingly overlapped. Apart from Russia’s use of X for disinformation and Musk’s outspoken opposition to aid to Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said earlier this year that Russian forces occupying the country’s eastern and southern swaths had started using Starlink to enable secure communications and extend the range of their drones.

…

Earlier this year, Musk gave airtime to Putin and his views on the U.S. and Ukraine when X carried Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with the Russian leader inside the Kremlin. In that interview, Putin said he was sure Musk “was a smart person.”

There's also a lot in there about Musk and the Trump campaign — subtly implying, but never outright alleging, "Russian Collusion 2.0" with Elon as middleman. But I'm getting a definite "he could be leaking US secrets to Putin" vibe from it. Possible groundwork for espionage charges?

Every communication between Musk and Putin is obviously monitored and everyone knows it on all sides.

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