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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10940 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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but aren't a lot of honest left-of-center people REALLY embarrassed about how huge portions of the movement are being revealed as government funded astroturf?

Musk has told enough lies about what DOGE have found (most notoriously, claiming that Politico Pro subscriptions were grants funding left-wing coverage on politico.com) that honest left-of-centre people have tuned him out as a lying liar. More broadly, his decision to use MAGA Twitter as his main tool for disseminating information about DOGE means that he has put himself into the MAGA Twitter bozo bin from the point of view of leftists, centrists, and Fox News watching conservatives. If someone accuses me of being the second gunman behind the grassy knoll, molesting babies in the basement of a pizza parlour with no basement, and petty corruption, I am not going to be embarrassed by the petty corruption allegations even if they are true.

The legal argument here is snark, but the underlying point is serious. Musk has now successfully defended two lawsuits (over "pedo guy" and "funding secured") on the basis that he is a notorious shitposter, everyone knows he doesn't fact-check his tweets, and only a moron in a hurry would believe anything based on a Musk tweet. Nobody who isn't in the tank for Musk is going to be embarrassed based on a Musk tweet without receipts, and the receipts DOGE have provided have been laughably inaccurate.

You are telling on yourself. Twitter isn't maga, Twitter is the lack of left wing censorship

Not all of Twitter is MAGA, but MAGA Twitter is MAGA, and Musk is part of MAGA Twitter - both in that he is a major supporter of Donald Trump, and in that he mostly likes/promotes/interacts with other MAGA accounts.

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