Elon Musk takes over Twitter

So the other wild thing about this. ... is the irony of Matt Taibbi talking about “The speed with which they can shuffle somebody into the Hitler of the month club.” ... given that he used to be the ringleader of that club, with some of the most dishonest magazine stories ever written that created false narratives to shuffle his targets into. ... the Hitler of the Month club. His whole magazine writing career revolved around taking complicated things that the typical person had no understanding of, creating a ridiculous and simplistic narrative that pointed a finger at a strawman villain, and then feeding the red meat to many of the same kinds of people who now revile Matt Taibbi.

Prime example was the Goldman Sachs "Vampire Squid" demonization piece after the financial crisis, where he selectively culled. and tried to tie together, disparate and confusing things, to create a tortured narrative that did everything except try to tie Lloyd Blankfein to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.

And just like how people's attitudes toward Elon Musk changed, same thing can be said about Taibbi. On threads on here, he was a truth teller, and no amount of me trying to discuss the stuff he was writing factually made a difference.

 

Not genius. More, not the guy who eats up bullshit based on who it's directed at.

Matt Taibbi is the same guy, doing the same stuff, that he was then.

 

The "Hitler of the month club" thing is true, to a good degree. Cancel culture, the social media mobs, the demonization, the immediate shouting down of anything you don't agree with, ad hominem responses. ... however you want to characterize the related behaviors. ... is sad, but common.

What happens is that dishonest people (starting with Donald Trump, of course) now use the fact that people behave that way to create a logical fallacy of, "Their behavior is the proof that our BS isn't BS."

 

For me, it's just unbelievable. I know you understand Donald Trump for what he is, in the way anyone in New York since the 1980s does. ... one of the biggest bullshit artists in history.

The fact that he got elected in the first place is a commentary in itself of how dumb America has become, but after the four years he put the country through. ... the litany of lies, the dishonesty, the uncuriousness, the vapidy, the degradation of the presidency and the lowering of public discourse. ... and like you said, that is the tact they are taking to shift the conversation away from his behavior. It's kind of Kafkaesque to me sometimes.

EDIT: I think Kafkaesque was not the right way to put it; in those Kafka novels, the whole world was in on the backward-ass thing that is happening. I don't think the whole world is in on the Donald Trump martyr narrative.