Thread by @PnictogenHorses

The #Matrix.

celebrity fascısts like @elonmusk and @jordanbpeterson and a whole lot of other wealthy and privileged (and habitually deceitful) people, surrounded by swarming clouds of social-media admirers, have done a land-office business of referring to "The Matrix".

(1/x)

partly this is simply *habit*. @elonmusk and other elitists are people who have no real personality, aside from whatever bits and pieces of fake personality they can grab and copy from others. anyone who's followed the #ElonMusk clown show knows how imitative the man is.

(2/x)

@elonmusk—not to mention most of his fanbase, who tend to be immature middle-aged cis men like @mtaibbi and @Timcast, people whose emotional age lags decades behind their chronological age—is getting old, but wants to seem young and fresh and hip.

so he *copies* youth.

(3/x)

what have I described, in essence? the behavior of the *Agents* in "The Matrix".

@elonmusk and @marcorubio and @mtaibbi and the rest of the crowd—the celebrity #CEOs and politicians and pundits, the "influencers" of these debased modern times—pretend to be "normal folks".

(4/x)

@elonmusk is everyone, and @elonmusk is no one; he has learned (as best he can) to appeal to a large audience by copying the culture and mimicking behaviors of that audience. hence #ElonMusk acts like a ghastly, middle-aged parody of a teenager, on @Twitter and elsewhere.

(5/x)

they all do it, you may have noticed. Dr. @jordanbpeterson, an unethical failure of a psychologist who turned to a secondary career as a peddler of self-help twaddle to right-wing audiences, has been copying "4channer" behaviors, hilariously—spewing abuse on social media.

(6/x)

@mtaibbi behaves this way. @benshapiro behaves this way. even @RichardDawkins, decrepit as he is, has attempted to behave this way: they all fancy themselves lofty and privileged, floating high above the lowlies, and yet they've learned to imitate Twitter's worst excesses.

(7/x)

but nobody in the world has been more faithfully imitative than @elonmusk. he has stuck stubbornly to his public persona—he's over fifty, yet he still carries himself as though he were a brash foul-mouthed youth, bubbling over with bright ideas and racıst jokes and such.

(8/x)

we've gotten hints in the press about what @elonmusk's true personality is like—the way he behaves when he thinks he's safe from public scrutiny. we know that he's prone to bouts of rage and temper tantrums. we know he likes starting arguments and firing people at will.

(9/x)

my real point however is that @elonmusk, in common with all the privileged elitists of #capitalism (even a relative nobody like @mtaibbi is an elitist, compared to the bulk of humanity), has a public persona that's mere fiction, a thing copied from others. he's an Agent.

(10/x)

astute students of "The Matrix" films will remember that the Agents are capable of copying themselves into any unwary person, as in the GIF I've just tweeted. but *certain human beings* are more apt to serve as hosts for the Agents—people who are already mostly a "front".

(11/x)

cops and soldiers, in particular, serve as easy hosts for the Agents of "The Matrix": they're already people who have had most of their humanity drilled and beaten out of them so that they may serve as faceless and indistinguishable agents of officially approved violence.

(12/x)

but any civilian may be taught how to act in a roughly analogous fashion. in a police state, all citizens are encouraged to act as amateur cops themselves.

we may remember O'Brien's panegyrics from George Orwell's "1984", his exaltation of the virtues of absolute power.

(13/x)

"...every human being is doomed to die...the greatest of all failures," says O'Brien (wrongly). "But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is...immortal."

(14/x)

this is *why* most of our soldiers and cops become soldiers and cops; this is how @tedwheeler can be sure that there's always a ready supply of racıst thugs to clothe in @PortlandPolice uniforms. there's no end of people willing to do murders on behalf of corporate power.

(15/x)

there's no shortage of persons willing to erase their identities and give themselves to "the badge", because when they have the badge, they feel (as O'Brien says in "1984") all-powerful and immortal.

the murdering @PortlandPolice or @OrlandoPolice thug feels like a god.

(16/x)

this is why leadership by personal-cult works—the reason that human beings are so willing to subordinate themselves to icons of unchallenged power and domination, even flimsy and fake idols such as Big Brother or @RonaldReagan or @elonmusk—is the same as O'Brien's secret.

(17/x)

@Timcast is a weak, silly person. but when he clings to the skirts of @elonmusk, whom he imagines as all-powerful and capable of miracles, then Tim Pool *himself* feels all-powerful and capable of miracles.

he is a *willing host*. he feels he shares in #ElonMusk's power.

(18/x)

the same is true of @mtaibbi, @lhfang, @ShellenbergerMD, @APompliano, @WholeMarsBlog, and every greedy gambler in #cryptocurrencies or #investment who crowds around @elonmusk, hoping to catch some of his reflected glory. #ElonMusk is the Agent, and they are hosts for him.

(19/x)

the fact that @elonmusk himself is a man of little substance—just one celebrity #CEO among a huge pack of them, just another celebrity given reams of press coverage and advertisement from #business #journalism—is, peculiarly, an advantage to @mtaibbi and other followers.

(20/x)

one Agent Smith falls, and another immediately rises up, with a new body and a new "look", to take his place. when @elonmusk finally stumbles and falls, @Timcast and @mtaibbi and the rest of the lackeys will swiftly switch loyalties to someone else—@RonDeSantisFL, maybe.

(21/x)

this is the primary virtue of the fascısts' Führerprinzip, their "leadership principle": the "leader" slot can be filled by anyone, even by a mere poster on a wall or a senile actor like @RonaldReagan. the Führer is both all-powerful, and merely a top slot in a hierarchy.

(22/x)

so, that's @elonmusk's place in The #Matrix: he's simply an Agent, a faceless embodiment of the power of entrenched #capitalism and the privileges and fame which loyal service to capitalism are capable of bestowing upon a few fortunate persons.

~Mona Drafter of Pnictogen.

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