1: In a much-discussed essay, @ezraklein argues that @JoeBiden is too cognitively compromised to run an effective campaign for reelection.

I think Ezra’s wrong, but even if we grant his argument, the media deserves a significant portion of the blame for getting us here.

🧵 2: Before I set out why the media’s to blame, I want to respond to Klein’s contention that Biden’s camp declining primetime interviews is necessarily indicative of a fear that his interview performances would indelibly confirm he’s in steep decline.

theunpopulist.net/p/musk-peddles…

1: A couple days ago, the @Chiefs won the Super Bowl.

@JoeBiden, activating the Dark Brandon meme, alluded to an internet conspiracy theory that is brain-meltingly dumb.

Here’s a very quick account of why conspiracies this preposterous are proliferating on the right.

🧵 2: This particular theory, pushed by right-wing dimwits like @VivekGRamaswamy, @bennyjohnson, and @JackPosobiec—who collectively boast 6.5 million followers on here—is that Taylor Swift and co. are a deep-state psy-op to re-install Biden.

Why did they go full Tinfoil Mode here?

lmao at the copefest in response to Elon hiring someone with a connection to the WEF.

These people were really expecting Elon to hire one of their own, an unbathed memesmith from inceldom, to run Twitter

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657050349608501249

😂😂😂

It's completely surreal that the GOP electorate is all in on a guy who got himself impeached twice, spectacularly lost reelection, fomented an insurrectionary riot to overturn an election, was recently indicted on 34 felony counts, and has now been found liable for sexual abuse. The most absurd thing of all is that each of these things has made them love him even more. What a completely ridiculous political culture.

The self-congratulatory tone is well deserved if and only if you believe being able to mobilize your listeners into hysterical overreaction to a beer giant's microtargeted marketing campaign is a virtue rather than an obvious vice. <vomits uncontrollably all over Walmart's self-checkout lane>

"Let no man deny that I've made a big impact here"

The DeSantis vs. Disney saga has caught some people by surprise.

Here’s a 🧵 that explains how it is both a genuine departure from, but also entirely consistent with, past forms of conservative activism against a major cultural entity. DeSantis vs. Disney represents an escalation from past conservative crusades against cultural entities believed to be furthering a “leftist” agenda.

And yet, Disney has been boycotted before.

So what’s new here?

belvyland.arcdigital.media/p/republican-f…

I have a high view of @JohnRWoodJr, who is an unfailingly decent person. But I think a mistake John makes here is thinking that his valuing of intellectual diversity, which is commendable, requires him to concomitantly value the specific commentators he mentions here. It's good that John wants to be regularly exposed to, and indeed learn from, a variety of intellectual traditions. But that doesn't at all mean he has to value any particular figure that is broadly associated with those traditions.

Alternatively, the fact that they namedrop Peterson and Shapiro, who are professional outrage-stokers politically and financially incentivized to paint an apocalyptic picture of American civilizational collapse, might explain why their conception of America has soured. I screenshotted @MsMelChen here in order to get the full thread in view.

Nice gesture—no reason to deny that. But just like Tucker’s Trump texts, anecdotes like this don’t really matter, since whatever virtues he displayed here did nothing to disincline him from enthusiastically becoming the most relentlessly toxic media figure since Rush Limbaugh.

https://twitter.com/njhochman/status/1650639535208890370

The hagiographic mania that has taken over the hard right in the wake of yesterday’s news is nauseating, since the person being celebrated is limitlessly repugnant and a key driver of right-wing brains being as broken as they are.

Good riddance—from Fox News at least—to the most destructive media personality since Rush Limbaugh. I wrote in Belvyland about how much of a liar and hypocrite Tucker is. Read this in honor of his Fox News departure.

belvyland.arcdigital.media/p/the-tucker-f…

As the Last Good Blue Check™, endowed with a reply visibility boost, I understand what I have to do now. I understand the awesome responsibility that comes with this role.

I will vigorously ramp up my dunking—not for me, not for my own inner satisfaction, but for my country. And as my replies to the worst discourse villains algorithmically float upwards in righteous ascent, they will also function as de facto Community Notes—just without the air of sanitized neutrality that keeps them from also functioning as iconic posterizing moments. Let us pray.

In the past month, I’ve waded into Amy Wax discourse on two fronts: first, arguing that, despite being an incorrigible racist, she should get to keep her job; and second, lamenting that there’s an online subculture that values her racial offensiveness for its own sake. Wax has said things that are manifestly contemptible. Still, academia is best served by upholding an extremely robust conception of intellectual freedom. This protects Wax, yes, but it also protects profs who say things that the *other side* can use to mobilize against them.

Elon what have you done to me 😭 Apparently Elon has been ensuring, in an around the clock, real-time fashion, that certain big accounts promoting Block the Blue are punitively awarded blue checks. What is this place now?

https://twitter.com/bencjacobs/status/1649896029159051265

These people are utterly astounded, in a pathetically self-congratulatory way, at their own ability to stir up an unstable collective to completely lose their minds over a drinkmaker’s microcampaign to sell more beer to certain demographics.

https://twitter.com/bernybelvedere/status/1647231376507252738

🤔

https://twitter.com/bernybelvedere/status/1646347978846633990

Hey @elonmusk, I am basically your only critic who is paying for Blue. But the CANCEL CULTURE MOB is killing me. Least you can do is help me get to 500K followers and then invest 30 million into Arc Digital. Or do I have to change my handle to Catturd3 in order to get your help? If only I could get this kinda love

https://twitter.com/bernybelvedere/status/1618297861808214017?s=20

Auron MacIntyre, whose account is the world's first DoucheGPT artificial intelligence model, casts his lot with the Dixiecrats who found THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT to be deeply morally problematic.

https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1649516386933260289

https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1567552619878699008?s=20

Elon Musk crossing the Delaware on Zuckerberg's paddleboard to decisively rout the bluecheckcoats in battle New contender for worst tweet of all time

Humbled by the realization that for entire scores of people on here, I am the only good blue check left. 😲 🙏

Leftist followers trying to get me to understand that me paying for Blue is harming the movement Monumental L to compare myself to Trump, actually

Ron DeSantis is the presidential candidate of the Republican base's dreams. He's a monumental upgrade over Trump—not merely across objective metrics like governing savvy and policy competence but even *from their own perspective*. And yet the base still flocks to Trump. RDS wages unrelenting culture war while prioritizing policy and governing wins over tweeting and NFT promotion. He's everything they should want. And yet they prefer a braindead reject who has suffered 3 electoral defeats in a row—with 2020 being the most seismic L imaginable.