Tagged: Twitter

What An Echo Chamber Is For

“We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!” So everyone says these days, quoting a character no one remembers from a movie no one has seen — repeatedly, incessantly, droningly, ad nauseam. Our performative riling up, on cue and at the cracked whip of our preferred “news sources,” is not a call to action, let alone to serious reflection,...

Out, damned spot!

Bill Kristol, who has chosen to express his disdain for the divisive and anger-infested rhetoric of the Trump cult that destroyed “his party” by throwing his support behind the Marxist front group that calls itself the Democratic Party today, has outdone himself, even by his own high standards of collegial, grinning, Harvard-man hypocrisy. Responding on Twitter — where the intellectuals gather — to...

Sacrificing Virgins in the Digital Age

Twitter recently limited the user privileges of Donald Trump Jr., for the peculiar “offense” of citing a popular video (which I have not seen) in which a group of Houston doctors claim to have used hydroxychloroquine successfully in treating COVID-19. The social media company — which in my opinion ought to have every legal right to make such a decision — defended its...

Free Speech and Censorship

Kris Paronto, a former private security contractor for the CIA who was in Benghazi during the attack in 2012, has gone on a tirade against Barack Obama and his apologists on Twitter. So far, so good. However, his tweet was based on a careless misrepresentation of Obama’s words, and seemed to promote violence against him, so Twitter suspended him for a few hours....

Social Media as Public Utility

Donald Trump, playing to his hordes as usual — the demagogue’s trap — is out on social media attacking social media for “censoring” “Republican/Conservative voices.” (Clever slash there, since the Republicans as a party are in no way connected to anything remotely like conservatism, but they always use these conjunctive forms to hide that fact, thereby sucking naïve conservatives into the establishment vortex.)...

Tweeting a Holocaust: The Progressive Civil War Dream

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, is recommending as “a great read” an article promoting the idea of a new civil war in America, one in which progressives would wipe out conservatives. Though the article in question notes that this new war “can be won without firing a shot,” the very noting of live fire as a possibility reveals of how thorough an...

North Korea and the Problem of Twitter Foreign Policy

North Korea has tested another ballistic missile, once again failing (but undoubtedly learning from the failure). In response, Donald Trump, the Global Crusader of Convenience, has mounted his trusty steed — well, mouse — and tweeted out another of his toothless sound bites, continuing his one-man mission to prove that while the pen may be mightier than the sword, any butter knife can have...

Obama’s Fake Twitter Followers Explained

(Originally published in September 2013) Barack Obama has 36.9 million Twitter followers, 19.5 million of whom, it turns out, are fake. This is a very disturbing sign for Obama’s opponents, as it demonstrates just how much appeal the president still has with his key support base, namely those who identify most closely with him on a personal level — fake people. The Daily...