Megillas Twitter

[crosspost from Times of Israel]

The progressive reaction to the recent purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk almost resembles a mass reading of Megillas Eicha.   A closer examination reveals an analog closer to the climax of Megillas Esther.

In Esther, when King Ahasuerus’ elevates Haman in Chapter 3, the King issues the famous genocidal edict aimed at the Jews; after the King is made suspicious enough of Haman’s royal designs that he summarily hangs him in Chapter 7 and his retinue in Chapter 8, the King issues another edict, that the Jews under attack as a result of his prior genocidal edict are hereby empowered by the kingdom to defend themselves with lethal (genocidal, even?) force.  In, fact a look at the language of both edicts are nearly identical.  

Musk’s purchase and stated intent to take the company private has thrown the contrast between the ostensibly “conservative” penchant for process-focus and the definite progressive penchant for outcome-focus into sharp relief.

Ostensibly, progressives might be up in arms because Musk beat them at their own game by returning “free speech” to the platform, which may seem directly outcome-oriented.  However, as progressives often confuse the goal with the objective, it might be difficult to determine whether they do this deliberately or not, or if they would even care were it pointed out.   Possibly the prime exemplar of the irony deficiency endemic to progressives and progressivism is Robert [One-Third] Reich: in July he tweeted 

“Trump is suing Facebook, Twitter, and Google for violating his 1st Amendment rights by keeping him off their platforms. Someone should remind him that they're private companies to which the 1st Amendment doesn't apply”

After Musk bought Twitter, Reich tweeted:

“Musk and his apologists say if consumers don’t like what he does with Twitter, they can go elsewhere. But where else would consumers go to post short messages that can reach millions of people other than Twitter? “The “free market” increasingly reflects the demands of big money.” 

One might infer that this is the inevitable result of repeated declarations--now progma, an article of faith--that anything having to do with math, logic, history or the scientific process is ipso facto white supremacist.  However, there is likely a much simpler explanation--what Milton Friedman called “political greed”:  progressives simply do not play well with others, and they hate to share, even as they pontificate about it.  At this point, they would demand participation trophies while declining to even participate.  

And like old King Ax’ contradictory legislation, they have now been bitten by their own blatant hyprogrisy: the rationale regarding the nearly identical, ostensibly contradictory edicts was (Esther 8:8) “the writing which is written in the king's name, and sealed with the king's ring, may no man reverse”—a possible Iron Age version of “the internet is forever”.  

Is Twitter (and by extension, social media in general) going to become any less of a collection of trash?  Will there be fewer nefarious actors in cyberspace now?   No—that might even get worse, on the surface.   However, like Ax’ second edict in Chapter 8, the playing field has been leveled to the point that the good guys can win, and win in a rout, to a point that—pace Esther 8:17 and 9:3—progressives will be instilled with a deathly fear resulting from the knowledge that they’ve been on the wrong side of history all along, and—the internet—being forever—will remember.

In the meantime, may they read many more Eichas.