Elon Musk is one of those figures whose presence on my radar screen was incidental. I knew the basics of his life story, was aware that he was the world's richest person, and could see that he had a slew of eccentricities. But I never regarded him as crucial to the direction of the world, at least in the short or intermediate term. Maybe one of his big ideas would eventually have some kind of major impact on human history, but not in the foreseeable future.
Then his purchase of Twitter became a thing, and speculation ran rampant as to where he'd take the company.
Okay. That seems like a natural reaction when Moneybags Number One makes such a move. But I didn't see how it was going to affect my ability to interact with the friends I've made on the site, or use it to disseminate LITD posts, Precipice essays or my occasional writings elsewhere.
But then comes along this series of moves:
Twitter's new owner Elon Musk appeared to have deleted a tweet posted on Sunday referencing an unfounded theory regarding the attack on the husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at their San Francisco home.
The since-deleted tweet was in response to one by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who blamed the attack on hateful rhetoric by the Republican Party and linked to an L.A. Times story about how the suspect promoted far-right conspiracy theories online.
"There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye," Musk replied to Clinton, linking to a site called the Santa Monica Observer that fact-checkers have described as a purveyor of hoaxes, including that Clinton herself had died and been replaced by a body double. The Observer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It's hard to find details about the allegation in the tweet now, since self-respecting news outlets are reluctant to perpetuate the unsubstantiated gay-lovers'-quarrel angle. But Musk's taking time to fool with it raises the question of why, as the new chief executive of a major social-media company, he doesn't have more important matters on his plate at present.
Another speculative tidbit ought to be mentioned here. Trumpist sites like Breitbart and Gateway Pundit raised the question of whether a third person was in the Pelosi home when the police arrived, but San Francisco police and Tom Winter of NBC News shot that down pretty decisively.
Whataboutists had some legit fodder to chew on in asking why coverage of the beating of a Marco Rubio canvasser was scant compared to that for the Pelosi incident.
There's also the rush among Dems, certainly, and the occasional Republican such as Mitt Romney, to show that they are Caring Human Beings by stating their hopes for Paul Pelosi's full recovery and their assertion that there is no place for this kind of behavior in a civil society. I don't want to ascribe anything but laudable motives to these people, but it just strikes me as a little icky, sort of a let-the-record-show-I'm-not-one-of-those-despicable-creatures-making-this-incident-worse gesture.
But the Dems among this bunch aren't above making hay over DePape's Qanon rantings on social media, as if he had it together mentally enough to be on board with the ultra-MAGA movement. He didn't. The guy lived in a nudist colony, for cryin' out loud, and had a slew of problems such as hard drug use. This is a pattern that has been detectable at least since that nutter in Tucson beaned Gabbby Giffords in the noggin. Most 21st century gun-wielders who shoot politicians or their associates more closely fit the model of unhinged marginal types than ideologically focused assassins.
The main point here is that this story's only three days old, and it's already covered in layers of pure speculation. And the new owner of Twitter isn't helping matters any.
This is what we get in a nation so badly polarized - no, make that fractured - and so unable to distinguish the trivial and silly from the grave and profound. Too few care about objective truth to muster the patience for that to be revealed.
It's not going to get better. It's very late in the day.
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