Opinion INTERNATIONAL Politics: Adelaide Board Discussion Part 5

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adelaidecrows said:
yeah, nah. thats just a wild conspiracy to scare people. Putin is an idiot but he isn't that much of an idiot to think he can reorder the world. Russia has too much corruption to even get that off the ground lol. They'd have to have China, North Korea and another foreign power just to draw even in a world war. China are trying to reopen themselves to the world because they lost too much money from covid, they've even come crawling back to Australia to try and reopen trade routes. Russia would be losing money hand over fist on the western backlash with the Ukraine war. Putin just wants Ukraine. If he had more on his mind and Russia had the capabilities, he would have done it already.
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No, sometimes I think you miss the undercurrents, he wants more than to eradicate the Ukrainian existence and steal their land.
Heard of the global mob. TOC?
 
OneGreatClub said:
No, sometimes I think you miss the undercurrents, he wants more than to eradicate the Ukrainian existence and steal their land.
Heard of the global mob. TOC?
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It doesn't matter what he wants to do. He would need to have 50% of the worlds resources and money at his disposal to get to that level. Its the same conspiracy with Trump, yes a new world order and global government has been the dream of a few secret societies. But the world is to big and too vast and not one country has enough power to consider it. The gateway to a global government would be to establish continent governments. Then you can merge from there. But again, too many cultural differences and belief systems exist that would break down even the most fruitful of negotiations. The USSR fell apart because of corruption.

Basically greed and corruption will tear apart any chance of this ever occurring.
 
adelaidecrows said:
It doesn't matter what he wants to do. He would need to have 50% of the worlds resources and money at his disposal to get to that level. Its the same conspiracy with Trump, yes a new world order and global government has been the dream of a few secret societies. But the world is to big and too vast and not one country has enough power to consider it. The gateway to a global government would be to establish continent governments. Then you can merge from there. But again, too many cultural differences and belief systems exist that would break down even the most fruitful of negotiations. The USSR fell apart because of corruption.

Basically greed and corruption will tear apart any chance of this ever occurring.
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He has lofty goals.
 

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Cap said:
Seeing our boards biggest and most pathetic cooker having a rant, thought this was timely

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In the comments some nutjob calling it a fabrication saying there's only one of those that has a vaccine...so I checked.

Yeah well, only one of those does not have a vaccine yet the moronic sector of the USA actually believe that kind of comment...like they believe Trump.

WTF has happened to the US? The world started laughing at it when Trump was elected.
 
footy4ever said:
In the comments some nutjob calling it a fabrication saying there's only one of those that has a vaccine...so I checked.

Yeah well, only one of those does not have a vaccine yet the moronic sector of the USA actually believe that kind of comment...like they believe Trump.

WTF has happened to the US? The world started laughing at it when Trump was elected.
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I'm not really sure, somewhere along the way misinformation became the norm.

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with the far right of the US and we see it here in Australia, hating science because it doesn't align with their belief, so they've discredited it to the point that people just choose not to believe it anymore
 
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Cap said:
Seeing our boards biggest and most pathetic cooker having a rant, thought this was timely

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The republicans are all about the demonisation of science to play up the importance of god. Modern politics is all about distorting facts and lying to your supporters to run a particular narrative. Its disturbing to be honest that republican politicians, all in an effort to get elected are more interested in causing preventable health issues that cause death or severe long-term suffering.

Its really just a shame you can't prosecute politicians for this. It really is the definition of an unpoliceable crime.
 
Interesting article. Worth a read of you don't want to spend an hour watching the Elmo's interview with Don Lemon.

Elmo wasn't very happy about it, either the interview or the article



Ten Stunning Revelations From the Hour-Plus Interview Between Elon Musk and Don Lemon​

The interview confirms that Elon Musk should not be a federal contractor, should not be CEO of any publicly traded company, and should not be controlling satellites and social media platforms in 2024.​


SETH ABRAMSON
MAR 18, 2024
∙ PAID




The Introduction to this report is free to the public; its remainder is for full Proof subscribers. To access this report and all 250+ reports at Proof for free for a week, click the button below.
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Introduction
​

Proof is aware that most Americans aren’t going to be willing to listen to Elon Muskspeak for an hour, whether it’s with ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon or anyone else.
Nor should they.
Musk is—this Musk biographer has found, in hundreds of hours of listening to and reading him—inarticulate, ill-informed, and irritable in a way that is hard to watch.
So Proof has summarized the key takeaways from the lengthy Lemon-Musk Interview.
Why read such a summary here on Proof? Well, for a few reasons: (1) I’m writing a book on Musk and have thus become a Musk biographer, which gives me a unique perspective on the man; (2) Musk himself reads my work (often with evident anger, as he calls he an “unreadable nonsense machine”) so this analysis is one he’ll almost certainly be reviewing and taking seriously if not, in any sense, accepting as factual; (3) I’m an attorney and was for many years a working trial attorney, which means I review and summarize both depositions and interviews professionally; (4) I’m a former federal criminal investigator as well, which again underscores how seriously I take reviewing depositions and interviews for their most important revelations; (5) I’m a journalist with thirty years of experience working in the field and more than half a decade spent as a journalism professor, so my ethoi with respect to a journalism are well-established; and (6) perhaps the only thing both Proof readers and Proof critics agree on is that I’m an obsessive researcher, so there can be nothing casual about me writing a report like this one.
With that in mind, this Proof report focuses on what is new—and newsworthy—in this new interview, not what’s redundant to statements previously made by Elon Musk.

The Lemon-Musk Interview: Ten Newsworthy Takeaways
​


(1) Elon admits that he’s not a “free speech absolutist.”
Elon famously claimed to be a “free speech absolutist”, but now admits that’s untrue.
Musk is, he says to Lemon, instead a supporter of free speech “as much as possible, within the bounds of the law.”
Why does this distinction matter? Because a review of Twitter’s corporate decisions outside the United States confirms that Musk curtails speech on Twitter substantially more than his predecessors did in every nation with weaker free-speech protections than the United States, which is most of them. Thus he must now add a caveat to his (in)famous—but clearly untrue—claims about (a) supporting free speech “absolutely”, and (b) supporting free speech more than his Twitter predecessors did. He does not, and we can track his betrayals of his own stated principles to a desire not to have his company face corporate repercussions from any nation, including those run by tyrants who don’t believe in “free speech” at all.
(2) Elon understands that the Twitter name and brand is still present even a year after his purchase of the company, contrary to both his intentions and his designs.
Musk refers to his company in the interview as “X, formerly Twitter”—a humiliation for a man who originally was dead-set on having the word “Twitter” disappear from public parlance. Indeed, he has even half-seriously accused those who habitually use the word “Twitter” (for instance, Stephen King) of “dead-naming.”
Now he seems to have relented, acknowledging his “X” branding as a partial failure.
While he says “X” will always be his platform’s name, Musk’s own usage of the “dead name” for the platform is a rare explicit acknowledgment of one of his corporate ploys having fallen flat.
(3) Musk is extremely confused—or else extremely (and ironically) biased—when it comes to identifying media biases.
Musk tells Lemon that he sees CNN as being as far to the left as Tucker Carlson is to the right, based (he says) on “every” media bias analysis out there.
In fact, no such analyses come to the conclusion Musk offers. If you consider the chart below, for instance, Carlson’s media outlet, The Daily Caller—which is clearly lessright-biased than his show on Twitter (and it’s Carlson’s Twitter program Musk is referring to in mentioning him)—is designated as “far right”, while CNN is merely “leans left.”
This is what every media analysis Proof has seen likewise shows, and the fact that Musk so confidently contradicts this is one of many indications (even an accidental confession) that Musk himself has a strong rightward bias he’s either unaware of or is unwilling to admit.


As Proof has often reported, data published by The Guardian confirms that Twitter had a significant rightward bias before Musk arrived—which Musk stunningly misstates to Lemon as a “far left” bias. Triangulating Musk’s politics based on these statements would place him on the farthest fringe of the already far-right MAGA “movement,” consistent (it must be said) with nearly every comment he makes about politics online and his implication to Lemon that he is likely to eventually endorse Donald Trump.
(4) When Lemon says to Musk that Twitter has “picked up where some conservative media has left off, moving to the right—increasingly becoming part of conservative dialogue, sometimes even conspiracy theories, right?”, Musk visibly nods. Indeed, he does so vigorously.
This is a stunning reaction to a statement that many would have expected Musk to reject with equal vigor. Instead he demonstrably and emphatically accepts it. In doing so, he also—perhaps a bit flustered—acknowledges that his own framing of what Twitter was before he came along may be a product of his own set presumptions.
For instance, Musk surprisingly states (emphasis added), “The objective fact of the matter, in my opinion, was that all Twitter was fundamentally a tool of the far left[before I bought it].” The fact that Musk has no new data he’s willing to release to the public to confirm his self-admitted “opinion” is evidenced by his subsequent reliance on old data that has nothing to do with establishing the core realities of Twitter’s UIor UX either pre-Musk or in the Musk era: the past political donations of Twitter employees.
Contradicting his past vigorous nodding in response to Lemon’s statement about what Twitter is now, Musk says “I certainly don’t think it’s [on the political] right” despite the fact that it was when he bought it—per The Guardian and every objective analysis conducted on it pre-Musk—and that Musk admits it was his goal to wrench Twitter to the right post-purchase.
Musk implying that past Twitter-employee donations (presumably few of which came from employees with control over Twitter policy, as that was a small cadre within the company, at best) demonstrably skewing toward the Democratic Party influenced Twitter’s UI/UX is a claim he offers just one supposed proof of: suspensions and bans.
But the only data Musk cites as to his confirmed false claims about Twitter’s alleged prior biases is that Twitter—before he arrived—suspended “ten times more” far-right accounts than far-left accounts (data that he hasn’t published but which, for present purposes, Proof will temporarily presume is true despite Musk’s history of using false data and amplifying false data in his statements about his own and other companies).
The problem here, of course, is that data analysis doesn’t work this way. For instance, Twitter may have suspended many more far-right accounts than far-left accounts in the past because far-right accounts were far more likely to violate Twitter’s Terms of Service as they were written at the time. By way of example, those terms of service prohibited harassing others based on sexual identity, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity—as well as other forms of animus that leftist politics in the United States resolutely opposes and right-wing politics openly condones—so it’d be no surprise that more far-right activists would run afoul of such policies than far-left accounts.
What this faulty analysis by Musk confirms is that he’s a proponent of white identity politics, which (contra the data) contends that it’s white people, not nonwhites, who face the most discrimination in America—and also that “white” is a discrete identity when in fact, of course, individuals classified as “white” hail from scores of different cultures, from Albanian to Swedish to Russian to Italian (not to mention the fact that Jews are at once considered white and yet treated as having a “Jewish” identity rather than, as would be far more appropriate, wharever country a particular Jew hails from).
In Musk’s view, movements like Black Lives Matter are racist, and thus many BLM activists should have been tossed off Twitter in the past to the same degree as neo-Nazis were. But because Musk inherently knows his advertisers would disagree with any such policy, especially as the promotion of violence against whites within BLM has a fraction of the prevalence in that movement as violent rhetoric does in Nazism, he’s made the choice to simply allow everyone to stay on the platform no matter whatthey do or say. (There has been exceptions for journalists who criticize him, however.)
This anything-goes policy also has the benefit of increasing traffic on Twitter, which is Musk’s new focus given that Twitter use is down a staggering 30% over the last year.
(5) Elon reveals that Trump sought him out in Florida—not the other way around—though Musk did approve the meeting.
According to Musk, he met with Trump in Florida at a third party’s home. He claims to not have traveled to within a few miles of Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump, but rather to merely have breakfast with a friend. His friend then informed him suddenly (he claims) that Trump would be coming over, asking Musk, “Is that [okay]?” Musk assented. When asked by Lemon what the two men discussed, Musk stammers for the second-longest period we see him stammer for in the whole interview: six seconds (which is much longer than it sounds when you listen to the video). Incredibly, just a few seconds later Musk again stammers for exactly six seconds in trying to figure out how to answer a simple follow-up question from Lemon on his meeting with Trump.
{Note: Musk’s longest stammer—twelve seconds—tellingly comes during the same part of the interview, when Lemon asks him why he doesn’t plan to donate to any presidential candidate this election cycle. That Musk’s twelve-second verbal malfunction indicates a possible intent to deceive is seemingly confirmed by the fact that, seconds later, he amends his first answer about staying out of the U.S. presidential election entirely by clarifying that, instead, “I don’t want to put a thumb on the scale THAT IS SIGNIFICANT” (emphasis supplied through capitalization). Seconds after this, Musk also alters his prior categorical statement about not providing funding to the candidate of his choice—which is by process of elimination Trump—by saying that it’s merely “unlikely” he would do so, but not impossible. Note that Musk also has a tendency to look away whenever he’s dissembling—usually down and to the right—as he does when he’s asked if any part of his reason for “leaning away from [supporting] Biden [in 2024]” is due to a fear President Biden will revoke his federal security clearance if reelected.}
I think most people would say—whether you’ve ever interrogated a witness in their home (as I did as a federal investigator) and a courtroom (as I did as a defense lawyer)—that Musk appears to be lying about almost every component of his meeting with Trump, on every subject from whether he went to Florida to meet with Trump to what the two men discussed, from whether he intends to offer future financial assistance to Trump to whether he has already decided that he will support him for POTUS in 2024.
(6) Nothing Elon says about his ketamine use makes any sense, and his evasions will likely strike many viewers as the sort of evasions we’d associate with drug addiction.
A groundbreaking Wall Street Journal report famously framed Musk’s ketamine use as out of control and a cause of major concern among both his friends and business associates. Other reports echo these concerns and these observations. All of which puts Musk’s claims to Lemon about the extent of his ketamine use under a microscope—a degree of scrutiny that it does not appear they can withstand.
While Musk admits to sometimes tweeting while high—he says he’s “almost always”(but, critically, not always) sober while tweeting, while insisting he doesn’t drink (thus leaving only ketamine or psychedelic mushroom use as a means to be something other than sober)—he gets annoyed at Lemon for the first time when Lemon asks him about his ketamine prescription, pursing his lips and implying to Lemon the question is an inappropriate one on a “pretty private” matter. But he does agree to answer this and other questions about ketamine, with the issue consequently being the answers given themselves and not his baseline willingness to address the issue in public.
He says he needs ketamine for episodes of “depression” that are not tied to specific events in his life but an intermittent “chemical” issue that is not on a schedule, and yet he describes taking ketamine not in response to such episodes but under the care of a doctor and at set intervals: “it would be like a small amount once every other week”, he says (but then quickly appending an evasive, “…or something like that”).
All this makes his response to Lemon’s question about whether he has ever “abused”ketamine a head-scratcher: “I don’t think so”, he says (emphasis added). Why would Musk have any doubt about this if he’s only taking a small amount of ketamine once every other week and under the advice of a doctor? Something clearly doesn’t add up.
Most people taking a drug under a doctor’s care at predetermined intervals do not say “something like that” in describing how often they take it, or identify their usage as being both regularized and responsive to intermittent episodes whose arrival can’t be predicted in advance. Lemon picks up on this, asking Musk, with some incredulity, “Is there not on the bottle [a place] where it says, ‘Take this dose this many times a week’?” The question—an exceedingly obvious (and necessary) one—flusters Musk.
Indeed, despite saying that he’s taking the prescription under a doctor’s care, Musk also says he sometimes skips the prescription for “weeks.” In other words, Musk is claiming that his every-other-week “small” dose (which would add up to 26 total uses each year) is actually much less than that; most viewers would surmise, therefore, if you credit Musk’s statements to Lemon, that he takes ketamine fewer than 20 times a year.
But that’s nothing at all like what the reports of his ketamine use—based on sources with intimate knowledge of it—are telling major media, including conservative media.
Musk says more than once that he only has a chemical need for ketamine “once in a while”, but public reports don’t reflect only once-in-a-while use of the drug by Musk.
(7) Contrary to his prior claims, Musk clearly doesn’t know how voting or the Census works in the United States. His statements on people who come to the United States illegally make no sense whatsoever under any existing legal or electoral framework.
Elon promises Lemon that he will explain “how this works”—that is, how Democrats are increasing their power via illegal votes from improperly documented immigrants—but his explanation doesn’t match anything about how voting or census-taking works in the United States.
For instance, Musk claims that “blue states” get the most improperly documented immigrants, but this is untrue. As this report confirms, California and New York are not far and away the top two receivers of such persons, as Musk contends. New York isn’t even in the Top 5. Of the Top 15 states that now receive the most improperly documented immigrant, eight are “blue” (California at #1, New Jersey at #4, New York at #6, Maryland at #7, Illinois at #10, Hawaii at #12, Connecticut at #14, Washingtonat #15); five are purple (Nevada at #2, Arizona at #5, New Mexico at #9, Georgia at #11, Virginia at #13), and two are red (Texas at #3, Florida at #8). At first blush, this seems to prove Musk’s point (though we might add that migrants are more likely to avoid red states because they’re generally rural and offer fewer employment opportunities as well as being less diverse and so more prone to impactful displays of systemic bigotry).
The problem is that virtually all of these states are getting redder. Over the last decade, Texas and Florida, which were both believed to be purple states or about-to-be purple states as recently as the 2000s, have in fact gotten redder. New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington—while still clearly blue states—have gotten redder. Arizona and Georgia and Nevada went very narrowly for Joe Biden in 2024, but were supposed to become purple states much faster than has in fact happened—and at least Georgia has now slipped back into “red” status (and Nevada is believed to be getting redder by the day).
Why is this happening? Because Democrats are losing their prior share of the Latinovote in nearly every state, contrary to Musk’s claim that Democrats are increasing this share and in so doing (due to, he says, illegal votes) increasing their standing in these states.
But Musk makes a further false claim, which is that the Census counting improperly documented persons leads to more Electoral College votes for Democrats. So why did the two states Musk is most focused on, California and New York, lose electoral votes in 2020, even as red states Florida, Texas, Montana, and North Carolina gained 5 votes?
{Note: It’s clear that if Musk could have added a third state he’s worried about it would have been the large, deep-blue Illinois—which, for the record, also lost an electoral vote in 2020.}
In the 2010 Census—the only other one Musk could be speaking of here, given that his focus is on recent events—the marked Census benefit to red states is even higher.
In 2010, red state Texas gained 4 electoral votes; red state Florida gained 2 electoral votes; red states Utah and South Carolina gained an electoral vote each, as did purple (but arguably slowly reddening or re-reddening) states Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada.
Who lost electoral votes in 2010? Blue New York and then-purple Ohio lost 2 electoral votes. Almost every state that lost an electoral vote was blue or purple (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, and Illinois) as well as the then-purple Missouriand then-purple Iowa). Only one red state—Louisiana—lost an electoral vote in 2010.
Indeed, the very fact that Iowa was purple and now is red; and Missouri was purple and now is red; and Florida was purple and now is red; and Ohio was purple and now is red; and Michigan was blue and now is purple; and Wisconsin was blue and now is purple; and Texas threatened to become purple but is now safely red again (a trend we see also in North Carolina and Georgia) makes one wonder what artificial bluing of the United States Musk thinks he’s seeing. Is it tiny New Hampshire transforming from purple to blue to match the entire rest of New England? Nevada staying purple?
Is it Arizona becoming purple, rather than staying red, because it’s become the top retirement spot for blue-state retirees?
Exactly where is there any evidence of this conspiracy to which Musk subscribes? And what does any of this have to do with his false claims that anyone in the United States illegally can vote in federal elections—which they can’t?
What Musk appears to have done, per his own description, is simply eliminate any improperly documented persons from the population of every blue state in America and calculated how many electoral votes doing so would cost that state, without doing the same analysis for red or purple states and without noting that, even if all his math is correct—and there’s no reason to believe it is—somehow the net effect we actually saw in 2010 and 2020 was a massive EV gain for red states and and a massive EV loss for blue states. And none of this takes into account that the whole notion of an Electoral College system, which is replicated nowhere else on Earth and is wholly foreign to the notion of a democracy, was designed to benefit what we now call “red states.” Indeed, if the current EV and Census schemes are so great for Democrats, why do Democrats and not Republicans support a national popular vote? None of it makes any sense at all.
{Note: Musk even admits that what Lemon is saying is “true” when Lemon explains that the Electoral College works massively to benefit “red states.” But Musk insists “basic incentives” support Democrats favoring the Electoral College system due to how the Census works; he doesn’t explain why, then, Democrats and not Republicans want to end the Electoral College.}
(8) Some have said that what angered Elon during his interview was the discussion of ketamine. That’s inaccurate. The interview goes off the rails the moment Elon faces an implication that he has advanced antisemitic ideas—which, as Proof has reported, he inarguably has.
What is less clear is why this topic so angers Musk. As a Musk biographer, my sense is that Musk isn’t worried about being seen as antisemitic because he’s not seen this way (and/or no one cares if he is seen this way) among his friends and fans—and these are the only groups whose opinions he rates (albeit only to the extent they align with his opinion of himself).
What does matter to Musk, however, is that accusations of antisemitism are causing Twitter to collapse financially. This is likely why he exhibits no sadness or regret about anything he’s said about Jews—and indeed uses his interview with Lemon to claim that comments he made in the past that were received by Jews as antisemitic were in fact pro-Jewish; he was simply warning certain Jewish philanthropists about their support for antisemitic causes, he says—but gets irked by any argument he sees as being aimed at advertisers (as opposed to Jews, who seem to have made up their minds for themselves about Musk’s antisemitism and what it means to their opinions of him).
(9) Musk says that any moderation of hate speech on Twitter is “putting your thumb on the scale”—confirming that Twitter is open to all hate speech that does not alsoviolate criminal statutes (though there have been allegations that even speech that violates criminal law is often kept up at Twitter because there aren’t enough staffers in the moderation unit to even come close to removing such content in a timely way).
It’s not news that Musk falsely claims hate speech is down at Twitter and is now suing any entity that has attempted to report the truth on this (such as the Center for Countering Digital Hate). What is news is Musk’s admission that Twitter executes no removals of hate speech, but merely—at most—limits the visibility of such postings. It may also be news that Musk now concedes that his (false) claims about hate speech are based on views analyses, not post analyses. This said, there is no public evidence supporting Musk’s claim that views of hate speech on Twitter are down, and it must be remembered that Musk redefined the definition of a “view” on Twitter when he took over (meaning he conveniently controls the definition of only metric he cares about).
In short, Musk has created a system in which he can attack—or even sue—any group that doesn’t measure Twitter usage in the made-up way he just devised, which new definition was explicitly crafted to perpetuate Musk’s personal opinion about what we should be offended by and why, what hate speech is and what it isn’t, and where on Twitter we find hate speech or do not.
Per Musk, “what matters”—and the only thing that matters—is “what visibility” the algorithm that he devised to amplify his personal opinions gives a particular tweet. If a tweet “isn’t illegal” it will stay up, per Musk’s remarks to Lemon, which is a concern because Musk is now universally reported to have regularly told his employees to ignore laws (particularly regulations he doesn’t agree with), so there’s no evidence that Musk’s view on legality is anything more than what he thinks existing laws should say.
For instance, when Musk says “‘moderation’ is a propaganda word for ‘censorship’”, he’s of course defining words with accepted definitions—censorship literally requiresgovernment action—however he feels like defining them. His homecooked definitions then govern Twitter policy and get represented by Musk as objective determinations.
But even this doesn’t go far enough to explain the disingenuousness of Musk’s claims.
While Musk initially says that Twitter deliberately downgrades the visibility of legal-but-hateful posts, he quickly pivots to say that any moderation of such posts would be “putting our thumb on the scale” and therefore an anathema to him. This appears to be an admission that in fact Twitter doesn’t downgrade any post’s visibility—as that would be a form of moderation and therefore, in Elon Musk’s parlance, censorship.
What’s creepy, to be candid, is how Musk seems to conflate Twitter and governments, saying that Twitter—a private company he rules as a tyrant—has a clear obligation to reflect “the will of the people” (which it doesn’t, either morally, ethically, or legally) and that therefore it cannot (but it absolutely can) do more than remove illegal content.
Would Musk allow the same constraints to be placed on Twitter that are placed on a government—for instance, with respect to transparency? Of course not. Twitter is a government-adjacent entity, for Musk, but only when such a bizarre claim suits him.
Consider: as the Walter Isaacson biography details, Musk fires almost anyone who disagrees with him. But under Musk’s standard of censorship being a thing that can happen either inside a government or inside a private company, all those firings are “censorship.” Indeed, they’d make Musk one of the most avid censors in America, as very few bosses fire subordinates for simple disagreements to the degree Musk does.
(10) Musk doesn’t know what DEI is, as he believes it means “lowering standards” in order to hire non-whites who are categorically unable—for reasons that Musk doesn’t endeavor to explain, but we can guess at—to meet existing standards for aptitude.
In fact, the very first result on Google for the question, “does DEI lower standards?”debunks this pervasive myth by noting that DEI is about evolving hiring processes to increase pool size, not to lower pool quality. That is, as this University of Coloradoreport linked to above indicates, DEI helps universities to cast a wider net in finding applicants so their pools are larger and more diverse without changing hiring standards.
The second Google result for the question above is this info-block:



Here we see a self-described “DEI professional” categorically declaring that her area of corporate quality control rejects the idea that “lowering the bar [is] an effective strategy for hiring great talent”, adding that DEI would never “suggest [this] as the key to inclusive hiring.”

{Note: One area in which we know standards are often lowered is in colleges and universities accepting subpar rich white applicants who are “legacies.” Musk has never been seen in public to complain about this process—or about its lowering of standards at academic institutions.}

Meanwhile, Elon has written on Twitter that “DEI must DIE” because DEI believes that nonwhites and women are as capable as white men and that therefore attracting equally qualified candidates who are nonwhite and/or women would simply require expanding the area of search and searching mechanisms.

For his part, Musk’s contention is that attracting nonwhite and/or women candidates requires one to lower standards—the racist/misogynistic implications of which are clear.

When pushed by Lemon to cite even a single study that confirms his claims, Musk says that “evidence” (in the form of unconfirmed anecdotes) gets posted in the “replies” of every post he makes on Twitter that falsely suggests that DEI lowers standards. Of course, if the mere existence of unconfirmed anecdotes in Twitter replies is evidence sufficient to guide public policy or private companies, replies to antisemitic cartoons that state “This sentiment is what fueled the Buffalo shooter, per his manifesto!”should also be taken by Elon Musk as indications that he’s actively inciting violence.

But of course he doesn’t extend his false presumptions in that self-deflating direction.

Just so, Musk claims that he’s “immediately corrected” on Twitter whenever he says something wrong. This also isn’t true. Musk changed the Twitter algorithm so that only those who monetarily support his leadership at Twitter can appear atop comment threads, making most comment threads following a Musk comment echo chambers with little to no sign of disagreement. By the same token, Community Notes on Musk comments have been found to often get quickly removed by editors who “mog” the backroom voting to ensure Musk is never publicly corrected—even when he says something not just false but also racist, xenophobic, transphobic, and/or antisemitic.

(BONUS) Elon has no idea what “woke” means—not historically and not now. He says it means “many things” (meaning that it somehow is the one word in English with no definition beyond what those who use it as a political weapon want it to be) but he also summarizes it as “making everything a race or gender or whatever issue.”

There’s no question that racists, misogynists, and transphobes agree with Musk’s homecooked definition for what “woke” means. But its actual definition, which Musk could Google at any time, is here; this is the first hit for such a search on Google, and the ABC News report I’ve just linked to has no connection to anything Musk has said.

Musk says America should “just move on” from allegations of racism, misogyny, and homophobia or transphobia, which is a core precept of white identity politics and the so-called manosphere. Musk doesn’t explain why America should move on from acknowledging inequities/injustices in America, though presumably his reason must be one of two things: either (a) no such inequities or injustices exist, or (b) if they do, they are warranted. Either contention would position Musk as delusional or ignorant, and thus incapable of running a company or being a federal contractor in 2024.

Musk’s insistence that the definition of “woke” (which has always focused primarily on things happening in the present) is actually “rehashing the past” causes him to issue one of the more bizarre statements in the interview, the head-scratching, “If you look at history broadly, everyone was a slave. We’re all descended from slaves—it’s just a question of when. Was it more recent or less recent?” Proof needn’t unpack this too much, as of course it’s manifestly untrue that everyone is the descendant of a slave and even if it were true, having slavery 160 years back in one’s family history versus having slavery 16,000 years back in one’s family history changes irretrievably whether we’d expect to still see effects from prior imprisonment via the institution of slavery.

Elon’s call to “just move on and treat everyone to just who they are as individuals” is also rather rich coming from a CEO whose companies are regularly sued for mass discrimination against almost everyone but white men. Musk claims these civil torts aren’t really happening because “I haven’t seen it”—a pretty good summary of how any megalomaniac or malignant narcissist understands the world.

He also says that “the color of [his] skin” has never given him any “advantage”—yet another sign the man sees what he wants to in the world, then calls it absolute truth.

As for realities he dislikes, Musk tells Lemon that bad things only “go away” if we “[stop] talking about them”—the same perspective that the average schoolchild has.

All of this would seem to confirm Musk as a substandard thinker who is uniquely ignorant of history and whatever the opposite of an ethicist is—none of which would suggest he can be trusted to run companies, handle federal contracts, or run Twitter.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Musk begins to show discomfort with the interview continuing—and begins taking steps to shut it down—when Lemon raises two issues: (1) trans rights (Musk is self-reportedly a transphobe in part due to his upset over his daughter being trans, leaving him with no ready or even hypothetical defense to his anti-trans animus besides personal trauma), and (2) whether “the buck stops with him” if advertisers choose not to advertise on Twitter due to their exercise of their own “free speech rights.” As to the latter issue, it’s clear that Musk doesn’t want to admit companies have free speech rights—despite him allegedly being a free speech absolutist and the holding of SCOTUS’s Citizens United saying corporations do have such rights.

These issues do appear to strike at the heart of what Musk is, and what he cannot defend being: a corporate opportunist whose opinions are based on emotion rather than fact, and who will turn on a dime and oppose all he previously said if his words ever hoist him by his own petard.

Conclusion
​

Musk is at his most coherent in the interview, ironically, at its very end—when he’s so visibly angry at Lemon that it’s clear their exchange (probably for the rest of their lives) will end imminently.

Musk says his focus is on “civilization risks” because his broad reading of history is that civilizations don’t just rise, they often collapse—in fact, perhaps invariably do.

In view of this, one could argue, being charitable to Musk, that his resolutely pro-Russia approach to the Russia-Ukraine War stems from the fear of “World War III”he expresses; one could argue that his bizarre personal sexual conduct in the past has been designed to ensure he has as many children as possible, for he says that he fears “demographic collapse” via underpopulation; one could argue that he exhibits such contempt for federal regulations (and doesn’t care at all about discrimination or anti-labor practices in his workplaces) because his exclusive focus is on “extending human consciousness” into space and making the human species “multi-planetary” as a way of avoiding a single event resulting in the destruction of humanity; one could argue he calls the “woke mind virus” something that is “fundamentally racist, fundamentally sexist, and fundamentally evil” because he’s decided that the quickest way to advance a society is to live, in the present, as though the future (presumably, a future without racism or misogyny or homophobia or transphobia) has already come to pass; and one could argue that Musk on some level knows that the term “censorship” doesn’t apply to private companies but is simply saying that he believes it should. But the problem is that (a) all of these perspectives so happen to benefit Elon Musk and his demographic immeasurably and almost no one else—calling into question the authenticity and the earnestness of these views; (b) he will retreat instantly from any of these views should they disadvantage him in even the slightest way; (c) he clearly conducts no research at all to support any of these opinions (or knock-on opinions that emanate from them); (d)he exhibits temperamental tendencies—e.g., toward out-group animus and in favor of a neo-Randian belief that all wealth is inherently just—that strongly indicate that none of his opinions are based in empiricism, but rather are founded in prejudice; and (e) even were none of the foregoing true, Musk’s unwillingness—or even incapacity—to face any serious questioning of his ill-considered opinions is profoundly unsettling.

The world expects its leaders—whether CEOs who focus solely on business or CEOs, like Musk, who want to be among the most powerful geo-political players on Earth—to be not just smart in narrow ways but wise, curious, patient, generous, open-minded and transparent. Musk is none of these things. He is, instead, self-made in the mold of some of the most dangerous tyrants in history: intemperate, capricious, cruel, puerile, impatient, spiteful, vengeful, bigoted, narrow-minded, and profoundly ill-informed. If much of the world is no longer comfortable with him as a public figure, it’s because we do have an awareness of history, and well know where “Elongelicalism” will lead.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...483b-1d76-4bb3-8cee-ff8706510e56_1400x556.png
 

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Mutineer said:
Seriously has the United Nations gone totally crazy..

Click to expand...

This image is pretty apt

You can throw Amnesty Int, International Red Cross and a plethora of other supposedly trusted international organisations into the same bowl with them

The UN is starting to make the League of Nations look competent

UN - useless.jpg
 
PeterSalt said:
Interesting article. Worth a read of you don't want to spend an hour watching the Elmo's interview with Don Lemon.

Elmo wasn't very happy about it, either the interview or the article



Ten Stunning Revelations From the Hour-Plus Interview Between Elon Musk and Don Lemon​

The interview confirms that Elon Musk should not be a federal contractor, should not be CEO of any publicly traded company, and should not be controlling satellites and social media platforms in 2024.​


SETH ABRAMSON
MAR 18, 2024
∙ PAID




The Introduction to this report is free to the public; its remainder is for full Proof subscribers. To access this report and all 250+ reports at Proof for free for a week, click the button below.
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Introduction
​

Proof is aware that most Americans aren’t going to be willing to listen to Elon Muskspeak for an hour, whether it’s with ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon or anyone else.
Nor should they.
Musk is—this Musk biographer has found, in hundreds of hours of listening to and reading him—inarticulate, ill-informed, and irritable in a way that is hard to watch.
So Proof has summarized the key takeaways from the lengthy Lemon-Musk Interview.
Why read such a summary here on Proof? Well, for a few reasons: (1) I’m writing a book on Musk and have thus become a Musk biographer, which gives me a unique perspective on the man; (2) Musk himself reads my work (often with evident anger, as he calls he an “unreadable nonsense machine”) so this analysis is one he’ll almost certainly be reviewing and taking seriously if not, in any sense, accepting as factual; (3) I’m an attorney and was for many years a working trial attorney, which means I review and summarize both depositions and interviews professionally; (4) I’m a former federal criminal investigator as well, which again underscores how seriously I take reviewing depositions and interviews for their most important revelations; (5) I’m a journalist with thirty years of experience working in the field and more than half a decade spent as a journalism professor, so my ethoi with respect to a journalism are well-established; and (6) perhaps the only thing both Proof readers and Proof critics agree on is that I’m an obsessive researcher, so there can be nothing casual about me writing a report like this one.
With that in mind, this Proof report focuses on what is new—and newsworthy—in this new interview, not what’s redundant to statements previously made by Elon Musk.

The Lemon-Musk Interview: Ten Newsworthy Takeaways
​


(1) Elon admits that he’s not a “free speech absolutist.”
Elon famously claimed to be a “free speech absolutist”, but now admits that’s untrue.
Musk is, he says to Lemon, instead a supporter of free speech “as much as possible, within the bounds of the law.”
Why does this distinction matter? Because a review of Twitter’s corporate decisions outside the United States confirms that Musk curtails speech on Twitter substantially more than his predecessors did in every nation with weaker free-speech protections than the United States, which is most of them. Thus he must now add a caveat to his (in)famous—but clearly untrue—claims about (a) supporting free speech “absolutely”, and (b) supporting free speech more than his Twitter predecessors did. He does not, and we can track his betrayals of his own stated principles to a desire not to have his company face corporate repercussions from any nation, including those run by tyrants who don’t believe in “free speech” at all.
(2) Elon understands that the Twitter name and brand is still present even a year after his purchase of the company, contrary to both his intentions and his designs.
Musk refers to his company in the interview as “X, formerly Twitter”—a humiliation for a man who originally was dead-set on having the word “Twitter” disappear from public parlance. Indeed, he has even half-seriously accused those who habitually use the word “Twitter” (for instance, Stephen King) of “dead-naming.”
Now he seems to have relented, acknowledging his “X” branding as a partial failure.
While he says “X” will always be his platform’s name, Musk’s own usage of the “dead name” for the platform is a rare explicit acknowledgment of one of his corporate ploys having fallen flat.
(3) Musk is extremely confused—or else extremely (and ironically) biased—when it comes to identifying media biases.
Musk tells Lemon that he sees CNN as being as far to the left as Tucker Carlson is to the right, based (he says) on “every” media bias analysis out there.
In fact, no such analyses come to the conclusion Musk offers. If you consider the chart below, for instance, Carlson’s media outlet, The Daily Caller—which is clearly lessright-biased than his show on Twitter (and it’s Carlson’s Twitter program Musk is referring to in mentioning him)—is designated as “far right”, while CNN is merely “leans left.”
This is what every media analysis Proof has seen likewise shows, and the fact that Musk so confidently contradicts this is one of many indications (even an accidental confession) that Musk himself has a strong rightward bias he’s either unaware of or is unwilling to admit.


As Proof has often reported, data published by The Guardian confirms that Twitter had a significant rightward bias before Musk arrived—which Musk stunningly misstates to Lemon as a “far left” bias. Triangulating Musk’s politics based on these statements would place him on the farthest fringe of the already far-right MAGA “movement,” consistent (it must be said) with nearly every comment he makes about politics online and his implication to Lemon that he is likely to eventually endorse Donald Trump.
(4) When Lemon says to Musk that Twitter has “picked up where some conservative media has left off, moving to the right—increasingly becoming part of conservative dialogue, sometimes even conspiracy theories, right?”, Musk visibly nods. Indeed, he does so vigorously.
This is a stunning reaction to a statement that many would have expected Musk to reject with equal vigor. Instead he demonstrably and emphatically accepts it. In doing so, he also—perhaps a bit flustered—acknowledges that his own framing of what Twitter was before he came along may be a product of his own set presumptions.
For instance, Musk surprisingly states (emphasis added), “The objective fact of the matter, in my opinion, was that all Twitter was fundamentally a tool of the far left[before I bought it].” The fact that Musk has no new data he’s willing to release to the public to confirm his self-admitted “opinion” is evidenced by his subsequent reliance on old data that has nothing to do with establishing the core realities of Twitter’s UIor UX either pre-Musk or in the Musk era: the past political donations of Twitter employees.
Contradicting his past vigorous nodding in response to Lemon’s statement about what Twitter is now, Musk says “I certainly don’t think it’s [on the political] right” despite the fact that it was when he bought it—per The Guardian and every objective analysis conducted on it pre-Musk—and that Musk admits it was his goal to wrench Twitter to the right post-purchase.
Musk implying that past Twitter-employee donations (presumably few of which came from employees with control over Twitter policy, as that was a small cadre within the company, at best) demonstrably skewing toward the Democratic Party influenced Twitter’s UI/UX is a claim he offers just one supposed proof of: suspensions and bans.
But the only data Musk cites as to his confirmed false claims about Twitter’s alleged prior biases is that Twitter—before he arrived—suspended “ten times more” far-right accounts than far-left accounts (data that he hasn’t published but which, for present purposes, Proof will temporarily presume is true despite Musk’s history of using false data and amplifying false data in his statements about his own and other companies).
The problem here, of course, is that data analysis doesn’t work this way. For instance, Twitter may have suspended many more far-right accounts than far-left accounts in the past because far-right accounts were far more likely to violate Twitter’s Terms of Service as they were written at the time. By way of example, those terms of service prohibited harassing others based on sexual identity, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity—as well as other forms of animus that leftist politics in the United States resolutely opposes and right-wing politics openly condones—so it’d be no surprise that more far-right activists would run afoul of such policies than far-left accounts.
What this faulty analysis by Musk confirms is that he’s a proponent of white identity politics, which (contra the data) contends that it’s white people, not nonwhites, who face the most discrimination in America—and also that “white” is a discrete identity when in fact, of course, individuals classified as “white” hail from scores of different cultures, from Albanian to Swedish to Russian to Italian (not to mention the fact that Jews are at once considered white and yet treated as having a “Jewish” identity rather than, as would be far more appropriate, wharever country a particular Jew hails from).
In Musk’s view, movements like Black Lives Matter are racist, and thus many BLM activists should have been tossed off Twitter in the past to the same degree as neo-Nazis were. But because Musk inherently knows his advertisers would disagree with any such policy, especially as the promotion of violence against whites within BLM has a fraction of the prevalence in that movement as violent rhetoric does in Nazism, he’s made the choice to simply allow everyone to stay on the platform no matter whatthey do or say. (There has been exceptions for journalists who criticize him, however.)
This anything-goes policy also has the benefit of increasing traffic on Twitter, which is Musk’s new focus given that Twitter use is down a staggering 30% over the last year.
(5) Elon reveals that Trump sought him out in Florida—not the other way around—though Musk did approve the meeting.
According to Musk, he met with Trump in Florida at a third party’s home. He claims to not have traveled to within a few miles of Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump, but rather to merely have breakfast with a friend. His friend then informed him suddenly (he claims) that Trump would be coming over, asking Musk, “Is that [okay]?” Musk assented. When asked by Lemon what the two men discussed, Musk stammers for the second-longest period we see him stammer for in the whole interview: six seconds (which is much longer than it sounds when you listen to the video). Incredibly, just a few seconds later Musk again stammers for exactly six seconds in trying to figure out how to answer a simple follow-up question from Lemon on his meeting with Trump.
{Note: Musk’s longest stammer—twelve seconds—tellingly comes during the same part of the interview, when Lemon asks him why he doesn’t plan to donate to any presidential candidate this election cycle. That Musk’s twelve-second verbal malfunction indicates a possible intent to deceive is seemingly confirmed by the fact that, seconds later, he amends his first answer about staying out of the U.S. presidential election entirely by clarifying that, instead, “I don’t want to put a thumb on the scale THAT IS SIGNIFICANT” (emphasis supplied through capitalization). Seconds after this, Musk also alters his prior categorical statement about not providing funding to the candidate of his choice—which is by process of elimination Trump—by saying that it’s merely “unlikely” he would do so, but not impossible. Note that Musk also has a tendency to look away whenever he’s dissembling—usually down and to the right—as he does when he’s asked if any part of his reason for “leaning away from [supporting] Biden [in 2024]” is due to a fear President Biden will revoke his federal security clearance if reelected.}
I think most people would say—whether you’ve ever interrogated a witness in their home (as I did as a federal investigator) and a courtroom (as I did as a defense lawyer)—that Musk appears to be lying about almost every component of his meeting with Trump, on every subject from whether he went to Florida to meet with Trump to what the two men discussed, from whether he intends to offer future financial assistance to Trump to whether he has already decided that he will support him for POTUS in 2024.
(6) Nothing Elon says about his ketamine use makes any sense, and his evasions will likely strike many viewers as the sort of evasions we’d associate with drug addiction.
A groundbreaking Wall Street Journal report famously framed Musk’s ketamine use as out of control and a cause of major concern among both his friends and business associates. Other reports echo these concerns and these observations. All of which puts Musk’s claims to Lemon about the extent of his ketamine use under a microscope—a degree of scrutiny that it does not appear they can withstand.
While Musk admits to sometimes tweeting while high—he says he’s “almost always”(but, critically, not always) sober while tweeting, while insisting he doesn’t drink (thus leaving only ketamine or psychedelic mushroom use as a means to be something other than sober)—he gets annoyed at Lemon for the first time when Lemon asks him about his ketamine prescription, pursing his lips and implying to Lemon the question is an inappropriate one on a “pretty private” matter. But he does agree to answer this and other questions about ketamine, with the issue consequently being the answers given themselves and not his baseline willingness to address the issue in public.
He says he needs ketamine for episodes of “depression” that are not tied to specific events in his life but an intermittent “chemical” issue that is not on a schedule, and yet he describes taking ketamine not in response to such episodes but under the care of a doctor and at set intervals: “it would be like a small amount once every other week”, he says (but then quickly appending an evasive, “…or something like that”).
All this makes his response to Lemon’s question about whether he has ever “abused”ketamine a head-scratcher: “I don’t think so”, he says (emphasis added). Why would Musk have any doubt about this if he’s only taking a small amount of ketamine once every other week and under the advice of a doctor? Something clearly doesn’t add up.
Most people taking a drug under a doctor’s care at predetermined intervals do not say “something like that” in describing how often they take it, or identify their usage as being both regularized and responsive to intermittent episodes whose arrival can’t be predicted in advance. Lemon picks up on this, asking Musk, with some incredulity, “Is there not on the bottle [a place] where it says, ‘Take this dose this many times a week’?” The question—an exceedingly obvious (and necessary) one—flusters Musk.
Indeed, despite saying that he’s taking the prescription under a doctor’s care, Musk also says he sometimes skips the prescription for “weeks.” In other words, Musk is claiming that his every-other-week “small” dose (which would add up to 26 total uses each year) is actually much less than that; most viewers would surmise, therefore, if you credit Musk’s statements to Lemon, that he takes ketamine fewer than 20 times a year.
But that’s nothing at all like what the reports of his ketamine use—based on sources with intimate knowledge of it—are telling major media, including conservative media.
Musk says more than once that he only has a chemical need for ketamine “once in a while”, but public reports don’t reflect only once-in-a-while use of the drug by Musk.
(7) Contrary to his prior claims, Musk clearly doesn’t know how voting or the Census works in the United States. His statements on people who come to the United States illegally make no sense whatsoever under any existing legal or electoral framework.
Elon promises Lemon that he will explain “how this works”—that is, how Democrats are increasing their power via illegal votes from improperly documented immigrants—but his explanation doesn’t match anything about how voting or census-taking works in the United States.
For instance, Musk claims that “blue states” get the most improperly documented immigrants, but this is untrue. As this report confirms, California and New York are not far and away the top two receivers of such persons, as Musk contends. New York isn’t even in the Top 5. Of the Top 15 states that now receive the most improperly documented immigrant, eight are “blue” (California at #1, New Jersey at #4, New York at #6, Maryland at #7, Illinois at #10, Hawaii at #12, Connecticut at #14, Washingtonat #15); five are purple (Nevada at #2, Arizona at #5, New Mexico at #9, Georgia at #11, Virginia at #13), and two are red (Texas at #3, Florida at #8). At first blush, this seems to prove Musk’s point (though we might add that migrants are more likely to avoid red states because they’re generally rural and offer fewer employment opportunities as well as being less diverse and so more prone to impactful displays of systemic bigotry).
The problem is that virtually all of these states are getting redder. Over the last decade, Texas and Florida, which were both believed to be purple states or about-to-be purple states as recently as the 2000s, have in fact gotten redder. New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington—while still clearly blue states—have gotten redder. Arizona and Georgia and Nevada went very narrowly for Joe Biden in 2024, but were supposed to become purple states much faster than has in fact happened—and at least Georgia has now slipped back into “red” status (and Nevada is believed to be getting redder by the day).
Why is this happening? Because Democrats are losing their prior share of the Latinovote in nearly every state, contrary to Musk’s claim that Democrats are increasing this share and in so doing (due to, he says, illegal votes) increasing their standing in these states.
But Musk makes a further false claim, which is that the Census counting improperly documented persons leads to more Electoral College votes for Democrats. So why did the two states Musk is most focused on, California and New York, lose electoral votes in 2020, even as red states Florida, Texas, Montana, and North Carolina gained 5 votes?
{Note: It’s clear that if Musk could have added a third state he’s worried about it would have been the large, deep-blue Illinois—which, for the record, also lost an electoral vote in 2020.}
In the 2010 Census—the only other one Musk could be speaking of here, given that his focus is on recent events—the marked Census benefit to red states is even higher.
In 2010, red state Texas gained 4 electoral votes; red state Florida gained 2 electoral votes; red states Utah and South Carolina gained an electoral vote each, as did purple (but arguably slowly reddening or re-reddening) states Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada.
Who lost electoral votes in 2010? Blue New York and then-purple Ohio lost 2 electoral votes. Almost every state that lost an electoral vote was blue or purple (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, and Illinois) as well as the then-purple Missouriand then-purple Iowa). Only one red state—Louisiana—lost an electoral vote in 2010.
Indeed, the very fact that Iowa was purple and now is red; and Missouri was purple and now is red; and Florida was purple and now is red; and Ohio was purple and now is red; and Michigan was blue and now is purple; and Wisconsin was blue and now is purple; and Texas threatened to become purple but is now safely red again (a trend we see also in North Carolina and Georgia) makes one wonder what artificial bluing of the United States Musk thinks he’s seeing. Is it tiny New Hampshire transforming from purple to blue to match the entire rest of New England? Nevada staying purple?
Is it Arizona becoming purple, rather than staying red, because it’s become the top retirement spot for blue-state retirees?
Exactly where is there any evidence of this conspiracy to which Musk subscribes? And what does any of this have to do with his false claims that anyone in the United States illegally can vote in federal elections—which they can’t?
What Musk appears to have done, per his own description, is simply eliminate any improperly documented persons from the population of every blue state in America and calculated how many electoral votes doing so would cost that state, without doing the same analysis for red or purple states and without noting that, even if all his math is correct—and there’s no reason to believe it is—somehow the net effect we actually saw in 2010 and 2020 was a massive EV gain for red states and and a massive EV loss for blue states. And none of this takes into account that the whole notion of an Electoral College system, which is replicated nowhere else on Earth and is wholly foreign to the notion of a democracy, was designed to benefit what we now call “red states.” Indeed, if the current EV and Census schemes are so great for Democrats, why do Democrats and not Republicans support a national popular vote? None of it makes any sense at all.
{Note: Musk even admits that what Lemon is saying is “true” when Lemon explains that the Electoral College works massively to benefit “red states.” But Musk insists “basic incentives” support Democrats favoring the Electoral College system due to how the Census works; he doesn’t explain why, then, Democrats and not Republicans want to end the Electoral College.}
(8) Some have said that what angered Elon during his interview was the discussion of ketamine. That’s inaccurate. The interview goes off the rails the moment Elon faces an implication that he has advanced antisemitic ideas—which, as Proof has reported, he inarguably has.
What is less clear is why this topic so angers Musk. As a Musk biographer, my sense is that Musk isn’t worried about being seen as antisemitic because he’s not seen this way (and/or no one cares if he is seen this way) among his friends and fans—and these are the only groups whose opinions he rates (albeit only to the extent they align with his opinion of himself).
What does matter to Musk, however, is that accusations of antisemitism are causing Twitter to collapse financially. This is likely why he exhibits no sadness or regret about anything he’s said about Jews—and indeed uses his interview with Lemon to claim that comments he made in the past that were received by Jews as antisemitic were in fact pro-Jewish; he was simply warning certain Jewish philanthropists about their support for antisemitic causes, he says—but gets irked by any argument he sees as being aimed at advertisers (as opposed to Jews, who seem to have made up their minds for themselves about Musk’s antisemitism and what it means to their opinions of him).
(9) Musk says that any moderation of hate speech on Twitter is “putting your thumb on the scale”—confirming that Twitter is open to all hate speech that does not alsoviolate criminal statutes (though there have been allegations that even speech that violates criminal law is often kept up at Twitter because there aren’t enough staffers in the moderation unit to even come close to removing such content in a timely way).
It’s not news that Musk falsely claims hate speech is down at Twitter and is now suing any entity that has attempted to report the truth on this (such as the Center for Countering Digital Hate). What is news is Musk’s admission that Twitter executes no removals of hate speech, but merely—at most—limits the visibility of such postings. It may also be news that Musk now concedes that his (false) claims about hate speech are based on views analyses, not post analyses. This said, there is no public evidence supporting Musk’s claim that views of hate speech on Twitter are down, and it must be remembered that Musk redefined the definition of a “view” on Twitter when he took over (meaning he conveniently controls the definition of only metric he cares about).
In short, Musk has created a system in which he can attack—or even sue—any group that doesn’t measure Twitter usage in the made-up way he just devised, which new definition was explicitly crafted to perpetuate Musk’s personal opinion about what we should be offended by and why, what hate speech is and what it isn’t, and where on Twitter we find hate speech or do not.
Per Musk, “what matters”—and the only thing that matters—is “what visibility” the algorithm that he devised to amplify his personal opinions gives a particular tweet. If a tweet “isn’t illegal” it will stay up, per Musk’s remarks to Lemon, which is a concern because Musk is now universally reported to have regularly told his employees to ignore laws (particularly regulations he doesn’t agree with), so there’s no evidence that Musk’s view on legality is anything more than what he thinks existing laws should say.
For instance, when Musk says “‘moderation’ is a propaganda word for ‘censorship’”, he’s of course defining words with accepted definitions—censorship literally requiresgovernment action—however he feels like defining them. His homecooked definitions then govern Twitter policy and get represented by Musk as objective determinations.
But even this doesn’t go far enough to explain the disingenuousness of Musk’s claims.
While Musk initially says that Twitter deliberately downgrades the visibility of legal-but-hateful posts, he quickly pivots to say that any moderation of such posts would be “putting our thumb on the scale” and therefore an anathema to him. This appears to be an admission that in fact Twitter doesn’t downgrade any post’s visibility—as that would be a form of moderation and therefore, in Elon Musk’s parlance, censorship.
What’s creepy, to be candid, is how Musk seems to conflate Twitter and governments, saying that Twitter—a private company he rules as a tyrant—has a clear obligation to reflect “the will of the people” (which it doesn’t, either morally, ethically, or legally) and that therefore it cannot (but it absolutely can) do more than remove illegal content.
Would Musk allow the same constraints to be placed on Twitter that are placed on a government—for instance, with respect to transparency? Of course not. Twitter is a government-adjacent entity, for Musk, but only when such a bizarre claim suits him.
Consider: as the Walter Isaacson biography details, Musk fires almost anyone who disagrees with him. But under Musk’s standard of censorship being a thing that can happen either inside a government or inside a private company, all those firings are “censorship.” Indeed, they’d make Musk one of the most avid censors in America, as very few bosses fire subordinates for simple disagreements to the degree Musk does.
(10) Musk doesn’t know what DEI is, as he believes it means “lowering standards” in order to hire non-whites who are categorically unable—for reasons that Musk doesn’t endeavor to explain, but we can guess at—to meet existing standards for aptitude.
In fact, the very first result on Google for the question, “does DEI lower standards?”debunks this pervasive myth by noting that DEI is about evolving hiring processes to increase pool size, not to lower pool quality. That is, as this University of Coloradoreport linked to above indicates, DEI helps universities to cast a wider net in finding applicants so their pools are larger and more diverse without changing hiring standards.
The second Google result for the question above is this info-block:



Here we see a self-described “DEI professional” categorically declaring that her area of corporate quality control rejects the idea that “lowering the bar [is] an effective strategy for hiring great talent”, adding that DEI would never “suggest [this] as the key to inclusive hiring.”

{Note: One area in which we know standards are often lowered is in colleges and universities accepting subpar rich white applicants who are “legacies.” Musk has never been seen in public to complain about this process—or about its lowering of standards at academic institutions.}

Meanwhile, Elon has written on Twitter that “DEI must DIE” because DEI believes that nonwhites and women are as capable as white men and that therefore attracting equally qualified candidates who are nonwhite and/or women would simply require expanding the area of search and searching mechanisms.

For his part, Musk’s contention is that attracting nonwhite and/or women candidates requires one to lower standards—the racist/misogynistic implications of which are clear.

When pushed by Lemon to cite even a single study that confirms his claims, Musk says that “evidence” (in the form of unconfirmed anecdotes) gets posted in the “replies” of every post he makes on Twitter that falsely suggests that DEI lowers standards. Of course, if the mere existence of unconfirmed anecdotes in Twitter replies is evidence sufficient to guide public policy or private companies, replies to antisemitic cartoons that state “This sentiment is what fueled the Buffalo shooter, per his manifesto!”should also be taken by Elon Musk as indications that he’s actively inciting violence.

But of course he doesn’t extend his false presumptions in that self-deflating direction.

Just so, Musk claims that he’s “immediately corrected” on Twitter whenever he says something wrong. This also isn’t true. Musk changed the Twitter algorithm so that only those who monetarily support his leadership at Twitter can appear atop comment threads, making most comment threads following a Musk comment echo chambers with little to no sign of disagreement. By the same token, Community Notes on Musk comments have been found to often get quickly removed by editors who “mog” the backroom voting to ensure Musk is never publicly corrected—even when he says something not just false but also racist, xenophobic, transphobic, and/or antisemitic.

(BONUS) Elon has no idea what “woke” means—not historically and not now. He says it means “many things” (meaning that it somehow is the one word in English with no definition beyond what those who use it as a political weapon want it to be) but he also summarizes it as “making everything a race or gender or whatever issue.”

There’s no question that racists, misogynists, and transphobes agree with Musk’s homecooked definition for what “woke” means. But its actual definition, which Musk could Google at any time, is here; this is the first hit for such a search on Google, and the ABC News report I’ve just linked to has no connection to anything Musk has said.

Musk says America should “just move on” from allegations of racism, misogyny, and homophobia or transphobia, which is a core precept of white identity politics and the so-called manosphere. Musk doesn’t explain why America should move on from acknowledging inequities/injustices in America, though presumably his reason must be one of two things: either (a) no such inequities or injustices exist, or (b) if they do, they are warranted. Either contention would position Musk as delusional or ignorant, and thus incapable of running a company or being a federal contractor in 2024.

Musk’s insistence that the definition of “woke” (which has always focused primarily on things happening in the present) is actually “rehashing the past” causes him to issue one of the more bizarre statements in the interview, the head-scratching, “If you look at history broadly, everyone was a slave. We’re all descended from slaves—it’s just a question of when. Was it more recent or less recent?” Proof needn’t unpack this too much, as of course it’s manifestly untrue that everyone is the descendant of a slave and even if it were true, having slavery 160 years back in one’s family history versus having slavery 16,000 years back in one’s family history changes irretrievably whether we’d expect to still see effects from prior imprisonment via the institution of slavery.

Elon’s call to “just move on and treat everyone to just who they are as individuals” is also rather rich coming from a CEO whose companies are regularly sued for mass discrimination against almost everyone but white men. Musk claims these civil torts aren’t really happening because “I haven’t seen it”—a pretty good summary of how any megalomaniac or malignant narcissist understands the world.

He also says that “the color of [his] skin” has never given him any “advantage”—yet another sign the man sees what he wants to in the world, then calls it absolute truth.

As for realities he dislikes, Musk tells Lemon that bad things only “go away” if we “[stop] talking about them”—the same perspective that the average schoolchild has.

All of this would seem to confirm Musk as a substandard thinker who is uniquely ignorant of history and whatever the opposite of an ethicist is—none of which would suggest he can be trusted to run companies, handle federal contracts, or run Twitter.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Musk begins to show discomfort with the interview continuing—and begins taking steps to shut it down—when Lemon raises two issues: (1) trans rights (Musk is self-reportedly a transphobe in part due to his upset over his daughter being trans, leaving him with no ready or even hypothetical defense to his anti-trans animus besides personal trauma), and (2) whether “the buck stops with him” if advertisers choose not to advertise on Twitter due to their exercise of their own “free speech rights.” As to the latter issue, it’s clear that Musk doesn’t want to admit companies have free speech rights—despite him allegedly being a free speech absolutist and the holding of SCOTUS’s Citizens United saying corporations do have such rights.

These issues do appear to strike at the heart of what Musk is, and what he cannot defend being: a corporate opportunist whose opinions are based on emotion rather than fact, and who will turn on a dime and oppose all he previously said if his words ever hoist him by his own petard.

Conclusion
​

Musk is at his most coherent in the interview, ironically, at its very end—when he’s so visibly angry at Lemon that it’s clear their exchange (probably for the rest of their lives) will end imminently.

Musk says his focus is on “civilization risks” because his broad reading of history is that civilizations don’t just rise, they often collapse—in fact, perhaps invariably do.

In view of this, one could argue, being charitable to Musk, that his resolutely pro-Russia approach to the Russia-Ukraine War stems from the fear of “World War III”he expresses; one could argue that his bizarre personal sexual conduct in the past has been designed to ensure he has as many children as possible, for he says that he fears “demographic collapse” via underpopulation; one could argue that he exhibits such contempt for federal regulations (and doesn’t care at all about discrimination or anti-labor practices in his workplaces) because his exclusive focus is on “extending human consciousness” into space and making the human species “multi-planetary” as a way of avoiding a single event resulting in the destruction of humanity; one could argue he calls the “woke mind virus” something that is “fundamentally racist, fundamentally sexist, and fundamentally evil” because he’s decided that the quickest way to advance a society is to live, in the present, as though the future (presumably, a future without racism or misogyny or homophobia or transphobia) has already come to pass; and one could argue that Musk on some level knows that the term “censorship” doesn’t apply to private companies but is simply saying that he believes it should. But the problem is that (a) all of these perspectives so happen to benefit Elon Musk and his demographic immeasurably and almost no one else—calling into question the authenticity and the earnestness of these views; (b) he will retreat instantly from any of these views should they disadvantage him in even the slightest way; (c) he clearly conducts no research at all to support any of these opinions (or knock-on opinions that emanate from them); (d)he exhibits temperamental tendencies—e.g., toward out-group animus and in favor of a neo-Randian belief that all wealth is inherently just—that strongly indicate that none of his opinions are based in empiricism, but rather are founded in prejudice; and (e) even were none of the foregoing true, Musk’s unwillingness—or even incapacity—to face any serious questioning of his ill-considered opinions is profoundly unsettling.

The world expects its leaders—whether CEOs who focus solely on business or CEOs, like Musk, who want to be among the most powerful geo-political players on Earth—to be not just smart in narrow ways but wise, curious, patient, generous, open-minded and transparent. Musk is none of these things. He is, instead, self-made in the mold of some of the most dangerous tyrants in history: intemperate, capricious, cruel, puerile, impatient, spiteful, vengeful, bigoted, narrow-minded, and profoundly ill-informed. If much of the world is no longer comfortable with him as a public figure, it’s because we do have an awareness of history, and well know where “Elongelicalism” will lead.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...483b-1d76-4bb3-8cee-ff8706510e56_1400x556.png
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Thanks. Wow what an interview. That is a lot to digest but certainly describes well the Musk we all know and his insane tweets and beliefs.
 
OneGreatClub said:
Sounds like how a mob is run. Surrounds himself with only the best of people.

Click to expand...

Looks like his "hush money" trial has been pushed out 30 days

His lawyers tried to have all of Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen and Karen McDougal (former Playmate he had an affair with) blocked from testifying .. wtf

They also tried to have "catch and kill" blocked - related to the practice of silencing people

The judge gave them another 30 days, but told them to GAGF

Might explain why he's getting more unhinged and running a call to arms campaign with his MAGA cultists for a bloodbath

Fire Elmo GIF
 
Trump bringing Manafort back is ******* unbelievable.

It’s pretty clear that Putin is helping Trump and will continue to.

I actually hope Trump drops dead or has a massive stroke soon enough.

Way way too dangerous and will refuse to accept the results of this next election too.

If we think last time was chaotic, this will be next level, and if he gets his way then ‘elections’ going forward will start to look more and more like those in Putin’s Russia.

The justice system is not strong enough to deal with such ultimate corruption at this level and frequency of such extremely powerful people, when a rogue President can pardon serious criminals and release them from incarceration for his own future benefit.
It’s ****ed up, totally.
 
Cap said:
Apparently this guy has met a few guys from our board 🤣

Click to expand...

He says trump has an IQ of around 73 and linguists have analysed his speech and reckon he speaks at the level of a third grader?

I call bullshit. How would he know Trump's IQ? Where/how did he get that information?




Maybe it's heresay, but I reckon 73 is being very generous 🤣🤣🤣

Apart from that, this guy nailed it for most of the vid.
 
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