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NancyB's avatar

Very interesting. The conviction that tech can directly unveil the real and bypass politics as a false mediation does feel more and more menacing.

It seems to me that Trump is less like the Strong Man than the popular clown who allowed various rightwing media domains––TV, social media, now podcasts––to become interlinked as a critical mass capable of defining reality apart from any contact with what they hive off as the "elite" (science, constrained journalism, academic disciplines). Now Musk steps in and gives a face to the monied interests who feel too constrained by the reality-based sphere and therefore financed the rise of this media world.

But Musk, unlike, say, Rupert Murdock, is also nutter and a conspiracist. It feels weirdly like there is a feed-back loop through which the world contrived by rightwing media-sphere is now the reality for all sorts of people who acquired their expertise and power from the world they no longer live in. Supreme Court justices and their wives. Finance titans with a holy calling to fire university presidents. Atheist tech lords who see demons burrowing in the minds of university students.

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dysphemistic treadmill's avatar

Bots populi bots dei.

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