Reminders
What Some Things Mean
This week may be a little light on newsletters as I’ve got a bunch of assignments to catch up on, but in the meantime…
Please check out my piece on the CEO of Palantir’s new book in Bloomberg Weekend Edition.
I also appeared last week on Background Briefing with Ian Masters to talk about my piece on Trump and Meade Esposito for AirMail.
I believe my friend
and I are going to record another podcast this week, so stay tuned for that.
I just wanted to briefly remark on the spate of Nazi salutes: Musk’s and the ones at CPAC. I really have no time for the discourse surrounding these events. Is it trolling? Is it postmodern irony? Is it merely to own the libs? And so forth. I don’t care. Here’s what the Hitlergruß says to me: “I want to murder your family.” Someone doing that at a political rally is not something I can take as a joke in the slightest. If they wanted to provoke me, they have: It provokes in me profound, burning anger and hatred. I’m sure there are many others who feel the same. And even if it doesn’t have the same personal dimension, it ought to provoke disgust. Those who do not feel this way, or minimize it, or justify it, or laugh it off, I do not trust you and will not forgive you: you are also either a fool or a villain, or both. That gesture to me means “enemy” — That’s it. This is serious stuff. You cannot play around with these symbols without summoning hell and all its demons. They will not be able to control them.
The Nazi salute and the “I am become meme.” They pretend they’re just trolling, but it’s disgusting, and what’s worse is all the young men who think they’re part of something daring and subversive. I agree with you, John. It’s disgusting and fills me with a sickening rage.
John, I agree with you. It makes me furious, because it IS saying that they believe they have the right to conduct a murderous pogrom. The right and the willingness. It’s insane that anyone tolerates it in a free society.