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Notes -
The reports of DOGE's demise may have been premature. Things apparently move at lightning speed now, so the easiest thing is a timeline of what happened this morning to resurrect DOGE before the weekend.
Elon posts a poll asking if the fired DOGE employee should be rehired: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887867644814020902
JD Vance quotes the poll, giving his support to the fired employee: https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633
In the press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister, Trump is asked about his opinion. He says 'I don't know...I'm with the Vice President': https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1887950091937530324
Elon says 'he will be brought back': https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887957783783391423
It's like for the first time in my lifetime people said 'no, we don't do that anymore.' And our leaders now share values sufficiently enough that they didn't ignore the sentiment or just listen and commiserate, they actually...obeyed. Pretty much instantly.
I had made a comment earlier today after Elon posted the poll about how the ideal scenario would be to quickly hire him back before the Super Bowl/whatever new developments break on Monday. Beyond that, I don't want to write too much about my own personal opinion because it's fairly scattered as I'm more than a little giddy from surprise at the moment. But, I am interested in your thoughts as this seems positively seismic.
I'm very happy about the direction and I hope it represents a sea change. However, I have strong reservations in this case specifically. He was recently hand-picked to rejigger the government, ostensibly on behalf on the American people. This past summer he tweeted "Normalize Indian hate", and "I was racist before it was cool." At best, this belies his immaturity. He already had a job at SpaceX, and he now has the sympathies of the richest man on the planet. He wasn't cut out for public service, and he'll be fine.
Vance said "I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life". I totally agree, but Vance is being your typical disingenuous politician. Either Musk is hiring kids to oversee the government, or this guy isn't a kid.
In principle, I'm against this specific re-hiring because I think he earned his firing more earnestly than he earned his hiring. It would have been better to issue an apology and do nothing. In practice, I'm just hopeful that more sympathetic cases become the norm. The left will continue to eat their own for some time, so this is a competitive advantage on the right. And the right is probably closer to a humanistic, empathetic understanding of people on this issue. My point is that it has limits.
I support his rehiring because it's the ultimate repudiation of cancel culture, and about time the right grew a spine. You don't win a culture war by accepting the opponent's moral framing or terms.
I agree, it's a welcome development.
At the same time, how would, 'Normalize Israelite hate.' have gone? Maybe Elon would take him on a field trip to Auschwitz.
I mean one of his tweets being quoted in news stories was literally “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”
Pessimistically I assumed this was the one that really got him fired (well, "asked to resign".)
Maybe if the left called him an antisemite rather than leading with the anti-Indian racism the charges would've stuck? Though maybe not, the Elon nazi salute thing passed from the zeitgeist very quickly, especially with the ADL coming out to defend him.
Can you point me to what they actually said? I can find lots of secondary sources claiming they did, but none containing a quote, and nothing on adl.org.
It seems plausible to me. Maybe something like "calling people who aren't killing Jews Nazis is like, kind of in poor taste, please stop."
https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403
I am not surprised by a primary source getting buried.
Interesting, I was hoping for more detail than that from them. Thanks for digging it up.
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