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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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In case you spent the day under a rock, Trump has been reinstated on Twitter after winning a poll by Elon Musk. Not kidding.

I'd like to keep this open & not push the discussion in any direction, so I'll keep this short.

Predictions? What does this mean for Twitter? Elon? Trump? Social media? The country? The world?

This will likely accelerate the Left's attempts to move to a more pro-censorship platform. They also might pressure advertisers to boycott Twitter.

Do not forget that Musk’s businesses such as Tesla and SpaceX wouldn’t survive a day without US government help (yes Tesla too). Musk isn’t anti-establishment, he is a part of the establishment.

The establishment has decided to let Trump back on Twitter, despite the fact that a lot of people (probably half the country) will be enraged by this.

Why they did it is an open question. My guess is they're just throwing the right a bone to cool the tides a little. They're too busy "celebrating" a minor victory while the larger and more important battles of the culture war, i.e. entertainment media, journalism and education, will remain their provinces.

Musk isn’t anti-establishment, he is a part of the establishment.

I'd say he's an expert at exploiting the establishment to do things he wanted to do anyway.

Electric car subsidies were going to exist anyway, why not get rich off them and kickstart the industry? [late edit, I just realized how ironic it is to use the term 'kickstart' in the context of electric cars.]

The U.S. needs tons of launch capacity and will (over)pay for it. Why not get rich off it, Kickstart the industry, and maybe colonize Mars?

Nothing in this equation implies being pro-establishment.

What do you honestly think the counterfactual world in which Musk does not exist looks like?