I can't take my eyes off of you.
But if you feel like I feelPlease let me know that it's real.You're just too good to be trueI can't take my eyes off you.
Frankie Valli, 1967
Elon Musk is a star. He is acting out. He has center stage and he is hanging onto it by being outrageous.
Musk is in a manic high.
Ron DeSantis has not displaced Trump on center stage. Elon Musk has. Musk dominates big-gesture narcissism the same way Trump did it, by being in the news cycle multiple times a day saying provocative things, poking his opponents in the eye with a stick. Screw the woke left. Screw Biden. Screw Democrats. Screw moderation weenies, and don't just fire them; accuse them of supporting child abuse. Screw the media and accuse them of hiding the truth. Twitter is the real media. Screw the supposed protectors of public health: "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci."
Musk, like Trump, appeals to the populist political right's resentments of elite opinion and social norms. They feel White Christian heterosexuals are picked on by the nannie/tyrants of the establishment. The Master of the Universe is Atlas, working on behalf of the everyday oppressed silent majority. Atlas shrugs. He is too rich to be called "deplorable."
There is an irony here. The richest man in the world is telling people to fear the power of elites. It works for Musk like it worked for Trump. People trust a traitor. It takes one to know one.
Musk is communicating with big, bold strokes. He showed he could make an offer to buy Twitter on a whim and as a joke. Then he realized he vastly overpaid. He was flamboyant in his rule-breaking to get out of the purchase. He ended up buying Twitter at the price he offered because his bluff offer was so well crafted. It was ironclad. The only person who could constrain Musk was Musk.
 |
| Medford CBD convention, 2019. The sky is the limit! |
[Note: To get daily home delivery of this blog go to https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
24 comments:
I would not be surprised if Twitter completely implodes because decent people and responsible advertisers no longer want to participate.
Anyone else tired of hearing about private male anatomy, which seems to be an on-going theme of this blog? Also, the criminal and corrupt former Occupant's most famous repulsive and degrading quote about women. Shock-value not needed or appreciated.
Cutting-edge electric vehicles and space transport are not Beanie Babies and tulips. Nor commercial real estate or magic beans, either.
The "moderation weenie" Musk fired, gay activist Yoel Roth, wrote his UPenn PhD dissertation on expanding underage youth access to Grindr.
The themes in this post are far more aptly applied to neo-Madoff crypto-huckster Sam Bankman-Fried. But he's a Democratic megadonor, so...
Most unfortunately, because of the explicit, graphic language often used in this blog, it is not suitable for young readers/students who might otherwise benefit from the content. It also would not have been suitable for my deceased grandparents. Fortunately they did not live long enough to see the extensive degradation of our society and public discourse. Although they are greatly missed, Thank God they are no longer alive. Their hearts would be broken.
Elon Musk, like Trump, resorts to abrasive, pretentious, narcissistic behavior as a way to achieve money, fame and power. He apparently views Dr. Fauci’s life of public service as a rebuke to the hollowness of his own, even though Fauci has no interest in him. In fact, that very indifference is apparently intolerable to him, as is having to share the limelight with someone more respected for his contributions to humanity than Musk is for his wealth and prattle.
What’s just as appalling are the many chumps and crazies who eagerly swallow baseless accusations made by charlatans against not only Dr. Fauci but other dedicated public servants such as election officials, teachers, etc. Their zeal is exceeded only by their ignorance.
Musk exemplifies that neither economic success, innovative success, nor superior intellect, are in any way indicative of emotional intelligence. Like Trump, Musk’s behavior is similar to a 3 year old’s. It is unfortunate that this behavior is rewarded by our society, rather than eschewed.
I read this blog every morning. What days was I in a coma or dead, that I missed "explicit,graphic language often used in this blog" ?
I noticed an interesting parallel: many liberals seem to have a been continuously traumatized and driven crazy during the four years of Trump’s presidency; someone they detested had taken over an important seat of power in their world.
And now we have Elon Musk, who bears some superficial resemblance to Trump, taking over another important seat of power in their world.
I think a lot of the negative energy directed by liberals at Musk is a re-excitation of the trauma from Trump’s presidency.
https://youtu.be/SjbPi00k_ME
Bernie Madoff. ...Bernie Madoff, Peter??
Bernie Madoff got away with peanuts in comparison to what we are seeing here today.
Please tell me, is La Tina, governor of the asylum of Portlandia going to return the political donations given to her by FTX??
... I didn't think so.
What's the matter Peter, you don't like your Tesla anymore?
Is the pathway to Mars a lost cause?
The darling of the left is now a demon of the right?
Just another one of the many rats who are desperately running to skitter from Twitter??
Free speech for some but the rest get none??
Sunlight is the greatest antiseptic.
Truth hurts.
Obviously you can't handle the truth
NEWSFLASH!
Government coercion/cooperation with corporations is defined as: FASCISM
You're so afraid of those Chinese protesters aren't you? Don't you just wish that the Communist Party would just shoot all of them? Just the way you wished Trudeau and his DAVOSOROSIAN army would just shoot all those protesters in the trucker Convoy
... those are your very words Anon mouses! I read your responses on those days. You are guilty of crimes against humanity.
Do you want to see a truly demonic soul? All you need to do is look in the mirror.
I have to say, the sadist within me is giddy and gay to watch you all squirm and wiggle deeper into your holes of fear and loathing, running desperately away from the reality of the evil YOU have wrought to not just America, but to the entire world.
(Here's just another reason why the movie Casablanca is one of the greatest critiques of world politics ever made, and how it shows to what degree Global fascism will go in order to destroy love and freedom in the world)
https://youtu.be/JW5bcI0ADCY
Trump used Twitter and the nation’s highest office to foment fear, anger, hatred and crackpot conspiracy theories. Musk bought Twitter to perpetuate that practice, even reinstating the notorious neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin. So-called conservatives love them for it. Liberals, not so much.
Beware of DeSantis. He is a mini -Trump, but a lot smarter. He's a hard right politician, without the corruption. He could win.
That's why I'm hoping Trump wins the nomination. He won't win, but takes DeSantis out of it.
"David in Ashland" sounds suspiciously like Curt: angry, irrelevant, delusional and overlong. All that's missing is the profanity and puerile sexual slurs.
David in Ashland writes in a different style than does Curt. To be hyper generous, David writes in a free-form Gertrude Stine style stream of consciousness. There is a kind of poetry in the jumble of thoughts. William Burroughs might think it takes a text, cuts it into pieces and re-assembles it randomly. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Herman’s Hesse’s journey to the East both consider logical trains of thought an illusion. Time travel is real. Consciousness flits from real time to memory. So therefore true writing is a jumble.
That is the generous—preposterous, actually—interpretation.
Alas, the correct one is that David dashes off accusations and doesn’t appear to re-read his comment for intelligibility, so to an outside reader, so it comes across as angry venting by a troll with a short attention span.
So why do I publish it??? Because angry disorganized comments are a legitimate part of the downscale populism brought to power by Trump. Trump energized this group. They needed a voice and Trump gave it voice. I think David in Ashland is self-defeating when he exposes his venting to the public that reads these comments. My assumption is that people read him and think, “Lordy, those people are nasty and weird. Don’t let them anywhere near power.” Truth is, alas, David in Ashland is not an outlier. He exemplifies a certain kind of right populism. People need to see him, and Paul Gosar, and Trump’s financial solicitation emails, and Nick Fuentes, and the whole panoply of people and documents that have a message that rings true to half of America. I say, let them expose themselves. I don’t want a cleaned up, educated, polished version to present the message. Let David in Ashland serve it up. Same with rut. As long as Curt is understood to be a local Republican and Trump/DeSantis supporter, For a while I had been willing to publish some of his comments.
Peter Sage
Thank you Peter, I very much appreciate your candor, and considering the essence of your post I would essentially expect you to just damn the torpedoes and fire away. Angry speech is free speech.End of story. Censorship on any of these topics is utterly unacceptable.
Then again, is it angry, or is it born of a deep frustration in our current state of uncertainty and ferocious evil that has truly infiltrated the highest echelons of power in the world?
This is all going far beyond politics and bending down to the lowest levels of animal behavior in the human being.
You all have to understand that you are exercising "hate speech" every single time you post on this blog. I have come to call you the "kindly fascists". It is akin to Ronald Reagan's famous nine words, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.".
Also, just so you know, I am a fierce Zionist. I call myself a "Goyish Chabadnick" I am not a Christian because Paul had a thing for uncircumcised penises (is that sexy enough for you Mousey Anon??)
Christianity truly is no more than a Jewish Messianic sect, and I find truth in the Torah, not the gospels.
I also just want to get my thoughts posted before the day is out because tomorrow will be a whole new post.
"I love you Alice B Toklas, ...and so does Gertrude Stein“
Oops. Used the wrong phone. Obviously that last one was me.
Antisemitic posts soared 61% in the two weeks after Musk acquired Twitter. Hate speech is not only prejudiced but abusive or threatening and can lead to violence. Peter does a pretty good job of censoring that, except for providing the occasional example. Nor is there anything wrong with censorship per se. Only the government isn’t allowed to censor non-government communication, and even that has exceptions. If remaining “Anonymous” or “Unknown” hadn’t enabled the ignorant to become so intemperate, they might do a better job of censoring themselves.
RE: "explicit, graphic language often used in this blog..."
I had no idea that "Trump", "Musk", "regressive", and "DeSantis" were considered "explicit, graphic language".
Please, Governor DeSantis, don't run for President. We want you to stay in Florida a few more years.
:-;
An earlier version of this post had a sentence which described the Wall Street Master of the Universe syndrome of all-powerful testosterone risk-taking and money-making as the BSD mentality. The phrase and abbreviation, Big Swinging Dick, was commonplace in financial circles during the go-go period from 1985 to 2000, at which point those Masters lost their clients 80% of their money. Or all of it if the BSD swashbucklers used leverage, which all did. I decided that BSD was unnecessary, and maybe offensive. I also rewrote Trump's quotation of what he grabbed to "grab __ ___ _____" I realize I am quoting someone, but in real life, outside of this blog, I would never use the five letter word "_____" to name a vulva.
As I wrote a week or two ago, I have noticed that some words are offensive when used as nouns, but become less so when turned into adjectives. It is curious to me, but I see it. Ads on television for Peroni's disease, refers to "penile stretching." Penile is OK, but the noun isn't. Ads for hemorrhoids make reference to "anal distress" or "anal bleeding" but don't use the noun form.
I was using the noun form, when wrote about Hunter Biden's penile appendage.
Every day that I drive to the farm I pass a huge blue sign that says "FxxK Joe Biden" only it spells it out. I think the sign serves to discredit Trump supporters, showing them to be trashy zealots. But, in reflecting on "Anonymous" I decided that I didn't want my blog to be coarse in the minds of some people. Let Trump supporters be the coarse ones. Let the evangelicals project their "Love thy neighbor" ethic by putting up signs that say "F--k Joe Biden and F--k you for voting for him, with an image of a middle finger.
I decided that Anonymous had a point.
Yes, DeSantis needs to stay in Florida to oversee his criminal “investigation” of the COVID vaccines, whose safety and efficacy he previously touted. But maybe he's tired of just pandering to the local bozos.
Re: DeSantis request for a federal grand jury investigation.
DeSantis is NOT anti-vaccine. He's anti-corruption by the CDC and the vaccine manufacturers.
From the start, his administration worked hard to get vaccines available in Florida to anyone that wanted or required a vaccine.
In our county, we were some of the first to get them. We got the 2nd one early, and also that 1st booster, the 3rd for me.
My wife, neighbors, and 8 are now up to 5, and there's no "official" room on our cards to provide info for that 5th shot.
He chose to get vaccines in our arms first, worrying about the other problems until now.
There's been no effort by his administration to not get vaccinated.
but I have known deep down that posting on this blog is an act of futility, and we are experiencing that futile nature now of what clearly has no ability to be a proper "civil" discussion, but just a bunch of stuttering rants, ...like this one.
Bruce...........
(Just email me Peter. Tell me what's bothering you)
Heeerrrreee Kitty kitty kitty kitty.....
...Finally!!
Waah, I didn’t get to see all the explicit, nor the graphic, language. Dang. Keep lookin', I guess.
Post a Comment