Shot in the Dark

In Which I Pummel

Big Left’s latest atrocity against the language – a perversion that looms large in the “Twitter Files” story – is the debasement of the terms “Attack” and “Safety”.

One example:

The “attack” was more commonly or germanely known as “showing evidence of wrongdoing on Fauci and Roth’s parts”, of course. And the fact that Roth was Twitter’s “Safety” czar, with “safety” in this case meaning “insulation from conservative dissent”, closes the circle on my lede.

But the larger point is, Big Left is actively debasing terms that used to have fairly vivid meanings.

“Attack”: Leaving out actual physical assaults, it meant a malicious verbal or written aggression – not “building a case for someone’s malfeasance”.

“Safety”: The state of being protected from or preventing harm – once upon a time. Now: the existence of an informational echo chamber.

The list goes on: Fascist, Holocaust, Nazi, Hitler, Man, Woman, Family, and on and on.

It’s not accidental, of course – controlling language is a key part of controlling society, and removing the redolence in language that harkens to the lessons of the past ensures that any future tyrant can dispense with any foreknowledge of what they are up to.

It’s pretty brilliant, really. Also evil.


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34 responses to “In Which I Pummel”

  1. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Where would we be without the freedom to see Hunter Biden’s genitals.

    Twitter is a dying company and Musk is scrambling. If anyone’s been using Twitter lately, they would have noticed an increase in the algorithm recommending US right wing nuts and Musk mentions on their primary timeline / feed, marked under various categories or ‘you may be interested in…’ topics.

    Also, his Twitter files ‘reveals’ have been blown-up nothing burgers. He’s reverting to the same tactics used by far left and far right grifters, trying to stir up controversy and drama, in a hope that it attracts more traffic to Twitter and promotes more engagement (be it negative or positive). It’s clear his main interest is making back the money he foolishly spent, and not some deeper calling or sense of purpose. Judging by his tweets over the past few weeks, It’s probably not long until he goes off the rails like Kanye. It’s clear the guy has some serious issues.

  2. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Nothing wrong with this perspective, but it would also seem to coincide with Treacher’s observation that when Republicans do something, the media’s story is about what Republicans did, but when Democrats do something, the story is about how Republicans are reacting to it.

    I don’t know how true it is (because I read it on the internet), but I’ve heard tell that Elon’s crusade, as it were, is personal because his estranged tranny daughter (born male).

  3. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    the reason the HUnter Biden laptop story was suppressed was not because it had lewd pictures of Hunter Biden. It was suppressed because it contains evidence that Joe Biden may have been getting kickbacks from his son’s influence peddling schemes.
    And the story was suppressed by the FBI, who had possession of the laptop’s contents.

  4. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    The Cambridge dictionary recently changed its definitions of “woman” and “man” to include trannies.
    But I’m not sure that is meaningful. The new definition doesn’t make sense because it says a woman may be: “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
    And that is far from current trans ideology, which says nothing about “living as a woman.” Part of the insanity of trans ideology is that gender is fixed at birth, no matter what you call yourself or what gender you live as. This way they can claim it is an immutable characteristic & make a civil rights claim on that basis.

  5. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    There’s more than enough evidence in Musks data dumps to convene a Congressional investigation into the FBI.

    The degenerates are laying the groundwork to discount the findings such an investigation might uncover, if the GOP found enough testicles between them to convene one.

    Which they won’t.

    In the end though, its doesn’t matter if they do or don’t. Mr. and Mrs. Normie are watching, and many are being red pilled. That’s all that matters.

  6. kinlaw Avatar
    kinlaw

    Ah, the troll is obsessed with hunter’s genitalia. There are medical professionals who can help you with this.

    Meanwhile, the adults in the room are focusing on the FBI interfering in an election (the real insurrection) and “10% for the big guy” (gropey joe).

    Lame as h*ll troll. wasn’t working lat week, still isn’t.

  7. kinlaw Avatar
    kinlaw

    Part of the communist way: gaslighting people into humiliation, and then into silence, then acceptance of your lies.

    Doesn’t work as well as it used to due to new media.

  8. Night Writer Avatar

    And next, “gaslighting” – the new word of the year – will come to mean “truth-telling”.

  9. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Most normal people are not even aware of what “shadow banning” is. This is one of the big challenges that conservatives are going to face. Their obsessions have no relevance to most normal people. It doesn’t help either that what conservatives saw as “shadow banning” was in many cases, just people choosing not engage with their accounts. It’s a hilarious complaint to given the degree to which conservative voices have been amplified on other social media including Facebook. Over the past four years too, there have been three other conservative attempts to create a more right-wing Twitter — Gab, Parler, and Truth Social — every single one has been a money losing flop. Now that Musk is transforming Twitter into another right-wing echo chamber, it isn’t surprising to see it heading in the same direction.

  10. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    There’s more than enough evidence in Musks data dumps to convene a Congressional investigation into the FBI

    In my lifetime being investigated by Congress has gone from a personal catastrophe affecting one’s honor and character to being, well, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

  11. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Twitter has only made a profit in one year — 2019.
    Frequently wrong, never in doubt strikes again!
    Over the past four years too, there have been three other conservative attempts to create a more right-wing Twitter — Gab, Parler, and Truth Social — every single one has been a money losing flop.

  12. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Sam Bankman-Fried Charged With Fraud: Live Updates
    https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/sam-bankman-fried-arrested-ftx-congress

    Weird, I was assured by the usual lot (obviously Musk included) that there would be no investigation “because he was a Democrat donor”

    Beginning to think these guys don’t have their finger on the pulse as much as they claim.

  13. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    It was always going to be like this. Trumpists are, despite their volubility, not a big group. Trump was able to surf Twitter on the huge (and much more diverse) audience that Twitter had built. But there was never any chance of Truth Social reaching that mass, and without that mass, of attracting other users and advertisers.

  14. Mr. D Avatar
    Mr. D

    Where would we be without the freedom to see Hunter Biden’s genitals.

    Hunter Biden’s genitals are a red herring. Probably makes things awkward for him on dates.

    The troll is marginally useful for sharing received (plagiarized) wisdom. No one cares about Hunter Biden’s balls; the interest is in how ballsy he’s been in comprehensively grifting off his surname and whether the Big Guy rendered any services in furtherance of said grifting.

  15. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    ^^ To summarize the heart of the SiTD editorial board’s argument, there is no evidence of anything nefarious. BUT, consider, how muddled is this whole topic. Surely one would expect at least some evidence of almost anything (the age of the universe, the death of God, etc.). Thus the flaw in the editorial board’s argument that there is no evidence: the absence of any evidence that might implicate nefarious activities is, intrinsically, evidence of nefarious activities.one would expect to exist is, itself, evidence of nefarious activities. Q.E.D. /s

  16. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    As far as I can tell, Emery is critiquing his own belief that Trump colluded with Putin to steal the 2016 election from Hillary.
    Or maybe he is going off about his Trump/Truth Social obsession again? I mean, it’s borderline gibberish.

  17. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    ^^ That chip on your shoulder is so big it can be seen from Mars.

    There were no “revelations” in the Taibbi / Weiss piece, given that almost everything that they reported was already in the public domain. On some of the issues, they implied “government censorship” eliding over the fact that Trump was president at the time, and glossing over the fact that the Trump people repeatedly intervened to influence content moderation decisions.

    It would be news if Taibbi and Weiss reported on the influence of the Saudi government in connection with Twitter (in the past or presently), but somehow I don’t think we will hear anything about that, and I doubt Musk will give them access to that information.

  18. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    Twitter was part of a coordinated plan to steal the 2020 election. The leftist media and the DOJ/FBI were complicit as well.

    The media is now working with the degenerates in the White House to shadowban the facts, in yet another coordinated plan to keep midwits from hearing anything about the lies and fuckery that manipulated them for the past 6 years.

    There’s nothing a midwit hates more than being shown he’s been treated like a nitwit.

  19. Mr. D Avatar
    Mr. D

    Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman, 1979: But I said once in some interview that every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

    The SiTD commentariat on the troll, 2022: every word it writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

  20. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    ^^Now we are into the gibberish!
    I saw what happened to Twitter happen to an outfit I worked for, but it was the head of HR that got pushed out because we had no “trust and safety” regime.
    Woman gets hired to run HR. She starts taking over the grunge work and decision making process from an overworked director. Pretty soon the entire organization is being run out of HR. At one point every email forward had to be approved by HR.
    The director eventually saw what she had done and fired her.

  21. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    All of the released “Twitter Files” threads so far, they are all just as ridiculous as the first one. They are all written by people who appear to have (1) no idea what they’re looking at (2) no interest in talking to anyone who does understand it and (3) no concern about presenting them in an extremely misleading light in an effort to push a narrative that is not even remotely supported by what they’re sharing.

  22. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    Since Shadow Banning is not a problem and may be a positive good, can we get some around here? There’s a particular commentator I’d like to have you shadowban so he no longer appears in my feed.

  23. TKS Avatar
    TKS

    FFS Emery the least you could do is try to have an original thought.

  24. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Twitter’s “trust and safety” team was not concerned about the safety of Chaya Raichik when A WaPo “ournalist used Twitter to dox her last year.

  25. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    This is what we learned from the Twitter Files:
    -Shadow banning was real.
    -Shadow banning was done on a partisan basis.
    -Twitter’s TOS were mostly meaningless and when applied, were applied inconsistently.
    -Twitter’s “trust and safety” team considered policing political speech on Twitter more important than policing child exploitation material.
    -We learned that most MSM editors & journalists are against free expression of ideas.
    -We learned that the FBI and the DNI had weekly meetings with Twitter in an attempt to control Americans’ political speech during election season.
    -As a side benefit, the Twitter Files exposed the lack of integrity of most leftists who, before the Twitter Files were published, insisted that all of the above was a “Right Wing conspiracy theory.” They now claim that “We knew this all along.”

  26. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Twitter seems really important to a very loud, very small minority that uses Twitter, a group that includes journalists. To the rest of us, all this sounds like irrelevant, chaotic inside ball.

    Maybe Republicans could start winning elections again if they started focusing on solutions for real issues (quality healthcare, climate change, paid leave, poverty, transportation infrastructure, affordable education) instead of obsessing over Twitter blocking the unimportant Hunter Biden conspiracy nonsense for all of 36 hours. I mean, really, who cares? How did that 36 hours affect anyone?

    Maybe pundits would not keep embarrassing themselves with awful, out-of-touch punditry (“there’s a big giant red wave election coming!”) if they stopped assuming the majority of us share the misplaced priorities of extremely online social media weirdos. We don’t.

    Imagine going to a tangible town square and it’s promoted by some person, persons, or a company. To get in, you have to agree to let them track everything you do all day and night and give them access to your personal data and contacts so they can sell it and use it for advertising to make billions, not to mention manipulate your reality so you experience what they think you should experience.

    That’s not a town square, that’s a profit center and a distortion of reality.

  27. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Maybe Republicans could start winning elections again if they started focusing on solutions for real issues
    ^^Doesn’t realize that the GOP took the house away from the Democrats last month.
    Like a certain and now banned liberal commenter on SITD, Emery writes comments that are so far off that they aren’t even wrong.
    Years, since 2001, that the Democrats have held the presidency:10
    Years, since 2001, that the GOP has held the presidency: 12.
    Years, since 2001, that the Democrats have held the House:6.
    Years, since 2001, that the GOP has held the House: 14.
    Years, since 2001, that the Democrats have held the Senate: 12.
    Years, since 2001, that the GOP has held the senate: 10.
    Current governorships held by the Democrats: 19.
    Current governorships held by the GOP: 31.
    State legislatures controlled by the Democrats: 36.
    State legislatures controlled by the GOP: 62.

    So Emery believes that the GOP has trouble winning state & federal elections. His premise is wrong — obviously, clearly wrong, and incredibly easy to check using this thing called “Google” — and then he writes four paragraphs assuming that his incorrect premise.
    What can I say? Head made of mush..

  28. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    ^ Who said that first, rAT?

    From what fetid corner of the leftist shitnet did you copy it? Do you paste plagiarized bull shit elsewhere, or is this the only venue you use as a toilet?

    Do you realize how small, how unimportant, how stupid you look to the people that read these threads?

    Aren’t you supposed decamp from your FaBULoUs LaKE FrONt EsTAte to head up to the SKi SHaK and tune up your boards to sHRed teh BiRKiE? Lol…

    Tia, rAT!

  29. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    Say rAT?

    What’s going on over at Vice, or Mother Jones?

    Anything worth calling your own? You know, Pedo Joe would be proud of your plagiarism… He fucks it up every time, and you get away with it about 1 time out of every 5 times.

    But your lying, that’s not good at all. Everyone automatically assumes everything you say is a lie.

  30. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    It should be pretty obvious that Emery is a shit poster.
    I mean, he comes on SITD, and posts a condescending comment on “what the GOP needs to do to win elections,” when his own team has been losing elections steadily to the GOP for over 20 years.
    The GOP is so gormless it takes real work to lose to them, at least nationally.
    What can I say? People don’t like poison.

  31. Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

    The Democrat electoral pitch goes something like this:
    “We are going to change America!”
    “But not the good parts, right? You’ll leave those alone, won’t you, Democrats?”
    “WE ARE GOING TO CHANGE AMERICA ESPECIALLY THE GOOD PARTS!”

  32. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    ^^ NIMBY combines with entrenched clientelism to make today’s Democratic party an unlikely engine of economic change; it’s a double-humped camel that walks on gangly and unsteady legs. Democrats promise more taxes and less results.

    In 2024, a suburban friendly Republican will stich together a center-right coalition and take the presidency. Mistrust of Democrats in the suburbs will move the critical swing 5%. It’s a game of inches at the national level.

  33. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Regarding the claim that Twitter censorship is a nothingburger, I seem to remember that Elon Musk released evidence that federal officials had been negotiating with Twitter executives to do exactly that.

    Emery, maybe you can explain to me why this should be acceptable, but on my part, it seems that when government officials are working with media outlets to prevent stories from getting to the public, that is a big deal and a huge transgression of the First Amendment. It’s also a pretty clear violation of USC 18, section 241, which reads:

    Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code provides: “If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person . . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same, . . . they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”

    I am not going to hold my breath for Merrick Garland to honor his oath of office and prosecute, but I would hope that even the left would agree that when government official conspire with media executives to suppress stories, something big is up.

    And really, even if it were just about “Hunter Biden has pictures of his genitalia on his laptop while smoking crack”, that still invites the question of “how does a man with a drug and hooker problem and no relevant private sector experience get multimillion dollar deals with companies right after his dad goes to those countries on ‘diplomacy’?”. I think we know the answer. Our President is deeply corrupt.

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