Moscow Musk and the "new" Technocracy

Q: So this is why Musk seemingly “overpaid” for Twitter? He and his backers want to use it as a tool of information warfare, to kill off the dollar and help usher in Putin’s “multipolar world?”

A: Yes, that’s why they “overpaid” for Twitter. Because the end goals have nothing to do with Twitter or its ad model by itself. It’s merely a means to an end. Musk is likely to join forces with Trump’s Truth Social and Kanye West’s Parler to try to control much of the information space. And they’ve got the threat of Putin’s nukes to force the issue.
~ Investigative journalist Dave Troy, explaining Elon Musk's true motives for buying Twitter

Fourteen years ago, just ahead of the 2008 US presidential election and in the midst of a terrible global financial crisis, I published a post about the Technocracy movement, and I facetiously suggested Technocracy as a possible bailout plan for the modern day, or at least as a basis for the New-Wage scams I used to write about so much. In light of recent developments, perhaps it's time to drag that old post out again.

Technocracy had its roots in the years immediately following World War I, but didn't really come to fruition until the Great Depression, when folks were desperate for solutions to their financial misery. In essence, Technocracy proposed the control of society by an elite corps of technical experts, who would determine what was best for everyone else. Everyone would be taken care of, and all of their needs met, through the application of sound scientific and engineering principles. Yet Technocrats weren't motivated by altruism, morality, or ethics, and they scoffed at the idea of democracy. And although their stated goals included equality and fairness (by their definition of fairness, anyway), they were disturbingly elitist. At its core Technocracy, like the various forms of autocracy also scorned by Technocrats, was still about power and control in the hands of a few.

Technocracy was a raging fad among many elites and elite wannabes during the lean Depression years and even into World War II, but its star dimmed considerably in the prosperous years after the war. But Technocracy never really went away. In fact it could easily be said -- and it actually has been said -- that egomaniacal multibillionaire Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, is a Technocrat.

It would seem to run in the family. Musk's grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was very big in the Technocracy movement in Canada back in the day. From a November 2021 piece on the Business Live site:

Believing that science and technology could cure all ills, Haldeman campaigned for the capitalist monetary infrastructure to be replaced by a new universal currency, based on a unit of heat, to be known as the erg. The technocrats even wanted an end to prices, in the view that scientists could handle distribution within society far better than the market.

Such concepts seemed dangerous to the Canadian government, which banned the movement over its opposition to World War 2. The belief system faded away with the growth of prosperity after the war. But similar ideas are inspiring the current excitement over meme stocks, cryptocurrency and the man who now calls himself “Technoking”.

To [Harvard University historian Jill] Lepore, Musk’s ideology seems to flow from these outlandish — and outmoded — views. In Lepore’s words, his ambition is an “extravagant, extreme” even “extraterrestrial capitalism, driven by fantasies that come from science fiction”.

Professor Lepore's theory is that Musk's stated mission to colonize Mars is a reflection of Technocratic philosophy. That makes sense. What also makes sense is the notion that Musk's recent takeover of a popular social media platform is rooted in Technocratic philosophy, among other related motives that are even more disturbing.

"The bird is freed" (and even if it crashes into a window, Musk will probably get fatter on the splatter)
As almost everyone must surely know by now, Elon Musk's deal to buy Twitter finally went through this past week. This was a hotly discussed and debated topic for many months, and I even tackled it on this Whirled, though in a broader context than the basic will-he-or-won't-he-go-through-with-it debate.

Not surprisingly, the right wingnuts and conspiranoids and hatemongers have been giddy with delight since Musk liberated the bird: they are rolling over and wetting themselves praising their Overlord as they celebrate the "return of free speech" and the "end of wokeness" on Twitter. Many have expressed their great joy by reportedly flooding the forum with the N-word, just because, like naughty kindergartners, they can. The Neo-Nazis and their ilk seem to be having a field day too.

Many others, not so happy, are just waiting for Twitter to fail, and are taking great gulps from their chilled bottles of schadenfreude because they believe Musk made a laughably horrible deal, paying far more for Twitter than it is worth. Many are also vowing to leave Twitter, perhaps migrating to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's nascent Bluesky forum, as if that'll show Elon.

I'm holding off on the schadenfreude myself, because I think Musk is invested in a long game that has little to do with the success or failure of Twitter, by conventional standards of success and failure (e.g., ad revenue and whatnot). And I plan to stay on Twitter -- after all, I'm pretty much of a nobody there anyway, and everyone just leaves me alone. I certainly have no plans to hop onto Bluesky. That would only be helping the dude who played a key role in Musk's deal to take Twitter private, and who happens to be good friends with Musk rather than his rival: Jack Dorsey.

Everyone who is at all concerned about Twitter, the future of actual free speech (online and off), and especially about the future of democracy, should read investigative journalist Dave Troy's October 29, 2022 piece on Medium, 'No, Elon and Jack are not “competitors.” They’re collaborating.' Troy explains that he has followed Twitter closely since its inception, and has had a chance to talk in depth about technical topics with Jack Dorsey and the company's other founders over the years. Accordingly, he has views that differ from the "well-intentioned but poorly-informed commentary and analysis" that we've seen all over the media.

To those who think Musk's purchase of Twitter is crazy because he's sure to lose tons of money, Troy counters that Musk and his backers have far broader goals than making a profit.

The goals are more ideological in nature. Musk and his backers believe that the global geopolitical arena was being warped by too much “woke” ideology and censorship, and wanted to fix that by first restoring voices that had previously been silenced —and then implementing technical and algorithmic solutions that allow each user to get the experience they want. They think this can “solve” the problems that people cite about social media content. Making money, they figure, will come from the secondary effects of enabling “free speech” and the possibility of building other services like payments and replacing government on top of such an app. Plus the company’s social graph data is a goldmine for other businesses that may wish to benefit from detailed knowledge of the makeup of society.

And that's where the Technocracy angle comes in, where Twitter is concerned. Dave Troy believes it's completely naive to think that there is a technical solution to harmful content, which is likely to lead to more radicalization and cultish behavior.

...they are being willfully ignorant of the harmful side effects of content. It is a kind of tech fundamentalist solutionism that posits that for any difficult problem, there must be a technical solution. Many sociologists and cultural scholars would argue differently.

But the Technocracy aspect goes far beyond Twitter, and out into the further reaches of Space. Troy points out that back in April of this year, Dorsey wrote:

In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.

Wow. That sounds pretty spiritual, especially for a sociopathic ego-tripper like Musk -- although, come to think of it, this blog is littered with posts about sociopathic ego-trippers who talk a good game about "light" and "consciousness" (this guy and this guy, for instance), so never mind. In any case, Troy explains what Dorsey really meant by "the light of consciousness."

This is a reference to “longtermism,” the heavily marketed philosophy being promoted by Musk and his friend William MacAskill that asserts the only thing that matters is humanity’s future in space, and that the only goal of the living is to maximize the number of future humans alive, as well as the number of artificial intelligence instances that could possibly exist in the future. This mandate is most often used to brush aside calls for improving conditions and alleviating suffering among the living here on Earth now. Because, the theory goes, giving a poor person a blanket isn’t likely to be as useful for the future of humanity as building a rocket to Mars. Longtermism is heavily influenced by “Russian Cosmism” and is also directly adjacent to “Effective Altruism.” Musk’s stated mission, which he intends to fulfill in his lifetime, is to “make humanity a multiplanetary species.” The anti-democratic urge in longtermism is rooted in the belief that “mob rule” will lead to nuclear annihilation; we should, Musk thinks, be guided by “wiser” minds — like his and Putin’s apparently.

What it all seems to boil down to is that Elon Musk is a Technocrat of the worst sort, putting all of his faith in technological solutions to everything, but caring far less about applying those solutions to the suffering masses on Earth today than to future generations of multiplanetary humans. And making him an even worse sort of Technocrat -- and human being -- is his malignant narcissism. All of his grandiose plans and pronouncements seem to be chiefly a means of drawing attention to himself, enabling him to suck all the oxygen out of the room, much like another malignant narcissist we know of promised, in so many words, to do years ago. (That guy has fulfilled his promise, or rather his threat, many times over, of course.)

In any case, Elon's Mars thing is in the future. Meanwhile back on Earth, in the present day, Moscow Musk is cozying up to Vlad and the MAGAs and other foul characters.

Musk also seems pretty interested in helping advance Putin’s “multipolar world order,” which is why he plays footsie with QAnon and MAGA accounts, and pals around with Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. “How are things going in Bakhmut?,” Musk asked Medvedev.

Nice guy.

Troy ends with a warning to all of us:

Ultimately what we are dealing with is the fact that social engineering through control of the information environment is an inevitable reality—the only question is who has the means and moral authority to do it.

If democracy-minded people don’t seize control of the information environment, powerful sociopathic autocrats will do so instead. We leave a power vacuum open at our peril, and at the moment, Musk and Putin are the ones with the most will to fill it.

Again, I urge you to read Troy's entire piece on Medium. Here's that link again. Read it. And don't forget to vote, if you're eligible and registered.

 

"And you can too!" Musings on the myth of meritocracy

As Elon Musk prepares to take over Twitter -- unless, that is, he's just trying to manipulate the stock market or get more attention for himself or both, and he ends up sabotaging the deal -- many are celebrating, while many are warning that it's the end of the world, or at least of Twitter. I'm more on the "end of Twitter" side, but am not panicking because my life doesn't revolve around tweeting. It's possible that even if Musk does assume control, not much will change on Twitter despite all of the sound and fury.

For now, I find Twitter to be a (mostly) pleasant diversion, and I didn't join the stampede off of the platform when the news was first announced of Musk's potential takeover. One of my favorite writers that I follow on Twitter is Jared Yates Sexton, self-described "Hoosier, Political Analyst, Prof, Muckrake Podcast," and author of the upcoming book, The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis (to be published in January 2023).

I'm always interested in what Sexton has to tweet, and a thread he initiated earlier today (April 30, 2022) caught my eye. It began:

Not going to lie, it’s been a great time watching all these mainstream commentators work themselves into believing Elon Musk might actually make Twitter better and then he immediately started posting troubling political takes and telling people to throw out their meds.

Sexton continued:

It’s been a good reminder that a lot of journalists and pundits the Right constantly attacks as being “Leftist” are just free-market worshipers who are as devoted to the myth of meritocracy as anybody.

For those who don’t get it, because Musk is rich it HAS to mean to these people that he’s uniquely talented and capable. They have a religious faith in the market that, despite all evidence to the contrary, cannot be shaken. The idea that privilege plays a role isn’t considered.

When considering media and politics, always remember these circles are populated by white people with money who believe they got there because they’re innately talented. That belief in the fraudulent meritocracy is necessary for their own identity and colors their worldview.

I think he's spot-on. Meritocracy is indeed largely a myth, and a uniquely American one in many ways. It is marginally less cruel than the traditional article of (bad) faith that poverty is a moral failing and that the poor deserve their horrid lives, while the wealthy are superior human beings whose superiority has been rewarded by Providence -- but it is still a myth, and cruel in its own ways. In any case Sexton is exactly right: Privilege plays a much greater role in the making of your average (or above-average) obscenely wealthy person than even many non-right-wingers care to admit. Elon Musk himself is nothing if not the product of privilege.
 
Privilege plays a big part in successful wealth hoarding, and so, for that matter, do sociopathy, ruthlessness, and an unceasing determination to game the system in ways both legal and illegal.

Nevertheless, the idea (or illusion or delusion) that every one of us is a billionaire or at least a millionaire in the making just won’t go away. As my friend Steve Salerno, author of the mostly dormant but still relevant SHAMblog, has written, “Hope springs infernal.”

Steve's context, as you know if you're at all familiar with his work, was the world of selfish-help/motivational/McSpirituality scammers, which were the primary focus of his blog in its heyday. And in case it isn't obvious, the selfish-help industry is relevant to Sexton's thread because ever since its beginnings many, many decades ago, that industry has played a major role in perpetuating the stubborn American cultural myth that untold wealth is well within the reach of the average person -- if only they're willing to work at it, have something of value to offer, and believe in themselves (and in more recent years, of course, are willing to follow the advice of whichever inspirational guru happens to be on the talk show or late-night infomercial they're watching).

It is that very illusion that spurs so many people who should know better to cheerlead for Elon Musk and his ilk.

Contemporary Scamworld hucksters aggressively push the myth of "easy" wealth, using their own success stories as an example, whether or not those stories are entirely true, or even a little bit true. As I have discussed numerous times on this Whirled over the years, the most successful selfish-help hucksters have made their fortunes by convincing folks that “I did it, and you can, too!” Thirteen years ago, I wrote a little song-in-search-of-a-tune called, "I've Gotta Find Me A Scam," and it still applies -- particularly the second verse:

They’re gonna make me a star
If I make ’em believe
That they’re more than they are
Make ’em believe that the world can be theirs
And that they’re all destined to be zillionaires.

One of this blog's favorite subjects, formerly imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, has made much of his ill-gained gold flogging the "you can too" theme. While his primary means of picking people's pockets has been his pretense that he has seekrit information that "They" don't want you to know, he also attracted thousands, particularly in the glory daze of his mega-scam GIN (the Global Information Network) by boasting about how healthy and wealthy and successful he was. And he's far from the only one in his scammy industry to use that hook.

Elon Musk, on the other hand, doesn't need to overtly boast about his wealth under the pretext of offering your average mediocre citizen a hand up to his lofty heights. This isn't to imply that Musk doesn't flaunt his wealth and influence; of course he does -- the potential Twitter takeover being but one example, and his space-phallus fetish being another -- but he doesn't have any need to overtly boast in the crass and relatively amateurish way that lower-echelon hucksters must do in order to gain and maintain a fan base whose pockets they can pick directly.

There are other differences between your average wealthy Scamworld player and Elon Musk, of course -- not only in scale of wealth and in the way that they flaunt their wealth, but, some might argue, in the actual value they contribute to society and the world at large. After all, his defenders say, Musk's company makes electric cars, which however flawed do have a practical value, and his forays into space might arguably benefit humanity, somehow, someday. On the other hand, when it comes down to tangible product, Kevin Trudeau and even the perennially successful Tony Robbins fall short, primarily selling illusions and false hope. To quote my song without a tune again:

All I’ll be selling is hope
Worth more by far
Than the best Maui dope
Granted, the high doesn’t last quite as long
And costs a lot more. But is that so wrong?

It’s what people want, after all:
Bright shiny visions
To keep them in thrall
It’s all in the packaging, all in the hype
Oh, I can make millions by marketing tripe!

The point is that whether we’re talking about Scamworld hucksters or multi-billionaires such as Musk et al., their success often relies not chiefly on merit or on providing value, but on privilege, as Sexton noted -- and also on a heapin' helpin' of hustling and scamming. And if they're even marginally successful, in the ways that our shallow culture defines success, they will have their fan bois and girlz.

Even if the multi-billionaire or Scamworld huckster in question spews misinformation or lies or hate speech, or behaves atrociously, or in some other way makes it pretty obvious that he or she is a horrible human being, all too many average folks will continue to grovel, hoping that even if they can't succeed on their own merits, perhaps some of that magic wealth fairy dust will somehow, someday, rub off on them.

Spoiler: It won't.

Red, red whine: Devin Nunes' defamation flawsuit against Twitter, a bogus bovine, et al.

I'm probably only the four-millionth or so person to mention this, but have you noticed a certain hyper-sensitivity in many of the conservative/libertarian manly men (and a few proud and defiant women) -- you know, the ones who are currently infesting the political and cultural landscape with their bright red caps and fact-devoid social media memes? Have you observed, as I have, that they seem to have awfully thin skins -- especially when you consider their derisive sneers about the oppressive, America-threatening "political correctness" of the left, and their screeds about wimpy liberals (aka "snowflakes") who are hypersensitive to "triggers" and have an insatiable need for "safe spaces?"
 
I have previously danced around the theme of right-wing snowflakery, e.g., in this May 2016 post (trigger warning: contains nekkid Donald Trump picture). But it's a matter that has captured my attention more fully in light of rabid Republican "strategist" Devin Nunes' comic $250 million lawsuit against Twitter, a made-up mommy, and a fake cow. (And I'm probably only the four-millionth or so person to publicly write about this, but I never claimed to be a groundbreaker.)

Anyway. From the Vox article linked to just above:

A member of Congress since January 2003, Nunes is perhaps best known nationally first for his involvement in the Benghazi investigation and second for his dogged defense of Donald Trump, upon whose transition team Nunes served. It was Nunes, for example, who wrote the 2018 memo on wiretapping that many Trump supporters believed would permanently damage special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign. (It didn’t.)

So it stands to reason that Twitter users less enthralled with Trump would tweet things about Nunes that were perhaps less than cordial — like calling him a “presidential fluffer and swamp rat,” for instance. (In fact, a tweet using those very words was included in the lawsuit.)

But in the 40-page complaint filed on Monday, Nunes argues that tweets like that and the two parody Twitter accounts were not merely examples of Twitter being Twitter. Rather, he argues that the social media platform served as “a portal of defamation” by permitting parody accounts of his mother and his imaginary bovine to exist on the platform.

The operative word, seemingly missed by Nunes and his lawyer, is "parody." Which, you know, is protected in the United States by the First Amendment and whatnot. Parody and other forms of sometimes unpopular speech are not protected everywhere, of course. In Russia (to name but one example of other places in the world where freedom of expression is not exactly a sacred cow), a person might, thanks to a new law recently signed by Trump's dom bromantic partner Putin, conceivably be prosecuted for parody, since it is by its nature disrespectful, and if your parody or satire disrespects Putin or the Russian government, well, then, shame on you, Господин or девушка Smarty-Pants. But the US isn't Russia... not yet, anyway.

Here is the direct link to the fake farm animal's Twitter account, which has more Twitter followers than the real Devin. Goodness, that must trample on his ego. If you're on Twitter and haven't done so already, why not go ahead and follow that cow? I've herd that she's very nice, the crème de la crème.  

Who feels more "hard done by": libs or cons?
Defamation cases are nearly always about hurt feelings, and a sense of being hard done by, as much as they are about actual damages. (A tip of the hat to an ancient post on the Kung Fu Monkey blog, which I've cited here before, for the "hard done by" theme. Ah, "that sweet crack pipe of moral indignation.") For me, this latest legal looniness brings up an argument that has been going on for a few years regarding who is in fact more hypersensitive: liberals/left-wingers or conservatives/right-wingers. TheTylt.com -- to name but one of countless examples -- has tackled this matter, running two surveys that I know of a couple of years ago -- this one and this one. Spoiler: the right-wingers won the sensitivity sweepstakes both times.

But the core sensitivity of so many crass loudmouths and blowhards on the right should come as no big surprise anymore, particularly since #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump is such a thin-skinned type himself. For instance, just this past weekend he got in a lather about a rerun of the Christmas 2018 episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live, suggesting once again that SNL and other media he doesn't like should be investigated by the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission.

Moreover Trump is apparently making good on the promise/threat that he spewed forth in his recent two-hour-plus rant to the Conservative Political Action Conference: a vow to sign an executive order that would punish colleges and universities that "do not support free speech" by denying them federal research funds. The initial promise was a direct response to a February 19, 2019 incident on the campus of the University of California Berkeley in which a man who was not a Berkeley student was on campus expressing his support of Trump, whereupon another man, who was not a Berkeley student either, punched him. The punchee, one Hayden Williams, was paraded around by Trump as a hero at the CPAC rant, the poster child for liberals' oppression of conservatives on campus.

Never mind that Berkeley was, in fact, already providing a solid platform for conservatives and pro-Trumpsters. In this case, the conservative org Turning Point USA was, with the university's permission, recruiting students to the cause. And never mind that many universities already have free-speech guidelines and policies that allow non-liberal expression on their campuses. Those inconvenient facts didn't stop the right-wing whining following the punching, and didn't stop Trump from his subsequent grandstanding.

Also never mind the fact that, according to the Chicago Trib article I cited a couple of paragraphs ago, "it's unclear what type of free speech limitation could trigger a loss of federal research funding. White House officials declined to provide specific cases of free speech suppression." The guiding sentiment behind the EO seems to be that by golly, it's time that someone stepped up and protected (conservative) free speech!

Here's an opinion piece, published on March 4, 2019 in the wake of the CPAC rant, explaining why Trump is missing the point, once again.

...Because almost across the board institutional missions center on scientific discovery, knowledge and learning, institutions of higher education are a key mechanism for fostering democratic education. Campuses often subscribe to John Stuart Mill’s notion that a university is a “marketplace of ideas,” where educators offer “balanced perspectives” so that students can “hear the other side” on every issue.

However, academic freedom guidelines specifically say that faculty members need not always cover “the other side” if the standards of the discipline deem that other side to be untrue. When topics seem to be settled, with a right answer having emerged through science and ethics, faculty can focus on the knowledge produced. A white nationalist view, for example, does not merit debate within the campus marketplace of ideas.

In the aftermath of the Charlottesville, Va., tragedy, these disagreements have taken on a deeper significance, as those of us who work within higher education navigate increasingly polarized contexts for teaching, learning and research. Public discussions of these issues have been dominated by legal analyses of the First Amendment, without sufficient attention to philosophical discussion of disagreement, truth and the democratic purposes of higher education.

College faculty and campus leaders are caught between wanting to be nonpartisan and promoting their institution’s missions, which often prioritize excellence and truth...

On the other hand, if colleges and unis are mandated by executive order or law or whatever to allow free speech, religious schools such as Liberty University, which also receives federal research funds, might have to allow satanists and abortion-rights advocates to speak on their campuses. So there's that. Could be interesting.

Misusing the courts to capitalize on being hard done by
It's not unusual for thin-skins who have the resources to try to use the legal system to fight back against real and imagined slights, generally via multi-million dollar "defamation" lawsuits. Trump is one notable and obvious example; a few of those defamation lawsuits are listed in this article, though the piece also covers some of his other infamous and yuuugely expensive legal dramas.

Another recent example is the "Covington kid," the MAGA-cap-sporting Catholic school student Nicholas Sandmann, whose parents sued the New York Times for $250 million and, more recently, CNN for $275 million, for the news outlets' initial coverage of an incident in which their kid confronted an elderly Native American activist and some shouting Black Hebrew Israelite cultists. (Never mind that the NYT and CNN and most other mainstream outlets revised their stories as new info came to light.) Part of the plaintiffs' argument was that the media are biased against Donald Trump and conservatives. Ah, snowflakes. No two are alike, and yet at some level they all are.

And now there's Devin and that fake mama and that bogus bovine and, of course, that very real social media platform, the latter of whom possesses the actual deep pockets that Devin and his legal team hope to mine.

If you want a good laugh, read the lawsuit. I have been trying to find a dowloadable PDF of the document that includes the filing/court stamps, indicating that it was actually filed and the date and time that this occurred. The document to which I linked does not seem to be that, but it was uploaded to Scribd by Fox News on March 18, and seems to be the reference point for all of the chatter about it. It begins by trying to lay out the case that Twitter has been purposely defaming poor Devin and continues to do so, and that furthermore Twitter has it out for all Republicans.

1. Twitter is an information content provider. Twitter creates and develops content, in whole or in part, through a combination of means: (a) by explicit censorship of viewpoints with which it disagrees, (b) by shadow-banning conservatives, such as Plaintiff, (c) by knowingly hosting and monetizing content that is clearly abusive, hateful and defamatory – providing both a voice and financial incentive to the defamers – thereby facilitating defamation on its platform, (d) by completely ignoring lawful complaints about offensive content and by allowing that content to remain accessible to the public, and (e) by intentionally abandoning and refusing to enforce its so-called Terms of Service and Twitter Rules – essentially refusing to self-regulate – thereby selectively amplifying the message of defamers such as Mair, Devin Nunes’ Mom and Devin Nunes’ cow, and materially contributing to the libelousness of the hundreds of  posts at issue in this action.

2. Twitter created and developed the content at issue in this case by transforming false accusations of criminal conduct, imputed wrongdoing, dishonesty and lack of integrity into a publicly available commodity used by unscrupulous political operatives and their donor/clients as a weapon. Twitter knew the defamation was (and is) happening. Twitter let it happen because Twitter had (and has) a political agenda and motive: Twitter allowed (and allows) its platform to serve as a portal of defamation in order to undermine public confidence in Plaintiff and to benefit his opponents and opponents of the Republican Party...

And so on, and so forth, adding up to yet another fine red whine. Alas, poor Devin, and oh, those poor, put-upon Republicans.

This bit, which occurs towards the end and wraps up the counts for which the plaintiff is demanding so much money, made me chuckle.

COUNT IV – COMMON LAW CONSPIRACY...
... 54. Beginning in February 2018 and continuing through the present, Mair, Devin Nunes’ Mom and Devin Nunes’ cow, acting as individuals, combined, associated, agreed or acted in concert with each other and/or with one or more “clients” or other donors, non-profits, operatives or agents of the Democratic Party (whose identity is unknown at this time) for the express purposes of injuring Nunes, intentionally and unlawfully interfering with his business and employment as a United States Congressman, and defaming Nunes. In furtherance of the conspiracy and preconceived plan, the Defendants engaged in a joint scheme the unlawful purpose of which was to destroy Nunes’ personal and professional reputations and influence the outcome of a federal election.

Nunes is asking for a minimum of $250,000,000 for the alleged attempts to destroy his reputation, but is certainly open to the idea of receiving much more, should it please the court. On his monologue on March 19, 2019, Stephen Colbert said that Nunes' legal team came up with that figure by applying a scientific legal formula: they took the dollar amount that Nunes' reputation is actually worth, and added $250,000,000 to it. That sounds about right.

Colbert and gang felt inspired by the hoopla to create another parody Twitter account, Devin Nunes' Skin. The opening (and so far only) tweet:

Devin Nunes' skin @devinnunesskin
Still thin.

Less than 24 hours after being launched, that account had more than 30,000 followers. And although as of this writing the account still contains a solitary tweet, the following is making its way steadily to 44,000.

I am well aware that there is an ongoing debate about several issues related to social media, and one of these issues is the question of whether or not platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are indeed biased against conservatives. A poll taken late last year by Hill.TV and American Barometer indicated that a majority of American voters thought that the social media giants have a systemic bias against conservative views. Unsurprisingly, the poll was heavily divided along party lines, with Republicans overwhelmingly likely to view tech companies as being biased against conservatives. Media bias is a perennial issue that is worthy of exploration and analysis, but frivolous defamation lawsuits by whiny politicians and other public figures are not helpful at all.
 
Conspiranoia strikes deep...again
All of the talk about conspiracy to defame reminds me very much of another defamation flawsuit from a few years back, one in which I was the top-named defendant. It didn't make the mainstream news, of course, and was barely a blip in the blogosphere, but if you think I am going to pass up an opportunity to sneer about it, you are very much mistaken. As you may know, the suit did not go very well for the plaintiff, Not-Doktor Leonard Coldwell, aka LoonyC, the stupidest and most evil man in Scamworld; his attorneys advised him to drop the case, and he did. Nor did his previous attempt to sue a critical blogger (my pal and co-defendant in the aforementioned case, Salty Droid) go very well; his rent-a-lawyer in that one dropped out of the case early on, and the whole thing was dismissed because LoonyC never showed up for any hearings. Yet he has continued to boast about his powerful legal team and about his steadfast willingness to fight and defeat anyone who dares to "defame" him.

Arguably the majority of defamation lawsuits fail, at least in the US. It's complicated, and I don't claim to be anything remotely resembling an expert on these matters. But it seems that more than likely, Devin Nunes doesn't have a very strong case, in part because he is a politician and a public figure, and America has a long history of protecting those who make fun of our politicians. Also, Twitter is merely distributing, not creating, the offending content. But some have warned that even if Nunes loses the lawsuit and the probable appeal, he is creating an opening for the Supreme Court to reconsider its previous rulings on defamation and public officials. As a lawmaker, Nunes is in a unique position to introduce legislation that could very well have a chilling effect that would make Putin proud.

For now, it seems nothing will stop either Nunes or his detractors from... oh, you knew this was coming, didn't you?... milking this matter for all it's worth. But it's worth noting that last year Nunes was a co-sponsor of HR 1179, the "Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act." Cory Doctorow on Boing-Boing made sport of this (as well as the now-defunct fake-mama Twitter account).

Nunes is upset that he was called a "herp-face," and is really upset about a human centipede meme that depicted Nunes, Trump and Putin as generic, labeled stick-figures with their mouths grafted onto one-another's anuses. This tweet may just be the greatest exhibit ever filed in a lawsuit.

It's a very good thing to have a little comic relief in the midst of the horror and chaos that is swirling all around us, but let's hope that the right-wing snowflakes don't have the last laugh.

Addendum, 5 April 2019: Republican strategist Elizabeth "Liz" Mair, who besides Twitter is actually the main defendant in Nunes' silly complaint, wrote a serious editorial about the real threats to free speech for all of us. It was published in USA Today. Here 'tis.
 
Related on this Whirled: Vintage whines from conservative conspiranoid snowflakes

• August 2018: Alex Jones and the usual whiners: censor-y deprivation?
• February 2017: Another tempest in a teapot: Google delists and relists whiny Health Ranger
• May 2016: Facebook "censors" Leonard Coldwell again: somebody call the waaaahmbulance!

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