Proof That Elon Musk Is a Threat to Democracy

Musk (literally) covers up a Tweet about January 6

Image of Leon by JD Lasica from Pleasanton, CA, US, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Jan 6 image from Tweet discussed in story (fair use claim); image smashup by author

Elon Musk, sometimes known as Leon to presidential aspirants teetering off the edge of sanity, owns direct control over what kind of information 368 million people are exposed to.

Can you imagine if I was able to control the access to information for that many people? All your guns would disappear, all the fundamentalist churches would be shut down, portraits of Jasmine Crockett would grace every courtroom, and we’d have 300 different Star Trek streaming services replaying old Trek episodes to the point of mass insanity.

I’d move the needle on public opinion to the point where you’d probably think that AOC should sit in place of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial. A copy of my novels would be on every table, and I’d finally have enough money to upgrade my dinners to Fancy Feast.

Photo of neighbor’s cat food by author.

Anyhoo, on September 16, Leon, and I use the word “literally” here with great trepidation because of its overuse, quite literally covered up a tweet about January 6.

He did this when Brit Hume, Fox’s “Political Analyst” but, in truth, Chief Propagandist, tweeted the ridiculous notion that Democrats should be held accountable for the Republican gunmen who have toyed with the idea of assassinating Trump:

If Donald Trump is held responsible for Jan. 6 because of his allegations that the 2020 election was stolen, is it unfair, after two assassination attempts, to hold responsible the Democrats who have ceaselessly claimed Trump is a threat to democracy?

The obvious response to that nonsense was a photo of the mob of insurrectionists breaking into the Capitol building so that they could hunt down and kill Mike Pence and stage their twenty-second coup (that’s how long it would have taken for the military to snuff them out).

Look what Leon did to hide the response from his Twitter users:

Screenshot from Twitter (X); fair use claim; image manipulation by author.

This image is a blend of the original cover-up and the image that is revealed when you want to see it. Worse, Leon’s tech minions lied about it and claimed the “author labeled this post as containing sensitive content.”

Bullshit. Nobody does that. If the author labeled it, that’s the first time in Twitter’s glorious history that’s ever happened.

There is obviously nothing “sensitive” about the content in that reply unless you’re a right-wing fanatic who thinks overthrowing an election is a swell idea.

As Tom Jones from the Poynter Report says in his newsletter today:

There was a time when Brit Hume was considered an objective political journalist. Back in the 1990s, he was ABC’s chief White House correspondent.

But these days, as Fox News’ chief political analyst, Hume clearly leans well right.

That’s an understatement, but the point is that Brit Hume was once a well-regarded journalist for ABC. He’s now a right-wing attack dog for the country’s primary right-wing propaganda outlet. It’s a propaganda broadcaster that reaches millions of people every night.

Before Leon became über-famous, he hid his apartheid-appreciative past very well from us, but now he’s all in.

This is what we are up against during this election.

If you’re wondering why, despite the fact he can barely speak a full cogent paragraph, Trump is still holding on to 40% of the vote in the polls, your answer lies in the massive right-wing propaganda network that starts with Brit Hume’s bosses at Fox and extends to Leon and his capricious oversight of Twitter. No, Leon, you twit, I’m not calling it X.

You might think that a broadcaster like Fox only reaches right-wing enthusiasts. But its propaganda often seeps its way into the general body politic. 25% of Democrats, according to one recent poll, are now in favor of mass deportations.

How can this be so? Easy. State your case, even if it’s ridiculous. Don’t rinse. Then repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Repeat it enough until it becomes part of the mainstream zeitgeist. Then, for good measure, repeat it again.

That’s the play the right wing is currently working on with Haitians. For now, their attacks have “only” resulted in some municipal shutdowns in response to violent threats from extremists. But that will change. It always does, no matter how ridiculous the propaganda.

Leon is helping to promote the Haitian hate, of course. Not because he has any interest in the politics of it. But because of his apartheid, racist upbringing that, unlike healthy people, he never shook off.

Eventually, and trust me on this because I’m old and wise about these things, enough people will start buying into all this bullying that Haitians will become a marked people for many.

The attitude will slowly seep into American discourse. More and more people will include in their conversations things like, “Well, there are a lot of them and they come from a violent country,” or some such. The contributions the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio have made to their community will be obfuscated by lies and innuendo, even among people who know better. That’s how propaganda works.

Say it. Repeat it. Use your propaganda vehicles like Fox and Twitter to keep repeating it over and over and over again. Boom. Enough people believe it to move the needle.

Remember when I said how ridiculous things would be if I could control the information fed to all those Twitter users?

It would be worse if I was president. I’d use my new immunity powers (thank you, SCOTUS!) to arrest Leon for his depraved conspiracy theories and send him to South Africa where he can face a reckoning from the people who overthrew his breed of haters.