Not the Best of Times

Short Takes on the News

Oct 07, 2022

Twitter Hysteria and Nuclear War Don’t Mix

The same week Elon Musk offered to buy, for the second time after trying to back out of the deal, Twitter, he was called out by Zelenskyy and mobbed by Twitter.

Yes, the same guy who likes getting visits from Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain, who keeps urging America and its allies to go to war with Russia, begging for yet more billions for Ukraine, was in a Twitter fight with Elon Musk about the war WHILE AT WAR. You can’t make it up, friends.

It’s like something out of Dr. Strangelove. It IS Dr. Strangelove.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

Ukraine-Russia Peace: - Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people. - Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). - Water supply to Crimea assured. - Ukraine remains neutral.

Musk was working on a negotiated settlement because someone had to. Zelenskyy responded with a childish tweet:

David Sacks points out in his Newsweek column that Twitter is trying to get us into Woke War III:

What matters in this story is not that Musk was told off, but rather, that a Twitter hive mind is using the same intolerant cancellation tactics that they use to shut down debate on domestic political issues in order to shape U.S. policy toward Ukraine. They are doing so by demonizing dissent, defaming opponents, and closing off as ideologically unacceptable any path to peace or even deescalation.

This should have all been settled long ago. I’m no expert on foreign policy, but it seems to me it could have been with an agreement by NATO that Ukraine would never be part of it. Trump would have urged settlement long before it came to war, and everyone knows it.

As with Iraq and Vietnam, it’s all gone too far now. Because we got in way too deep and Zelenskyy is high on his own supply by now, we have gotten closer to nuclear war than ever before. And all this while the economy tanks, inflation soars, and the Democratic Party has walled itself off like an aristocracy on the brink of a peasant revolt.

If things couldn’t get even more ridiculous when you try to read the story below, you’re hit with a paywall. We’re a country of lab rats who have been fed droplets of sugar for far too long, and we are wholly unprepared for this moment.

Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter but they turned him down. Now he has until the end of October to offer them a settlement they will accept. Musk buying Twitter would be one bright spot on the horizon. The richest man in the world is also a critical thinker and a free speech advocate. That kind of leadership is what Americans are going to crave as we crawl out of the mess the Left has made of this country, culturally and politically.

Jobs report from the Wall Street Journal

The New Witch Hunt by a Corrupt DOJ

Jeremy Bertino, 43 years old, of North Carolina has pleaded guilty to “Seditious Conspiracy,” which will now open the door for more charges and convictions to help bail out a government that has abused its power and now needs an exit ramp.

Seditious Conspiracy is what the government wants to charge the January 6th rioters with. But unless they planned to overthrow the government and put their own group in power — not Trump but themselves - they should not plead guilty to this charge. This is the correct charge:

Two other Proud Boys defendants—Matthew Greene, 34, of Syracuse, N.Y., and Charles Donohoe, 34, of Kernersville, N.C.—have pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct Congress’s joint proceeding on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol.

These rioters were not plotting to destroy the US government. They were protesting what they believed was an unfair election.

Diagnoses of gender dysphoria in children increased by 70% from 2020 to 202

What could account for such a sharp rise in 2021? The Summer of 2020. Most people believe it was only about “systemic racism,” but it was the Great Awokening. Almost everything changed overnight.

And what is that exactly? Well, Douglas Murray puts it well here: