Twitter has taken a baby step toward corporate responsibility, or more simply toward decency. As a company they did not take the fully mature step of banning the President from the platform for disseminating deceitful information, but they did put an addendum to his tweets pointing out their deceptions complete with links to show how they were clearly and intentionally constructed and untrue.
This is more than the Senate of the United States, our representatives, have been willing to do. Even a public hand slap would be a step in the right direction. They are fully invested after all. Nothing will move them from their blind support. They will live or die with this allegiance. That’s the calculus.
No official admonishments of these humiliations to the party will be forthcoming, and that in itself is the ultimate humiliation. The consent of silence. The complicity of it. It feels like it’s catching up to them. It’s just all too embarrassing to give a complete pass to, even for his supporters. It’s chipping away at the outskirts. The wives of the hopelessly lost in MAGA-land, seeing what it has all done to their partners, their marriages, their lives, are unable to turn their heads anymore. It makes you feel dirty, less than you can be to follow such a desperate huckster, with him feeling the pressure and cracking under it, throwing ridiculous incendiary devices recklessly, hoping something will stick.
It just ain’t stickin’ like it used to.
The President has noticed. His reaction was quintessentially Trump, and one element of that is that it was completely unbeknownst to him. He reveals so much unwittingly.
His reaction to the Twitter debacle was to claim an attack on the election. It wasn’t that truth was being suppressed. That is an argument that, if true, would have legs. Alas, that avenue was not open to the President as a line of defense. His tweets were utter bullshit, so he blatantly admitted that the tweets had been naked election tactics out of the Roger Stone playbooks, adapted from Roy Cohn’s, and how dare they prevent him from his All-American pursuit of the Presidency by whatever means necessary? You’re damn right I ordered the Code Red!!!
He next made the same mistake that every social media right wing amateur pundit makes when responding, unwelcomed, in someone’s Facebook news feed. He claimed his 1st Amendment rights were being infringed, not having read the 1st Amendment. His speech was not being suppressed by the government. He was free to spew bile elsewhere unfettered, but on Twitter, at least one time, they were going to call him out. An independent company making an independent decision to stand up.
Their right.
In a very brief tweet, the President had made it clear that his presence on Twitter was not a town hall where the President gives encouraging fireside chats to the unwashed and leads the country toward greatness. This was a naked manipulation of all those that would bite to lead him to four more years of graft and corruption. It was a tool for population control, an important one for him, perhaps his most important tool of mass mind control with the aid of OAN and FOX.
Twitter was part of that intellectual rape of an unarmed target, a critical component. It was unfettered. He didn’t have to get things past even the paultry editorial efforts on radio or TV. If it popped into his head, he would try to make it pop into yours. If it wasn’t too far off the rails, it would magically come out of Steve Doocy’s mouth tomorrow. If it was, then it wouldn’t. But no one could stop him on Twitter.
Until now. Twitter’s pushback, if they don’t collapse under the onslaught that is to come of accusation and indignation, is seismic. If they stand up, weather the storm, they are going to come out the other side as something different. Something, maybe, if they keep stretching, better.
The opportunity is such a low-hanging fruit. Who is their largest social media competitor? Facebook. You have the daunting task of being perceived as more ethical than Mark Zuckerberg. Good Luck! I’m pulling for you!
But secretly I really am. Let this be a baby step. Stand for something. Something good. Something decent. Baseline stuff. If you feel your oats, go for something noble. It’s higher, but maybe you can make it part of the brand. Let’s get it down to something you can sell to the board. Brand nobility. Make it a calling card, a catch-line, an ad campaign, all because it’s true. Make it true.
But we’ll take decency right now. It seems so small, yet everything. Decency seems officially emasculating in this Administration, a sign of weakness, which is the highest crime that can be committed against a “man”. The minority is the countering voice, but it can be discarded as partisan if the Republicans stick together, and they do. Some other voice needs to shore up the minority ones. The Republicans are nearly a solid wall.
That’s why Twitter’s baby step is such a big deal, at least potentially.
How cool would a new corporate landscape be that rewarded companies that lived up to a higher standard first? How would that happen? First, they have to do it. A baby step was made. Then they have to continue to do it. If and when they do, we have to make them foolishly rich because they did the right thing, at least until something other than money becomes a symbol of success.
I know. This is way too early. But it puts a spotlight on what is not only possible, but what is necessary to save us. Our democracy, our credibility, our future are all up for grabs this time around. As an absolute baseline, facts have to be immutable. Facts just are. Any argument on any side of the aisle has to, must, start there. That is Twitter’s argument here. You can be an imbicile, but not an outright liar. We all have a stake in this. We can’t make our most critical civic decision on falsehoods, and as far as it is up to me, I will stop you, or at least embarrass you said Twitter.
Maybe they’ll stop him next.
One of the first jobs of a successful dictatorship is the control of the media. So far the President’s mighty efforts to discredit them has not worked for the majority of observers. They are still free to publish what they like. They have not been forced to bend to the knee of the Administration. There is a propaganda arm of media, but they are free to publish their version as well. The two-edged sword at play. But it is still a free press, and Twitter is blazing a trail that others can rise up to follow. If his words are going to be served up for public consumption, it is fair game to publish a timely fact check with no remorse. Just the facts, ma’am.
Will someone be next?