I thought more people would see a guy doing ... that salute, or things like the antisemitism in Grok in the past few days and say "no", but a huge number of people seem to be able to rationalize things away.
I'm with Wil Wheaton https://bsky.app/profile/wilwheaton.net/post/3ltkjyzjb4k2p
[0] https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/did-i-publish-the-private...
And I find that there are some thoughtful conservatives who do ok there. I follow some of them.
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3l...
But sometimes you have to make some sacrifices in life over your principles.
And the more people move, the easier it is for everyone else.
I don't think it's realistic to pretend that abandoning X is seriously restricting anyone. If anything, sticking with it is brand endangerment and by leaving it you're making the smart move, with or without animus.
I don't think that gesture was a nazi salute and was grossly taken out of context by everyone who hates the guy. I don't like Elon Musk either but stressing over something like that exacerbates the appearance that the accuser has a biased opinion. It also made the media who covered this for weeks desperate and very shallow.
In other words as much as I’d like to vote with my wallet that is not always practical. And that extends to everything, not only tech.
We're not talking "has different ideas about corporate taxation or environmental regulation" like, say, Mitt Romney.
Connecting the USSR with free health care and education is, uh, "nice try, but completely wide of the mark". We have free education in the US after all, as do most wealthy countries. Denmark and Italy are night and day from the USSR politically and economically.
I think you can both recognize that the past of the US has some very ugly moments while still thinking the ideals were directionally correct and that we should attempt to live up to them.
Most left left left folk that I know have zero idealization about Rome or the USSR, and haven’t forgotten the atrocities the US has committed both home and abroad.
Anyone who seriously talks about the Roman Empire without wrestling with the realities of it is putting their head in the sand.
Anyone pining for the USSR probably doesn’t know a lot of what went on during its existence. Similarly most people actually wanting some form of communism or socialism probably don’t mean “just like the USSR”.
I think all Nazis should be socially shunned. I think all those willing to knowingly socialize with Nazis should also be socially shunned.
20 years of anti-fascists who are jealous that some other people have better footwear calling wolf was a magic spell that brought real fascists into existence.
(If you had to say what was wrong about Twitter in a short text it is that it is easy to say something like the above message in a short text but impossible to conclusively refute as it involves introducing concepts such as "The meaning of a communication is its effect", "The purpose of a system is what it does", "Chaos Magick is real", and that even though physics is real some things obey the laws of 'pataphysics instead.)
Having a hard and fast rule that can always be applied about this is impossible. We're just too interconnected and interdependent, and there are too many unknowns.
That doesn't mean we can just ignore it and not think about it. We owe it to each other to still do our best, even if it's not going to be perfect.