One theory of democracy is that it’s a stunt — a way to suck people into accepting more government than they would otherwise accept. Voting in elections is seen by these conspiracy theorists as fake, as a con job.

This is distinct from the idea that many elections are faked. Communists had an obviously fake form of democracy, where the outcome was nearly always known going in. It helps to have only one candidate, for example.

To discover that one or two or an alarmingly high number of elections are controlled not by voters but by hidden forces does not prove the conspiracy view of democracy, but it does suggest it. Which is why the Democratic sector of legacy media — most networks and news programs — is not reporting on the ongoing Twitter revelations much at all. Because Elon Musk has shown that social media interference in the dissemination of opinion and news during the 2020 presidential election was destabilized the integrity of that election, this is a topic too hot for propagandists to handle. It’s blankout time.

The Twitter Files, as subcontracted out by Mr. Musk to a handful of independent journalists, has been very instructive. Recently, we’ve learned that the FBI had a huge presence in Twitter’s employee ranks, with hundreds of former federal law enforcement and intel agency personnel swelling the ranks of the company. They even had their own employee server and new former-fed employee welcoming parties. And it turns out that the government paid Twitter to censor in partisan ways.

And Elon Musk has point-blank stated that the same sort of things were going on in other social media outfits.

This is not “regulatory capture,” where corporations imperialize bureaus by swapping personnel. This is partisan government-worker capture of business, not much different than how Nazi Germany worked: one party planting operatives in every major business.

Meanwhile, Mr. Musk has continued his goofy online polls. Earlier he had let Trump and “all” banned users back onto Twitter because of polling results. On the 18th he polled his audience about whether he should continue as CEO, saying he would “abide by the results of this poll.” A greater-than 14 point spread favored his resignation. 

And then someone suggested that only paid blue-checkmark people should vote in such polls, and he accepted the idea.

The latest tweet of @elonmusk’s that I have read stated, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”

Stunt!

twv