The Dude Bros Bow Down

Anticipatory obedience is the new normal

Can’t imagine why . . .

The social media dude bros are clearly not content with allowing racism, antisemitism, misogyny and deadly lies about diseases and vaccines to spread on their unregulated platforms. Instead, Silicon Valley sociopaths like Mark Zuckerberg are finding creative new ways to obey in advance—all in service of helping Donald Trump spread disinformation and division just so they can keep getting richer, democracy and humanity be damned.

The greatest offender continues to be Elon Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to help purchase Donald Trump’s presidency (or his shadow presidency—the jury is still out). This week Musk announced that he’s changing the Twitter algorithm to promote “positive” posts. This move is designed to suppress content that is critical of Donald, which is a clear indication that the so-called “free speech warriors” are hell-bent on erasing content that challenges their agendas.

During the election, and increasingly since then, many others—from Zuckerberg to Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman of OpenAI, have followed suit. They seem to be engaged in a game of one-upmanship to see who can grovel most extravagantly.

Few multi-billionaires have worked as hard as Jeff Bezos to get on Donald’s good side. Having brought low one of America’s greatest papers by interfering with his editorial board’s decision to publish an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, among other things, Bezos is currently spending $40 million to license a documentary and limited series on Amazon Prime about Melania, who may be one of the most uninteresting and vapid people in Donald’s entire orbit—which is really saying something.

Relatively minor players, like Patrick Soon-Shiong, billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, are doing their part. Like Bezos, Soon-Shiong blocked his editorial board from endorsing Harris, and he is currently in the process of turning his paper into the print version of Newsmax.

This week, Zuckerberg jumped on board when he put domestic abuser Dana White on the board of Meta. For those of you who don’t know, White, who was given a prominent speaking gig at the Republican National Convention, is the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and his only qualification (other than his misogyny) appears to be his support of Donald Trump.

In a more troubling move, Zuckerberg announced that he will be ending the practice of content moderation (fact-checking, monitoring for hate speech, etc.) at Facebook and Instagram, replacing it with the kind of crowd-sourcing of “facts” that Musk has long employed at Twitter.

Meta’s terms of service have also been changed to protect the rights of fascists as well as those who traffic in anti-trans, anti-gay and anti-immigrant bigotry. It is now ok, for example, to call people in the LGBTQ+ community “mentally ill.”

A reminder: just a few months ago, Donald said that Zuckerberg should “spend the rest of his life in prison,” after erroneously claiming that Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election.

When asked Tuesday if he thought his threats against Zuckerberg were the impetus for the changes at Meta, Donald said, “Probably.”

Welcome to our brave new world.

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Of course, the rush to bribe the incoming emperor is not limited toMusk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos.

“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND,” Donald wrote on social media after the likes of Tim Cook and Bill Gates traveled to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee.

Nobody wants to be Donald’s friend, obviously—all of his relationships are transactional. These greedy and amoral oligarch wannabes are simply paying for the privilege of staving off the the threats and sanctions Donald would launch against them if they failed grease his palm. For those keeping score, this is not how any of this is supposed to work

The companies these men run have each donated $1 million to Donald’s inauguration. Four years ago, Amazon donated $276,00 to Biden’s inauguration, Apple donated $43,200, while Meta and OpenAI donated nothing,

This is how it works in America now because, to a person, Musk, et al. knew that Pres. Biden would not have used the power of his office to retaliate against them no matter what they said about him. And of course they know the opposite is the case with Donald Trump. They have to be very careful to toe the line to make sure he doesn’t pull their government contracts or find other ways to interfere with their business interests.

Donald hasn’t even been sworn-in yet, and the spineless elitist billionaire class have already made it clear just how willing they are to play Donald’s game. The surrender has been comprehensive and swift. We’re still thirteen days out from the inauguration, and the capitulation is complete.

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It is impossible to imagine what the people affected by the out-of-control wildfires in and around Los Angeles are going through right now, but my hope is that the winds die down and the fires are contained as soon as possible.

My thoughts are with the first responders and the pubic servants who are working around the clock to mitigate the effects of this unthinkable tragedy, as well as everybody affected.

People will need a lot of help even after the fires have been contained, so, if you are able, here are some organizations that could really use our donations:

CALIFORNIA FIRE FOUNDATION: Provides support to families of firefighters

PASADENA HUMANE SOCIETY: Helps with pet evacuations in the Los Angeles area

AMERICAN RED CROSS OF GREATER LOS ANGELES: Shelter, food, water, health and mental health services for evacuees

WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN: Provides food and water to first responders and evacuees

Thank you. And please stay safe.