There is so much going on, the average consumer of news is inundated with a cacophony of input from so many sources. 24-hour cable news and entertainment, social media churning 24/7; yet, it seems, people are likely to be ill-informed. "Ill-informed" can simply stem merely from too much of one side and little else from the other. From so many, there's too much, yet so few are of little value from the perspective of a truly functioning democracy.
"Musk was a name originally given to a substance with a strong odor obtained from a gland of the musk deer."
What do we have here? A source for countless metaphors, for one. Musk oil, long before it was synthesized from other material, was originally a very expensive source for the perfumery business since it meant killing the musk deer. Later, it included other animal sources to extract a substance to be used as a carrier of inducing scents, albeit for no other purpose than to smell fragrantly attractive to another. However, it was also at one time used to attract wild animals for hunting. At one time tigers were lured with musk scents. On the other hand, if one were a hunter, he or she is discouraged from wearing perfume or cologne on a hunting trip, lest their intended prey will sense them long before they can come close to unleash the perfect shot.
A multi-billionaire named Elon, with a last name Musk, is raising up a stink in the media world, at a place symbolically imitating the sound of a bird's tweet. Twitter, phonetic play or not, is accurately imaged however:
The social media giant appropriately symbolizing a tweeting little bird was meant to be a sounding board for anyone and everyone, wasn't it? Like the bird's tweet, wasn't it meant so it can be heard by anyone and everyone, from everywhere? I do not have either a Twitter or Facebook account so I am just another bystander asking a question. What is all this stink churned up by a man named Elon, with a last name, Musk?
As metaphors go, it seems like a fly just landed on what used to be one smoothly spread ointment called Twitter. If it is true that Twitter had also become a censorship platform, denying the participation of those whose ideas and opinions are contrary to the one espoused by the few in its leadership board, then perhaps they are only to blame for attracting an unlikely fly on their ointment.
Seven years ago I wrote, "When Rattlesnakes No Longer Rattle", but today it seems like one cannot be silenced anymore. A quick quote from what I wrote then:
"Now we have a moral lesson – a metaphor of a sort in social and political discourse. One of democracy’s most important attribute is freedom of speech. It is because a democracy works when all sides are heard, discussed and decided upon by the people. It ceases to be one when a monolithic voice takes over because that almost always happens when the government turns into a dictatorship that strives to silence any and all opposition. It comes either from the persecution of the press or the press becoming an ally to restricting the voices of dissent with the aim towards the final eradication of anyone who opposes the prevailing ideology. It works badly for either side of opposing ideologies when one tries to suppress the other’s ability to express".
I warned further,
"When one ideology prevails lopsidedly over another, the danger is that the latter will lose its ability to rattle. The silence will have serious repercussions. A monolithic society or government will always turn into an indivisibly and inflexibly oppressive aggregation of people when reason and dissenting voices are diminished if not entirely silenced. That is a dangerous condition. Whoever is in power must be aware that silence does not mean the demise of an opposition. It must understand that it is easier when opposing voices are heard – not just for the logical reasons – because that is the best way to understand and know them and perchance to work with them (one can only wish). Worse than hearing the opposition is the silence that percolates underneath. History teaches us that political power changes hands, dictatorships are toppled and ideologies change or evolve even amidst every effort to silence the opposition. Worse than hearing too much out of the political and sociological discourse is when one side no longer rattles".
We can't probe, not accurately anyway, into Elon Musk's motivation to first buy up enough shares of Twitter to become its single largest shareholder or his now recent offer to buy up the whole caboodle. One thing he did make clear was that he would let Twitter become a true sounding board for everyone, without censorship. We can take his word for it, the same way most folks took Jeff Bezos' words when he bought the newspaper, "The Washington Post".
It is possible too that Elon Musk merely did one clever business jujitsu to raise the value of his investment. One thing, for sure, it would seem, that to expect Twitter board to sit still and not create a defensive wall from a Musk takeover, is to expect that Musk will abandon SpaceX to probe the heavens.
But let us not perish the thought that censorship of free speech is the beginning of the end of democracy.
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