One year ago, Twitter ejected Donald Trump after tolerating the troll king for his one term in office. How would things be different now if the ex-president still had access to his electronic bully pulpit?
The question resonates today almost as forcefully as it did last year: Why did former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey perform a very convincing impersonation of Big Brother by sending a sitting president packing to Big Tech’s memory hole? That devious move went deeper than mere hatred of the feared Orange Man, deeper than that digital cesspool known as Silicon Valley; Dorsey’s deplorable decision spoke to the threat that still hovers over Trump’s cult of pugnacity, at least on social media sites where, for four hellacious years, he was the main event, day and night.
If Trump were still the master of his Twitter account, he’d be like a post-modern civil-war general – something like Ulysses S. Grant with orange hair – rallying his populist forces while lampooning the other side over its exquisite leadership skills. Let’s face it, while few people expected any miracles from the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, a consortium that banked on the false promise of equity and quotas over hard-earned merit, few could have predicted the raging dumpster fire it has become. Just one year into the Biden clown show, and there are more reported sightings of UFOs than silver linings.
In the last 12 months, inflation in the United States has barreled ahead at seven percent, a surge not witnessed since 1982. Most Americans probably wouldn’t mind spending a bit more at the checkout counter if there was something to buy, but therein lies another problem. Across the nation, shoppers are reporting something not seen since at least the Depression era – empty store shelves. No matter how bad things got before with the US economy, Americans could pretty much take it for granted that the corporate-owned cornucopia would continue providing them with an uninterrupted flow of goods and services.
Now, with dozens of cargo ships stuck out at sea amid a severe labor shortage, the good times have taken a backseat to uncertainty, at least for now. Trump the inveterate businessman, whose central focus was the performance of the US economy, would be leading a headlong charge against #BareShelvesBiden, a viral Twitter hashtag that lays the blame for the shortages directly at the doorstep of the Biden White House.
The complaints against Biden don’t stop at a battered economy; they also lead directly to the doors of the schoolhouse. Once upon a time, parents could send their children off to school each morning knowing they’d be receiving a wholesome education by teachers who shared the same values as they did. Yet, thanks to the rise of woke ideology, promoted by the radical progressive faction of the Democratic Party, children are now being exposed to everything from transgender ideology to critical race theory.
These totally un-American ‘Cultural Marxist’ teachings have led to an epic showdown between parents and local school boards rarely seen before. Here is where Trump, who immediately reversed Barack Obama’s controversial ‘toilet law,’ which allowed transgender women to share bathrooms with biological women, would have been launching endless Twitter tirades against the Democrats over such controversial policies.
The matter, however, is not just a question about what is being taught to US schoolchildren, problematic as that has become. The issue has come down to whether or not parents should have a say in what crazy ideas are being forced into their children’s soft skulls. Incredibly, not only do school boards think the answer to that question is ‘no,’ the National School Board Association filed a petition against parents, going so far as to rank them as potential “domestic terrorists.” These shocking claims prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to direct the FBI to investigate parents for alleged threats against school-board members. Again, Trump would have gone ballistic on Twitter over these chilling diktats, which essentially view parents as some sort of fundamentalist offshoot of al-Qaeda.
Another reason the Democrats must be relieved that Trump was deprived of his Twitter privileges is that it saves the White House from having to explain the anomaly of Biden’s comparatively low follower count. This is something that the number crunchers have never been able to quite square: Biden, who received more votes than any other previous candidate in a US presidential election (even more than Barack Obama, who has 130.5 million Twitter followers), somehow had significantly fewer followers on Twitter than his populist challenger, Donald Trump.
At the time of his suspension from Twitter on January 8, 2021, Trump had 88.9 million followers; at the time of this writing, Joe Biden has just 16.8 million followers on his POTUS account and 32 million on his personal one. That does not compute.
Meanwhile, the same muted enthusiasm for the 79-year-old Commander-in-Chief, painfully conspicuous on the campaign trail where Biden spent the majority of time in his basement, was also apparent on YouTube – that is, until the Google-owned channel played defense for the president’s social media team by disengaging the ‘thumbs down’ button.
Historically, there has always been a need for someone, much like the court jester in medieval times, to call out the deficiencies of the Commander-in-Chief, especially considering that this guy is required to carry around a nuclear briefcase while playing 5D chess against the likes of Russia and China, among other pressing duties.
As much as he annoys us, who better than Trump to pronounce over Twitter that the emperor has seemingly lost his marbles? Let’s not forget that here is a leader who has referred to his vice president, Kamala Harris, as “President Harris” on more than one occasion. Trump, the ultimate troll, would certainly have had some choice words for those slips on the mental banana peel.
Finally, had Twitter resisted the temptation of playing God, the US mainstream media, particularly CNN, would not be in the hole that it now finds itself in. By silencing Trump, Twitter stole the mainstream media’s goose that lays the golden eggs. Now, CNN, like other mainstream media outlets, has not only tanked with its viewers, it now finds itself in the headlines. That is something no news agency desires.
The lesson to be learned here – if the masters of the universe are taking notes – is that all efforts to destroy freedom of speech will always backfire sooner or later. Not only did Twitter deprive itself of the huge number of customers that Donald Trump brought to its platform free of charge, it left a vacuum for the news agencies who built much of their empires square on the back of the Republican rabble rouser.
And now what does Trump plan to do with all that spare time that Twitter gave him? He aims to ‘Build Back Better,’ to borrow a term, with his own social media network, which has all the potential to bury Big Tech in the dust. All things considered, Twitter should have kept Trump chained to the reservation and just let the political chips fall where they may. But because Twitter, like the rest of Big Tech, is more of a political activist than a legitimate business, it couldn’t resist. Now a veritable monster has been unleashed; if it consumes them in the process they’ll all get what they’ve had coming for a long time.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.