I know, I know, I fucking know. I remember that tense feeling, somewhere between shit-yourself anxiety and stroke-inducing rage, of wondering what deliberate, fuck-up-your-day provocation Donald Trump had tweeted. Of course, if you're of a devolved or brain-damaged or cynical mindset, you looked forward to the Trump tweets like they were worms disgorged from Daddy Bird's beak into your hungry, squawking throats. And then the rest of us would get extra rage jolts from the idea that all the greedy-mouthed baby birds were loving this whole situation.
So I'm not here to tell you that Donald Trump should be allowed back on Twitter because of free speech or censorship or whatever. Twitter is not a government entity. Trump wasn't banned for being conservative. He was banned for being a lying dick. His First Amendment rights weren't violated. No one is passing a law saying he should be punished for being a lying dick. He's free to be a lying dick in lots of places, and, well, he totally is. So, no, I don't actually give a fuck about Trump being banned. I've been tossed from shitty bars for being less of a dick and I wasn't a whiny bitch about it. I just figured it was the bar owner's prerogative and went to the next bar.
But now we're hearing that potential future Twitter owner Elon Musk (motto: "I'm not a megalomaniacal sociopath with delusions of world domination. Society just needs to bend to my will.") would allow Trump back onto the social media platform that runs many of our lives. And former CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack "Totally not a supervillain beard" Dorsey agreed with Musk, calling the decision to ban Trump something that should be reversed because the situation has "evolved." It bears saying that the reason Trump was finally banned was because he had helped foment an insurrection against the United States, but, hey, that was over a year ago. No big.
Already the debate is under way about whether a freed Trump twittering away will destroy the country or destroy Republicans. Jill Filipovic makes a ton of good points, as she usually does, in a CNN column about how Trump drove the news cycle, in part through his Twitter feed, during the 2016 election, encouraging his debased troll army of followers, leading to both his election and the 2021 insurrection. In Slate, Richard Hasen sees the corrosive effect of a tweeting Trump on election laws and voter rights, arguing that Twitter employees should raise hell to make sure he's not allowed to return. On the flip side, Democrats and others have said that Trump's tweets will remind everyone of what an abject cockscab he is and that will work for Democrats.
Obviously, the line between giving air to Trump's embers of lies and bullshit and giving Trump enough rope is contingent on a lot of factors, none of which we can predict. This isn't 2015 or 2016. Our fascism cherry was popped when we were fist-fucked on January 6, 2021. We are far more aware about how we're lied to. And you can make the case that a muted Trump is far less dangerous than a Trump farting loudly into the mad echo chamber of right-wing media and salivating mainstream media who want some spark in the news that isn't Ukraine or abortion.
Except I'm not so sure. Lemme take this in another direction. It's not just that Trump has a way of fucking himself when he's allowed to speak without restraint. It's that a loud Trump with a giant microphone shuts everyone else down. He also fucks everyone else because that's what a gelatinous shit blob running on batteries of ego and hatred would do.
Listen: Right now, without Trump on Twitter, we have a bunch of voices driving the crazy right-wing conversation, mostly little Trumps and Trumpettes and Trumpazoids. It frankly makes their batshit positions seem a great deal more popular than they are. In the wake of a marginalized Trump, only speaking to fringe outlets and Fox "news," making statements that get a scintilla of the coverage his tweets got, we have this Fellini-esque parade of freaks and frauds and fuckers and Boeberts and Gaetzes and Jordans and Greenes and more, all bleating variations of the MAGA sheep-credo: "Fuck you, give me your money."
I'm asserting two things here. The first is that Trump will be a triumphant snaketwat about returning to Twitter and all of MAGA world will be wetting itself with glee. And he will suck all the oxygen out of the MAGAverse, leaving his acolytes and ass lampreys gasping for air, even as they beg him for his blessings. The second is that his novelty factor is gonna wear off pretty fuckin' fast when everyone remembers, "Oh, fuck, that's right. We really hated hearing what that orange jagoff had to say." Voters are mostly dumb and selfish and have no sense of history, even recent history. There were Obama voters who turned to Trump. Then they turned against Trump. Now they're ready to go back to Trump because they forgot how much chaos he sowed. They're not watching what he says on One America or Newsmax. They don't give a fuck about his pathetic assistants tweeting out some statement from him. They're taking hits of Trump mixed with baking soda. But the pure shit jacked right into their veins is too much. Whatever satisfying jolt of warmth you get is immediately followed by vomiting, shitting, and regret.
And maybe one more: over here in Sanityville, USA, we fucking hate Donald Trump. Whatever visceral hatred we have for Marjorie Taylor Greene or Ted Cruz or whoever, you can multiply that by degrees when it comes to Trump. You want to inspire Democrats to vote? Give them the visibility of the loathsome pumpkin-headed former president spewing noxious insults and brags, ejaculating his ego-spunk all over the internet again. Democrats will be begging to wreck that motherfucker one more time, even if through his proxy candidates.
These kinds of things are all conjecture, no matter which side you land on. I know this could be totally wrong, as can any prediction of what happens with a mute or blaring Trump. But we can all agree on one thing: Fuck you, Elon Musk. Just fuck you in your stupid face. Go make a fuckin' battery or a train or some other bullshit thing you promised and never delivered.
