But I'm quitting Twitter. And not because Elon Musk took over, per se,
A little over a week ago an unhinged QAnon extremist broke into Pelosi's San Francisco home in the middle of the night looking for Speaker Pelosi to, in his own words, "seriously harm her." He found instead her husband Paul, whose skull he fractured with a hammer.
Right away a lie was made up and posted by a right-wing website, the Santa Monica Observer, which is known for pushing various fabrications and false conspiracy theories. The lie was that 82-year-old Paul Pelosi came home drunk from a gay bar with a male prostitute and was later injured when the two got into a half-naked spat.
But it was Elon Musk who spread that lie along with a link to the website of its origin in a tweet that went viral.
I honestly don't understand such hard-heartedness in people. If the elderly spouse of a politician I didn't like was attacked and terrorized and had their bones broken with a hammer I wouldn't think it was funny. I'd be horrified. I'd feel sympathy for them and their suffering family.
And yet here's Elon Musk spreading a demeaning lie about Paul Pelosi while the man was undergoing surgery to repair his shattered skull. There's Donald Trump Jr. mocking Mr. Pelosi. Here's the Republican candidate for Governor of Arizona Kari Lake quipping at a campaign rally that, “Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C. — apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection."
Well, there's nothing I can do about the minds and hearts of those people. But I can quit Twitter.
True, I'm only one of 450 million people who use Twitter, and subtracting one-450-millionth from the sum total may not amount to much difference. But, then again, who knows? In any case, we all do what we can.
Good-bye, Twitter.