I agree a tourist’s view is superficial. But “Potemkin” claims suggest fake, unreal. Life in urban China — for a certain class, obviously — is materially pretty much as it’s represented to be. 1/

If you think short videos and memes are taking you to the true heart of anyone, you’re obviously a bit credulous. But exchanging kindnesses at a person to person level, however superficial they may be, is a contribution in human affairs. 2/

If your politics is threatened by that, it’s time to review your politics. I support a strong commitment by the US to Taiwan’s security. There’s no contradiction between that and warm feelings towards ordinary mainland Chinese. 3/

I strongly support Ukraine, look forward to its joining NATO, but support person to person connections with Russians as well as Ukrainians. Geopolitics is a shitty game, but mutual dehumanization makes it so much worse. Israel/Palestine, both sides of that, shows where that leads. 4/

I have not yet visited Taiwan. It is very high on my list. I have heard extraordinary ordinary things, the best kind from my perspective. /fin

when an open atproto app exists, as i said from the start, i’d prefer that. there’s a fediverse app that, if it proves not to be vapor, may show up soon. i’d prefer that. 1/

i don’t disagree that CCP is aligned in the sense it prefers to see liberal democracy sabotaged as a competing model. but i think that’s a secondary priority to CCP where castrating democratic government is the main priority of the Musk-ists, and the Musk-ists are far more imminent a threat. 2/

Google has been a terrible actor for a very long time, before the more ideological and directly political phase that Thiel and Musk have introduced. They’ve been ever more aggressively surveillant, and a debilitating parasite on the open web. 3/

Yes, they are less openly ideological, but they share the same structure and material interest as Musk or Bezos, a plutocratic distribution of wealth among their shareholders. 4/

I look forward to an emerging, open alternative. and i don’t actually spend a lot of time on tiktok-like apps. but when i do, given the choice between Meta, Google, or Musk and a Chinese app, I’ll pick the Chinese app. 5/

I do enjoy the people-to-people Connection aspect of redbook. CCP may be terrible, but it’s nice to see Americans and Chinese people joking around and spreading the ordinary affection that comes from intercourse. 6/

It’s not likely to last, as CCP is likely either to insist on reseparation to ensure control or to aggressively manage the experience of foreign users to portray its own line. But for now, in this moment of wtf, there’s something lovely in it. /fin

Do you think China is a mustache-twirling villain eager for the United States’ outright destruction? 1/

The CCP governs sometimes viciously internally, and seeks geopolitical primacy or at least parity with the US. The US seeks to retain geopolitical primacy. Do you think it’s fair to characterize the US as eager for China’s outright destruction? Either characterization is dumb, silly. 2/

The Musk / Thielite project also does not seek the United States’ outright destruction. 3/

But it seeks the United States’ political transformation into a less democratic, less equal society in which labor is hungry, atomized, and pliant, and great wealth is secure from taxation or confiscation and unfettered in its projects and whims. 4/

I’m a partisan of the United States over China in the geopolitical pissing match, though mostly I hope the two can find a detente or even an entente and lower the temperature. 5/

The main threat China poses is not “destruction of the United States” but creating conditions under which the US would have to go to war with it, which would be profoundly destructive to both parties and every bystander. (Specifically it might invade our protectorate Taiwan.) 6/

Musk, Thiel, Trump threaten not to physically destroy the country, but to transform its social, moral, and material basis in ways profoundly offensive to my values and material interests. They have made great progress in this project. 7/

I do want to see the US succeed in its geopolitical projects, and live up to its security commitments. But the threat Musk et al pose is far more imminent and pressing than the threat China poses. I hope we can address both. We’ve got to reindustrialize to deter. 8/

But that won’t be worth anything if the oligarchs succeed at transforming the United States according to the UAE model. Whatever virtue there might have been in US primacy would vanish if that happened. /fin

No. He comes off as a conformist, and financially focused CEO who has been perfectly content to break products in order to maximize revenue. Do you see any evidence of principled resistance to trends on which both his social milieu and his firm’s financial resistance converge?

* his firm’s financial interests… grrr.

I think you badly misread the politics and interests of tech oligarchs in the United States. Google won’t thrive if the US becomes Latin American poor, but they admire Latin American strongman Bukele. They admire UAE. 1/

They are Thielists: their notion of freedom and democracy aren’t compatible. Their notion of freedom must therefore Trump democracy. That is the project. /fin

is it? Google surveils, its owners and leadership strike me as part of the same, close social network as a person who just took extraordinary measures to ensure a fascist political tendency over which he has extraordinary influence gained power. 1/

it’s not that CCP is “better” than Google. but CCP is more concerned about China than undermining the liberties and quality of governance of my society. where Google i think would be an accessible, willing tool of domestic oligarchs. /fin