Forgiving and Forgetting Those Who Lie About You
Today is the eight year anniversary of being unjustly suspended from Twitter. You can read all about it in The Washington Post from May 26, 2015.
Of course I am not the same person I was eight years ago. Who is? I didn’t have the views ascribed to me then that I was reported to have and I couldn’t defend myself.
It would be quite easy to be angry about being unjustly banned from Twitter eight years ago but I’ve decided to take a different path. I forgive you Dick Costolo, Vijaya Gadde, and Jack Dorsey.
Yes, I was lied about. But then I am often lied about. Just look at my Wikipedia! I don’t let it affect me except to build my capacity for empathy. I want to let everyone know that I forgive them for the meanness and I am so grateful for the kindness that I experienced in my years of isolation and denigration.
Yes, you can have your voice taken from you. Yes, we live in a time of persecution. But we will always live in such a time.
I was really suspended from Twitter because I criticized Black Lives Matter and how its proponents were encouraging riots. Like the Beatles song, “We all want to change the world//But when you talk about destruction//Don’t you know that you can count me out.”
Over the years I’ve come to learn that Black Lives Matter was terribly Chinese. Had I been listened to then, I suspect we could have stopped a lot of suffering in 2020. You don’t get the opportunity zone riots without Kushner’s policies.
George Floyd may not have been killed by Chinese fentanyl running through his body but it certainly didn’t help things.
But I failed at winning that fight. I win some of them but I don’t win them all.
After my ban Twitter and I litigated it all the way to the California Supreme Court. As so often happens I lost the case but won the argument. It was both thrilling and maddening to see people use arguments I had formulated years ago come back at me.
I’m in my thirties now. I’ve lived in four places since I was unceremoniously kicked off of Twitter.
Yes, a lot has changed in the past eight years, for myself and for others.
Twitter has also changed.
In the spirit of forgiveness I even befriended Jack Dorsey and Jared Birchall, Musk’s aide de camp — though those alliances came and went. Jack even invested in a company I recommended — Clear Labs.
I meant it when I said favorable things about him. “Jack Dorsey is a beautiful man with the impossible job of making everyone happy,” I told the Wall Street Journal in 2020.
Of course we’re not allowed to talk about how Chinese Twitter has become under Elon.
We’re not allowed to talk about how intellectually vapid the Black Lives Matter movement is. (For more on that, I recommend reading Norm Finkelstein’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It, where he goes into some detail about Ibrahim X. Kendi.)
We can’t yet go there with the obvious question of whether or not Jack Dorsey gave millions of dollars to Ibrahim X. Kendi as a way of paying for a Chinese-backed influence operation.
Not yet anyway.
Oh, did Jack just call for “CIA, NSA, and Fbi to be splintered apart into a thousand pieces and scattered into the winds”? Wouldn’t he want these government agencies to be stronger, especially given all the weird stuff with Cash App and Bob Lee?
Well maybe it is time to write and talk about this sort of thing! We’re going to go there with Jack’s compromise. It’s essential.
Let that sink in indeed!
Now, about those shadow bans…
