The Return Of Trump Dubya

The least-noticed development of the midterm elections' aftermath is this one:

Former US President George W. Bush will hold a public conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky next week with the aim of underscoring the importance of the US continuing to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia https://t.co/aI0uXJt4sX

— CNN International (@cnni) November 11, 2022

CNN continues at greater length in a story:

The Struggle for Freedom event will take place on Wednesday, in partnership with the Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy, at the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

This will be the first public discussion between Zelensky – whose participation will be virtual – and the former president, following a private meeting they had earlier this year. After that initial meeting Bush called Zelensky the “Winston Churchill of our time.”

Both Dubya and his father have scrupulously followed the traditional protocol whereby former presidents maintain a low profile and don't normally engage in political dialogue after leaving office. Here, Dubya is pushing that adherence to the limit by very visibly endorsing a particular foreign policy that's been controversial at home. On one hand, I find this reassuring; at least in comparison to both Trump and Biden, Dubya, for all his faults, is much closer to a functional adult at this stage.

But let's see if we can peek behind the scenes at what this really means. Although Dubya is as close as we have to an adult, he isn't eligible to be reelected to the presidency and probably isn't interested in any other office. He's standing in for someone or something else. On the other hand, his chief proxy, Liz Cheney, daughter of his vice president, is a lame duck at the end of her own political career. For whom is he acting, then?

The answer is fairly clear, he's acting on behalf of Volodymyr Zelensky, the only consequential leader now on the world stage. Biden is on a whirlwind tour of climate conferences, the US election is uncertain with no clear Republican leadership, the UK conservatives are in a muddle, the Putin state is in crisis, and every other European leader has been upstaged by Zelensky, who de facto controls NATO and EU policy without being a member of either.

Let's consider as well the effect Zelensky has had on the US political environment. In summer 2021, Biden singlehandedly ordered the Kabul debacle. Had the Russian invasion of Ukraine not developed the way it did, the 2022 midterms might have been very different. By not fleeing Kyiv in a US C130 as Biden offered, Zelensky saved him from another disaster and created not just a distraction but a whole new issue that quietly saved the congressional Democrats. They were aligned with Winston Churchill; the Republicans wanted to appease Hitler. Joe Kemp apparently lost his House race in WA-03 over just this question.

Dubya is copacetic with this. Not only that, but we may be sure this public conversation with Zelensky has the tacit approval of Secretary Blinken, if Blinken himself wasn't the instigator. But wait a moment -- Dubya's foreign and defense policies were neoconservative, and neoconservatives have been out of favor since public frustration with the Second Gulf War helped defeat Republicans in 2008. The Obama policy, which had been the default for Biden as well, was to draw down from Iraq and Afghanistan, de-emphasize Israel, and build up Iran as the regional power broker. How's that working out?

At the same time, Trump, who has made few specific comments on the Ukraine war other than to say it wouldn't have happened if he'd been president, had a policy of treating Russia as a near peer of the US, granting it autonomy over a sphere of interest that included Ukraine provided it didn't rock the boat. The problem for Trump is that this policy has been overtaken by events; Russia did rock the boat big time. The best estimate we can make is that Biden's Kabul debacle led Putin to miscalculate and believe Biden, a weaker figure than Trump, would not react to a renewed invasion and annexation of Ukraine.

The miscalculation left Zelensky out of the equation, but neither did Putin figure in his own military incompetence. The political consequences for Russia are yet to be determined, but the political consequences for the US are beginning to emerge, especially a return of neoconservative foreign and military policy. This has most visibly taken the form of the neoconservative Institute for the Study of War, led by the prominent neoconservative Frederick Kagan, becoming the chief articulator of US Ukraine strategy, unabashedly pro-Zelensky. Zelensky is an authentic figure, as Dubya says someone at the Winston Churchill level, whom I don't think either Biden or Trump can easily relate to or appreciate. But as of yesterday, the ISW clearly expresses what has been, and according to Dubya will continue to be, US policy:

Ukraine has by no means liberated the minimum territory essential to its future security and economic survival even with the victory in western Kherson, finally. The city of Melitopol and surrounding areas, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, land on the east bank of the lower Dnipro River, and territory in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts are all vital terrain for Ukraine, as ISW has previously argued.

. . . Ukrainians and the West must bend every effort toward enabling the liberation of those lands as rapidly as possible before worrying about what lies beyond them. Momentum is an important factor in war. Ukraine has it now. Kyiv and its partners must make the most of it.

Dubya is back. The neoconservatives have in fact been back since February. At this point, I think both Biden and Trump are irrelevant, but we don't know what else will come, except that the real leader of the free world has turned out to be the former actor and comic Zelensky.

The King Of The Rains

The Institute for the Study of War, normally a snoozer on my list of sites to visit, gave me a surprising flash of insight in last night's summation of the Ukraine war:

A pro-war Russian ideologist, Alexander Dugin, openly criticized Putin — whom he referred to as the autocrat — for failing to uphold Russian ideology by surrendering Kherson City on November 12. Dugin said this Russian ideology defines Russia’s responsibility to defend “Russian cities” such as Kherson, Belgorod, Kursk, Donetsk, and Simferopol. Dugin noted that an autocrat has a responsibility to save his nation all by himself or face the fate of “king of the rains,” a reference to Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough in which a king was killed because he was unable to deliver rain amidst a drought.

I hadn't thought of Frazer in decades. I ran into him in graduate school, a 19th century bourgeois optimist along the line of Hegel, Darwin, or Carlyle, a distinctly minor figure, but the trope was so intriguing that I followed it up. From The Golden Bough p 107:

The priesthood of the Alfai, as he is called by the Barea and Kunama, is a remarkable one; he is believed to be able to make rain. . . . The people bring him tribute in the form of clothes and fruits, and cultivate for him a large field of his own.. . . He is supposed to conjure down rain and to drive away the locusts. But if he disappoints the people’s expectation and a great drought arises in the land, the Alfai is stoned to death, and his nearest relations are obliged to cast the first stone at him.

For now, this may apply to Putin, but I haven't been thinking about Putin lately; I've been thinking about Tuesday's election. There's a sense that Trump is behind the results, but as I've pointed out, his endorsements performed, if anything, slightly better than in previous years. Few other analyses have been illuminating, but the best one I found I haven't been able to find again. That writer made the point that Trump's first three years, as well as his 2015-16 campaign, were good. His final year, 2020, was a disaster.

He'd previously made monkeys of figures ranging from Jeb Bush to Hillary Clinton, but by 2020, Dr Fauci managed to make a monkey of Trump. I thought this was a productive insight, but I didn't fully grasp it until I looked at the king of the rains. The electorate would tolerate Trump's abrasiveness as long as they could sense it brought results, but after all, the buck stops at the president's desk. He was in fact the king of the rains, and COVID was definitely drought and locusts together, especially for the working class.

Masks and social distance, after all, were annoyances, and for at least some in the gentry they were even public displays of assent. But everyone could put up with a mask if they needed to go out. The problem was for the millions who were locked out of jobs or had their children locked out of schools. That was more than an annoyance.

So let's look at the few clear winners from Tuesday: Selfish DeSantis Takes Entire Red Wave For Himself:

Donald Trump has appeared unphased by his young rival's selfish stockpiling of precious red wave, an act that purportedly made the 45th president's handpicked MAGA candidates look like incompetent morons, costing the party vital seats in the House and Senate. To demonstrate how unfettered he was by DeSantis, Trump went to TRUTH Social and Truthed, "Little Ronnie DeSelfish won't know what hit him when I very soon will reveal a redder, wavier wave, bigger than any wave that's ever waved. Huge wave. Huge, red wave!"

The few other surfers on the red wave were all governors who won landslides after taking highly visible positions against lockdowns, school and business closures, and mandatory vaccinations, Brian Kemp, Greg Abbott,and Kristi Noem. Kemp and Abbott In fact, are currently thought to have ended the careers of prominent opponents Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke in much the same way that Trump ended the careers of Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton in 2016. There have been almost no other bright spots for Republicans in the aftermath of the election.

In fact, an indication of Trump's tone deafness after 2020 was his continuing claim, correct as far as it went, to have fostered the development of COVID vaccines under "Operation Warp Speed" -- fine, but the vaccines didn't work and became the cause of much annoyance themselves, especially among working class and military voters, where they worked in combination to prolong other failed policies like school restrictions and lockdowns.

Thus I think I was correct in saying before the election that its big subtext was going to be COVID -- I just didn't quite grasp the spin this would take. Trump in 2020 was the king of the rains. If that was what he claimed to be, he should have driven away the locusts and the drought, especially for the poorest, and he didn't. Nor, of course, did any other prominent Washington Republicans, including McCarthy and McConnell. I would look to this as a key motivator for what's to come.

The Red Wave And Shorting Musk

One of my favorite films of all time is The Big Short. My sixth sense tells me it's time to short Elon Musk, and at the end of yesterday's post, I began to muse on how his kids (who apparently owe him very little) might lock in their inheritance in the event he dies a pauper. Of those, one died in infancy, and another, Vivian, changed their name based on "gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form." This would make Vivian an unlikely candidate for the strategy I have in mind.

But if the others can get their act together, they need to approach Dad in a body and propose jointly that each has a reasonable expectation of $xx,xxx,xxx inheritance at the time of Dad's demise. (Among other things, they would need to engage serious financial analysts as well as estate attorneys in determining this amount.) However, given Dad's recent record, there appears to be a significant chance that instead of leaving a massive estate, he will die a pauper. Thus they have an interest in locking in shares of the current value of his estate.

I wish my late father-in-law, an insurance CEO, were still around to advise me on this -- but even before he left us, he announced that now that he was retired, he had no intention of ever discussing insurance again. So that option's out. Nevertheless, my wife and I both worked for insurance companies, so we have some background in how this might be done.

In brief, assuming the remaining eight children can agree, what they need to do is persuade Dad to buy eight separate single-payment annuities that would pay each the specified $xx,xxx,xxx on Dad's death. The purchase price of each annuity would be actuarially determined by the age of each child at the time of purchase, as well as the insurer's calculation of Dad's likely lifespan and its ability to turn the purchase payment into the final amount, plus profit and the cost of administration. That's my idea of how the kids can short their father, which it sounds as though they'd be inclined to do.

This eliminates the risk that Elon dies a pauper and ensures that their inheritance is paid by an insurance company, not the estate. Remember that effectively, the guy just went long on Twitter, and the Twitter board quite early in the game realized Elon had handed them an unbelievable deal on the basis that he thought it was potentially a going concern. Darn right they sued to make him go through with it!

I'm a little bit surprised that nobody has recognized this. After two weeks of chaos at Twitter, there are still people who think Elon will change the whole world by eliminating blue check marks or something. Just this morning, Glenn Reynolds, who's supposed to be a smart guy, posted:

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Elon Musk is not a national security threat — TikTok is: Joe Biden is focusing on the wrong social media giant.

But Tik Tok isn’t a threat to the Democrats, and Elon Musk is.

Elon Musk is a clown. Remarkably few people in the public forum are coming to this realization -- far more are now discounting Donald Trump. An exception is Alex Berenson, a COVID and vaccine skeptic whose views are being vindicated on a daily basis. I think he has the right call on Musk as well:

[I]n January 2021, Musk and I were chatting (over Twitter, inevitably) about the worsening threat to free speech. Twitter had just banned Donald Trump.

. . . “Buy Twitter and put it in a blind trust,” I suggested. “Or make it a public benefit corporation committed to free speech first.”

“Not feasible,” Musk replied. He had other priorities - notably importing human consciousness into robots and putting humans on Mars. Plus he had two huge companies, Tesla and SpaceX, to run - and what might be called an active social life to boot.

. . . But at some point in late 2021 or early 2022, Musk must have realized buying Twitter would give him chance to reach entirely new heights of societal influence. Let other billionaires have their own football teams or superyachts or private islands.

Musk would have his own social media company, used by hundreds of millions of people every day. He would put himself, in the words of Tour de France, “hors categorie” -beyond categorization.

Buying Twitter would also give Musk a good excuse to sell tens of billions of dollars in Tesla stock at extraordinary prices.

Berenson then argues, obliquely, that Musk's 10-year Tesla options were about to expire, but absent any other reason to exercise them, it could be taken as evidence that he was going to cash out of Tesla as the stock peaked. In effect, he needed an excuse to sell Tesla stock without appearing to short himself as an insider. So along came Twitter and the chance to sell Tesla to buy Twitter. But right now, this deal is looking like a loser. He bought Twitter to cash out his Tesla profits, but Twitter immediately crashes? Smart move, that! I'm not completely sure Berenson fully understands this even now. Nevertheless, he raises a key point:

[E]ven before Musk bought Twitter, he’d shown warning signs he might not be the First Amendment absolutist those of us who had faced social media censorship in the last several years had hoped.

Through Tesla, he was deeply tied to China, which has used advanced technology to crack down on dissent more effectively than any other country. He had also aggressively chased would-be whistleblowers at Tesla, in one case forcing one to repay the company $400,000 for “leaking confidential information to a reporter.” His SpaceX launches American military satellites, among the most highly classified programs in the United States military.

Carl Benjamin, an often insightful UK commentator, ventures a question in this YouTube discussion: up to now, Twitter has almost never been profitable, but influential capital has nevertheless continued to fund it. Its ability to control public dialogue and the width of the Overton window has apparently been worth the investment.

The best we can say at the moment is that Musk has no clear view of where to take Twitter, especially in its current perceived position as an arbiter of acceptable views, but there is absolutely no assurance that Musk can somehow change the world by making changes there.

Any more than anyone thought there was going to be a red wave last Tuesday.

The Burn It Down Theory Of Management

The other day I noted that Elon seems to be making things up as he goes along with Twitter, and recent developments aren't changing my mind. This story goes into considerable detail about how last week's layoff process went down. Earlier, I quoted Musk on how if you think a policy would make a great Dilbert strip, it might be a bad policy, but the problem there is that Dilbert is supposed to be funny, and this saga is turning out to be anything but.

Friday’s layoffs had been brutal for all involved, including those involved in planning them — many of whom themselves lost their jobs. While the process varied by team, some managers were asked to submit to Musk’s team two sentences about all of their direct reports: one sentence explaining what the employee did, and one sentence justifying their continued employment at Twitter.

Wait a moment. "Those involved in planning them"? The new boss takes over and gives the company one week to lay off half its workforce? How do you "plan" any such thing?

As I was the first to report on Saturday, within hours of the layoffs, some managers were already being told to ask select laid-off employees if they wanted their old jobs back.

. . . “Sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4 PM PST on Sunday,” one such message from a manager to employees read. “I’ll do some research but if any of you have been in contact with folks who might come back and who we think will help us, please nominate before 4.”

. . . Some employees are nervous that if Twitter can’t get them to return voluntarily, the company will formally rescind the notice they received Friday laying them off. Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, businesses with more than 100 full-time employees are required to give 60 days notice if they lay off 33 percent or more of the staff. At Twitter, that notice included a promise to pay people for the next 60 days and give them a month of severance.

Now workers fear that if they they refuse to return voluntarily, Twitter will fire them for abandoning their jobs, depriving them of what otherwise would have been three months’ pay.

Some workers have begun to consult with lawyers over their options in the event that they are recalled. Others are in open revolt, tweeting public threads about various aspects of the organization that have been broken after the ready-fire-aim disaster of Musk’s layoffs process.

As of this morning,

Twitter’s most senior cybersecurity staffer Lea Kissner has departed the social media giant.

Kissner announced the move in a tweet on Thursday, saying they [sic] made the “hard decision” to leave Twitter, but did not say for what reason they resigned. Elon Musk completed a $44 billion takeover of Twitter two weeks ago, resulting in layoffs affecting more than half of the company and the departure of senior executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Legal Policy chief Vijaya Gadde.

News of Kissner’s departure was first reported by Casey Newton. Twitter’s chief privacy officer Damien Kieran has also resigned, and reportedly so has chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty, according to Newton, citing messages shared in Twitter Slack.

Here I think there's a real probability that Musk is cutting meat. Cybersecurity is critically important to a social media company; you simply can't have the accounts of prominent people getting hacked, with the hackers using the online IDs of politicians, celebrities, and others to make posts that destroy their reputations. The mere inkling of any such risk will make people flee the platform. The most I can think is that before you replace the manager in charge of that team, you need to do a very, very careful review -- and I can't imagine that being done within a couple of weeks.

The same applies to compliance. Any corporation is bound by all sorts of government rules and regulations. Any sort of discontinuity, even just a perception, will hurt the company. Again, it's possible that everyone at the top is incompetent and needs to go, but at minimum, Musk has to maintain an impression of continuity. If the heads of cybersecurity and compliance quit in protest or frustration, though, so much the worse.

Nor do I find this reassuring: The Right Is Cheering Latest Twitter Move Concerning Head of 'Trust and Safety':

After Elon Musk took over Twitter, he seemed to give his imprimatur to Yoel Roth, the guy who had been the head of “Trust and Safety” for the site. “Trust and safety” dealt with things on the site like abuse, harassment, and “election security” in the past, before Musk came in.

But many pointed out to Musk that perhaps Roth wasn’t the best guy to render objective judgment on the platform, given the things that he has previously tweeted. They certainly indicate there could be a big problem in how he would exercise that judgment.

On Thursday, there were multiple reports that Roth, as well as the head of sales, Robin Wheeler, were no longer with the company.

. . . Did someone finally get the message that perhaps there could be a problem there? Folks on the right certainly found his leaving another positive sign.

So let me see. As of Monday, we had a reassuring tweet from Roth himself, which I linked here on Wednesday, that "trust and safety" were doing business as usual. This followed an October 31 tweet linked in the story from Musk expressing confidence in Roth. But by yesterday, that had all changed, and Roth was out the door. Maybe you can say that this shows Musk will listen, Musk will admit he's made mistakes, but why did Musk make a snap decision right after taking over that Roth was a good guy, but less than two weeks later, he was fired? Isn't there something wrong with this whole process?

And of course, Musk can change his mind again. He can still call up Roth over the weekend and threaten to revoke his severance if he doesn't report to work on Monday. If I were any of Musk's ten kids, I'd be looking to lock up my inheritance now.

The Red Tsunami That Wasn't

I gave myself a day to let the results of the midterms sink in, and as of now, my takeaway is that I just don't understand the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth on the Republican side. The bottom line is that what had been predicted for months, the Republican takeover of the House, appears all but certain. In fact, I briefly saw Fox News at the end of Bret Baier's hour yesterday, and Fox announced that the Republican takeover had been "called" (whatever that means), but nobody as far as I can tell has repeated it, even at Fox.

Nevertheless, the House Republicans are setting up for leadership elections, while the House Democrats aren't. This was going to be the key event of the cycle: with a Republican majority, the House can stop Democrat legislative initiatives, while Republican-controlled committees will have subpoena authority to pursue investigations into issues like COVID and the Biden family finances. The possibility of Republican control of the Senate is still open, but under the circumstances, the only big difference if the Democrats retain Senate control will be the ability to push through one or more of Biden's Supreme Court nominations -- but with a slim majority and unpredictable Republican senators, it would still be a likely outcome even if Republicans do win control.

Thus the key legislative outcome is already decided in Republcans' favor, which had been predicted by everyone. As my wife put it, you can cross the finish line in a jalopy, or you can do it in a limo, but you've still crossed the finish line. So why the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth? The answer probably has to do with Trump. Trump himself wasn't on the ballot, and interestingly, his record of endorsements according to ballotpedia isn't that different from prior years. His record of successful general election endorsements was 59% in 2018, 67% in 2019, 78% in 2020, 67% in 2021, and 78% in 2022 -- so in fact, he did slightly better this year than in several prior years.

But I think Don Surber captures the real reason for the disappointment:

We can spend months in denial but the fact is, Americans do not want Donald John Trump to be their president.

He did not save the Republican Party. He spent it.

. . . Governors Kemp, Sununu and DeSantis showed how Tuesday would have gone for Republicans without Trump. Republicans needed to gain 5 House seats. DeSantis delivered 4.

Dr. Oz showed how it went with Trump. That's how poisonous he has become in purple America. We, his fans, see the good in him and the evil in his enemies. But the majority doesn't and never will. It is a sale that cannot be made. There will be no second term from The Donald.

Looking at those individual data points, I can't disagree, although I'm not sure if there were other Republican candidates in the Pennsylvania and New Hampshire primaries who would have defeated the Democrats in the absence of Trump endorsements.

I would say that backing off at a greater distance, the Republicans have had two breakthrough figures since the 1990s, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump. Both were able to turn the conventional wisdom upside down. Gingrich showed Republicans could win congressional majorities, which they hadn't done consistently since the 1920s. Trump brought down one political dynasty, the Bushes, and forestalled the creation of another, the Clintons. But neither could establish a stable electoral record himself. Having engineered the 1994 Republican upset victory in both houses of Congress, he served as Speaker of the House for only four years, forced to resign as Speaker and then resign his seat after a series of scandals and the failed strategy of impeaching Bill Clinton. Wikipedia quotes the New York Times describing him as "an expert in how to seize power, but a novice in holding it".

The same might be said of Trump. I think his biggest defect was relying on untested and unqualified advisers, who were in a constant state of churning. I'm not sure if this was much different from Gingrich, of whom it was said his opinions on anything depended on the person who'd talked with him most recently. Trump's instincts were often good, his delivery and execution less so, but his overall flamboyance was, as Don Surber suggests, his undoing.

However, as far as 2024 goes, I thionk Trump will be a sacrificial figure. It's clear that Trump has been the focus of Biden's 2024 reelection strategy, insofar as he's had one, and he was the focus of Democrat efforts to forestall a significant 2022 congressional victory by Republicans. The problem is that if, as predicted, Biden engineers an indictment of Trump in coming months, it will only take Trump out of the running for 2024 while leaving an open path for DeSantis to capitalize on his own 2022 victory and unify the party for 2024.

That's where I think the Democrat focus on Trump while ignoring DeSantis and other potential strong Republican candidates has been a serious miscalculation.

Maybe The Richest, But Definitely Not The Smartest

I couldn't help but notice this morning's news:

Elon Musk is dipping into his electric car company to pay for his share of the $44 billion Twitter purchase, according to reports.

He sold another $3.95 billion of Tesla shares Nov. 4-8, the Associated Press reported from regulatory filings, following up the $7 billion he sold in August as he tried to exit the Twitter deal on allegations of fraudulent account figures. He's now sold more than $19 billion of Tesla shares since April, when he started the Twitter deal.

Forbes reported this was the first time Musk's personal wealth, which is tied up in Tesla, has dipped below $200 billion since May 24. It also happened Oct. 1, 2021. Tesla shares closed at a 52-week low Tuesday at $191.30.

As I've looked at the Twitter takeover, on one hand from a considerable distance but on the other from a career in tech, I can't escape the feeling he's making things up as he goes along, which doesn't bode well. He started out making the $44 billion bid in April following a strange dance over whether or not he'd join Twitter's board of directors.

Less than a month later, Musk announced he'd put the deal on hold following generally vague statements about the number of bots among the platform's users. In July, he announced he wouldn't go through with the deal, whereupon Twitter filed suit to compel him to do so.

In October, he announced he'd changed his mind and would go through with the original deal at the original price. Late that month, he and Twitter closed the deal, and Musk fired Twitter's top executives, taking over as interim CEO. Other than vague and inchoate announcements about reducing workforce and making the company profitable, he hasn't articulated anything resembling a business strategy. Most visibly, his intentions over the blue-check feature of the application aren't clear, while his firing of half the workforce within a week of his arrival seems to have been largely a public relations move that by the way threw thousands of lives into chaos.

In fact, observers who thought Musk's staff cuts would largely dismantle the hated "trust and safety council" discovered no such thing seemed likely to take place.

Yesterday’s reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022

What strikes me is that the captains of industry in the robber baron generation like Rockefeller, Gould, Carnegie, Morgan, Ford, and Harriman worked from consistent and predictable business strategies. Indeed, some like Morgan and Ford may have played those strategies too consistently in their later years, but at least they were consistent. Musk is anything but, and in the case of Twitter, he seems to be playing for attention and publicity instead of maximizing his investments. How much money has he thrown away to white-shoe law firms in this whole erratic Twitter saga?

I can't escape the idea he's playing a part in a personal drama, caudillo financier out to fix tech and remake society, maybe even a little like the emperor Nero who sang and played the lyre for his private amusement. This won't turn out well. He got rich, he got laid, he spread his seed for the benefit of mankind, and it all went to his head.

But then, I suppose this is the overall state of our public life. We need to find public figures who are stable and smart.

That Didn't Take Long

As I noted the other day, the news late last week and over the weekend was that Elon was going to fire half of Twitter's work force. I was skeptical, if for no other reason than the managers he tasked with drawing up the lists of whom to fire had an incentive to sabotage the process by firing the people who actually made the company run, insofar as it did. But in any case, a project that big planned in the space of a week wasn't going to turn out well. As of yesterday,

Twitter has asked dozens of employees that were laid off after Elon Musk took office to return. This is just days after nearly half of the company’s workforce across countries were asked to go, as per multiple media reports.

According to sources cited by Bloomberg, a few of those who are being asked to return were “laid off by mistake” while others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features the new boss Elon Musk envisions.

Once again, life imitates Dilbert. In 2018, Musk issued the following almong a list of rules for Tesla employees:

6. Follow logic, not rules

“In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a ‘company rule’ is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.”

Well, give the guy credit. He decided to lay off half of Twitter, but it turned into a great Dilbert cartoon, so he decided to hire some of them back. What could go wrong?

In general, my corporate experience is that companies just don't reverse terminations, leaving aside only furloughs due to seasonal or business conditions where employees are called back when business improves. That even includes voluntary resignations where someone leaves the company for a better job -- for someone to have quit x years ago but be rehired, especially into a higher-level job, is so unusual that it's a subject of quiet congratulation. From a corporate point of view, firing someone probably leaves them bitter enough that they'll return and make trouble anyhow.

This would apply to the Twits who got the adverse notices last Friday, for that matter. Even if it was a big mistake, what does it say about the company that it would make that kind of mistake? You spent the weekend cursing fate and updating your resume, and they just say never mind? Frankly, I'd want more than an e-mail saying sorry, please come back, and the company should know that, too. Every one of those people is now a potential troublemaker who at minimum can be expected to be out the door at the first opportunity.

And it goes both ways -- advice from career consultants and headhunters is that if you submit your resignation letter and the company asks you to reconsider, it's a good idea not to do it. After all, why did you go to all the effort of updating your resume, sneaking out for interviews, and lining up your references? There had to be a good reason for leaving, and you can be sure that won't change. The corporate hierarchy, meanwhile, will be smarting over having been beaten and forced to rehire someone who wasn't happy.

I can think of one exception, though, which probably proves the rule: I was caught in a big downsizing and laid off with several others in my work unit. Half a dozen years later, I came back briefly as a consultant, working again with the remainder of the people in the unit who'd stayed. (This was probably a sign that they'd laid off the wrong people, come to think of it.) However, on returning, I discovered that they'd actually brought back one of the others who'd initally been laid off.

I was a bit surprised, since that worker was absolutely the most clueless and unproductive of the bunch, and the person simply resumed that role when she was rehired. I can't understand why this was done; the only explanation I can think of is that this was part of some obscure upside-down function of the Dilbert universe. In my case, once someone realized I was a former employee, they called the company who'd brought me in as a consultant and ordered me off the property.

Which takes me back to Elon's own advice, if it looks like a great Dilbert cartoon, maybe it's not such a good idea. Except I assume Elon figured it would make him look really smart if he ordered his people not to look like characters in a Dilbert cartoon. Maybe dating Amber Heard affected his IQ or something, who knows?