Elon Musk vs Yoel Roth

Forget Sam Brinton, the big news Saturday night was Yoel Roth, Twitter's former Trust & Safety head, who is shown at left above with his husband after their San Francisco wedding in August 2019. Roth was initially kept on at Twitter by its new owner Elon Musk despite presenting himself as the public face of its controversial censorship and banning policies, but as of November 10, he had resigned.

I have yet to endorse Musk as some sort of cultural caudillo, but I can grant that as of late Saturday, he'd at least done homework he should have been doing over a month ago:

Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis: pic.twitter.com/1NiBohjhMQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2022

A Bloomberg story that covered this tweet commented with the standard line:

Far-right and extremist voices have long pushed a false claim that LGBTQ+ people are sexual predators who are “grooming” children to abuse them. In September, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Extremism said that “the result of this widespread hateful rhetoric has been a spike in harassment, threats and violence targeting the LGBTQ+ community.”

But the problem isn't that people on the far right falsely claim that LGBTQ+ people are all groomers, the problem is that Roth as Twitter's Trust & Safety head himself had a creepy fascination with porn that's reflected, of all things, in his own tweets:

I enjoy having the kinds of meetings where googling “gay bareback porn” is considered academic work.

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) September 25, 2012

or

I'm persistently freaked out by the youth-centric direction my research interests are headed in, given I, you know, hate children.

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) August 24, 2011

or indeed, a secret dirty Twitter account of his own:

Apparently former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter had a “secret dirty twitter account” which has since been scrubbed.

Read this tweet that was tweeted from @yoyoel’s secret dirty account:

Everything is starting to make sense. pic.twitter.com/YpJiX8ckIW

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 12, 2022

One problem with social media is indeed that there's porn all over. I'm not on Twitter at all, but I'm on Facebook primarily for railroad hobby interests that ought to be entirely G-rated. But even there, you can't avoid clickbait porn, including gay images. OK, if you're someone who likes to join railfan groups on Facebook and download incidental porn off them, well, OK, but how is it that the guy on Twitter who was supposed to be controlling this is into gay porn himself and thinks this is all copacetic?

Isn't there a basic problem with public discourse here? Remember that the intent of the 1960s MPAA movie ratings was to replace overall censorship with the idea that people could choose the sexuality of their environment. G was family entertainment, X was under 16 not allowed, and so forth. It's increasingly plain that on social media, this has been replaced, and there's effectively no censorship on highly controversial sexual matters, but there's up to now been heavy-handed censorship of fairly uncontroversial political views.

I'm skeptical that Musk is the guy to fix this -- I'm not sure if even a month ago he had an inkling that it needed fixing. And indeed, maybe all that needed to be done was to fire Roth and hire the right guy to replace him. (How, by the way, did Roth rise to that position in the first place? Should we be asking Mr Dorsey, who is sometimes thought to be gay but claims he isn't?)

But at least, if inadvertently, Musk is raising important questions.

More On Sam Brinton

I did a quick web search on Sam Brinton in preparing yesterday's post, especially in the context of his felony charges for stealing designer luggage and the doubts the gay community has aired about him since that scandal broke. Wikipedia provides a somewhat more complete account of his career, but as far as I can tell, it still omits critical issues. Using his preferred they/them pronouns, it says

Brinton graduated from Kansas State University with a Bachelor of Science in nuclear engineering and vocal music. While attending the university, they organized its first Pride march in 2010. They have a dual Master of Science degree in nuclear science and engineering (technology and policy program) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

. . ., In 2016, Brinton was a senior policy analyst for the Bipartisan Policy Center, lobbying for updated regulations so nuclear waste can be used to power advanced nuclear reactors. In February 2020, the website of Deep Isolation, a Berkeley, California, nuclear waste storage and disposal company, listed them as its Director of Legislative Affairs and in May 2022 they were its Director of Global Strategy. In 2022, Brinton's profile at the Department of Energy indicated their previous work with the Breakthrough Institute, the Clean Air Task Force, and Third Way.

Yahoo! Lifestyle noted that Brinton "may be the first openly gender-fluid person in federal government leadership" after they were selected by the Biden administration to be the deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy for the Department of Energy in January 2022. In July 2022, South Florida Gay News reported that, according to Brinton, while they were "welcomed with open arms" at all levels of the organization, others reacted to their appointment with hatred and disgust, some making death threats against the self-described "Nuclear Nerd".

In February 2022, an unidentified Department of Energy employee filed allegations of hiring malpractice with the Office of the Inspector General due to concern regarding Brinton's qualifications for a Senior Executive Service (SES) level position, i.e. "the class of federal career officials who rank just below top presidential appointees in seniority".

In any case, the hiring malpractice case is currently moot, since they (the Brintons?) have been placed on leave by DOE due to their felony charges. However, the Wikipedia entry also goes into more detail on questions from the gay community itself on the Sam Brintons' record of prior mendacity:

Brinton was raised in Perry, Iowa and is the child of two Southern Baptist missionaries. Brinton came out as bisexual to their parents in the early 2000s. According to Brinton, Brinton's parents disapproved of Brinton's attraction to a male friend from school, and put the then-middle school student in conversion therapy, an experience Brinton later described as "barbaric" and "painful" in a New York Times op-ed. In the most extreme session, Brinton has stated that a conversion therapist bound them to a table while ice, heat, and electricity was applied to their body, all while being forced to watch clips of gay intimacy.

Journalist Wayne Besen, writing in LGBTQ Nation in December 2022, cast doubt on Brinton's description of their childhood, noting inconsistencies in Brinton's retelling of events, such as the occupation and location of the conversion therapist; as well as Brinton's claim that they could not remember the therapist's name (which would be necessary to corroborate the story), despite having had two years of sessions with him. Besen also stated that the type of severe conversion therapy Brinton stated they underwent had become "exceedingly rare" by the late 1990s. Online magazine Queerty wrote about Brinton in 2011, including Brinton's description of how their own parents "punched, burned, electrocuted and stabbed him to make him straight." Queerty reported that LGBT publication Towleroad had contacted Wayne Besen and that Besen hadn't been able to verify Brinton's story. Queerty described separate allegations, via Towleroad, that "Brinton's Facebook page “has a picture of the entire happy family at his college graduation ceremony, May 31, 2011,” even though Brinton's father reportedly threatened to shoot his son in the head if [they] ever came around again.

What's somewhat puzzling is that Brinton has had a high-profile career as a gay activist that parllels his positions as a nuclear waste lobbyist and government official. Again per Wikipedia:

Calling themself a "survivor" of conversion therapy, Brinton was the first such individual to testify before the United Nations Convention against Torture regarding their experience in November 2014, as the advisory committee cochair of the National Center for Lesbian Rights' #BornPerfect campaign. Brinton held the position until at least September 2015.

Brinton, in December 2016, founded the #50Bills50States campaign with the goal of prohibiting the pseudoscientific practice of conversion therapy throughout the U.S.

In 2016 and 2018, Brinton was the principal officer for the Washington DC chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an LGBTQ charity and human rights group. At events, such as the organization's 40th anniversary, they performed in drag under the name "Sister Ray Dee O'Active".

From 2017 to 2019, Brinton was the head of advocacy and government affairs at the non-profit LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project. In 2020, Brinton coordinated with three of Anchorage's openly gay city council members to draft the city's conversion therapy ban on minors, which became law in August. Anchorage joined twenty states and dozens of cities that had enacted laws banning the practice.

What appears to be a reprint of the Wayne Besen LGBTQ Nation piece mentioned above appears in the Los Angeles Blade for December 9, where Besen dates the start of Brinton's personal legend:

Sam Brinton burst on the scene on October 1, 2010. In a riveting two-part interview with I’m from Driftwood, they revealed the most shocking conversion story activists had heard since the 1960’s. It involved Brinton coming out to their parents at age 11, and their father reacting with a swift punch to their face.

So far, I haven't been able to find dates for either Brinton's graduation from Kansas State or his Master's from MIT, but if he was at Kansas State when he started the Pride march there, his high-profile gay activism even predates his work in the nuclear waste field. Not mentioned at all in the Wikipedia profile, though, is their equally visible and active career as a presenter at kink conferences:

Sam Brinton, who was placed on leave at the Department of Energy after stealing a suitcase full of women’s clothes, last weekend delivered a seminar on the science of spanking and "turning butts red" at a Los Angeles kink conference. Speaking under the pseudonym "NuclearNerd," Brinton delivered the hands-on "Spanking: From Calculus To Chemistry" seminar at the Leather Getaway conference, the Daily Mail reported.

The Daily Mail story links to his conference thumbnail:

Nerdy at heart, NuclearNerd finds that the best kinks are the one centered in the brain. As a graduate of MIT, NuclearNerd has been teaching their "Physics of Kink" class in universities and community events across the country for years. They have been active in the kink world since 2013, host monthly kink parties in their dungeon in Washington, DC, and estimate they have spanked over 2,000 cute butts.

Soon after his appointment to his DOE post, the Washington Examiner reported,

Brinton has a history of promoting sexual fetishes and kinks related to animal role-playing. A post in the student newspaper at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 2017 says the nuclear waste expert held a discussion on kinks and sex education at the campus.

“Throughout the entire talk, Brinton was open about his experiences, the kinks he partakes in, and the nature of his relationships,” the article reads. “He left us with countless anecdotes, like how he enjoys tying up his significant other like a table, and eating his dinner on him while he watches Star Trek.”

Whew. At 35, he's had a triple-whammy career as a nuclear waste lobbyist and policymaker, an outspoken gay activist, and a noted authority on the theory and practice of kink.

Just for starters, I have two questions. Anything related to nuclear at the Department of Energy requires major, major background checks. I've been there. Even to go to the lunchroom, even to go to the men's room, at a DOE nuclear facility requires weeks of background checks. In fact, even if you've had a Defense Department secret clearance, you have to get a whole separate DOE clearance, just to set foot in the cafeteria. At least back in the day, a record like the Brintons would be a deal killer. How on earth did he get hired for that position?

Second, just out of curiosity, on whose dime was he flying when he stole the designer bags? Was he traveling on DOE business? Was he traveling to a conference? Was it on gay advocacy business?

Just wondering. Maybe somebody needs to do an investigation.

Right After The Election

The poster above is is from just one recent controversy involving school curricula that effectively groom children for all the variants of pansexualism. In this particular case,

New Jersey mother Angela Reading revealed she was told she was being 'monitored' by local law enforcement, after airing concerns about posters hanging at the entrance of her seven-year-old's school in North Hanover Township.

Reportedly part of an assignment to create a 'safe space' for students, the colorful art installations contain language that tout different sorts of sexuality, including the virtues of being both 'poly-' and 'pansexual' - all scrawled in children's handwriting.

The added wrinkle is the woman "revealed cops became privy to her since-deleted Facebook post after being tipped [off] by a lieutenant colonel at nearby military base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, who took issue with the post."

The military official - a senior staffer at the New Jersey military base - said that staffers were working with local police to 'monitor the situation' while ensuring 'the continued safety of the entire community.'

In the Chicago area, the private Parker School became immersed in controversy when a Project Veritas reporter posing as a conference attendee interviewed a school administrator:

The video captures the dean talking last week about a visit to Francis W. Parker School by an LGBTQ health organization to discuss queer sexual health with high schoolers.

. . . Parker leaders sent a letter to the school community late Wednesday saying “we are heartbroken that one of our colleague’s words have been severely misrepresented for a malicious purpose.” The letter offered strong support for their faculty and staff and for the school’s “inclusive, LGBTQ+ affirming, and comprehensive approach to sex education.”

The school said the local alderman helped it expand the police presence around its Lincoln Park campus, and it has implemented higher security measures. At least one person marched in front of the school on Thursday to protest the school’s sex ed curriculum.

I was immediately curious to see whether any Parker School parents objected to the LGBTQ visit, which as portrayed in the Project Veritas video didn't say anything about "queer sexual health" but did involve distributing dildos and butt plugs to the students. Apparently there was no mass withdrawal of students by irate parents, and the Parker School website suggests why:

Francis W. Parker School educates students to think and act with empathy, courage and clarity as responsible citizens and leaders in a diverse democratic society and global community.

So the parents are spending as much as $42,300 per year for just the sort of queer sex ed the school provides, and they feel good about it. In fact, per the link above,

Parker leaders sent a letter to the school community late Wednesday saying “we are heartbroken that one of our colleague’s words have been severely misrepresented for a malicious purpose.” The letter offered strong support for their faculty and staff and for the school’s “inclusive, LGBTQ+ affirming, and comprehensive approach to sex education.”

The school said the local alderman helped it expand the police presence around its Lincoln Park campus, and it has implemented higher security measures. At least one person marched in front of the school on Thursday to protest the school’s sex ed curriculum.

As with the Hanover Township controversy, the fact that a school would be grooming pre-teens and teens for pansexualism is represented as a public safety issue, with the groomers portrayed as potential victims who must be protected from concerned parents, who must in turn be monitored by law enforcement.

Again, Admiral Levine themselves weighs in:

Dr. Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman, tried to enlist children’s doctors and nurses into the transgender activist movement, urging them to become evangelists and preach the gospel of transgenderism. Anything less would be a betrayal of their profession and science itself, he argued.

Levine, assistant secretary of health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, claimed that there is a large population of biological males who are really female and vice versa, and these people are likely to commit suicide unless doctors pump them with drugs to delay puberty, introduce a hormone disease into their bodies, and perhaps even remove healthy body parts.

. . . He championed “acceptance” as a life-saving message; painted opponents of his ideology as driven by an “agenda” that has “nothing to do with warmth, empathy, compassion, or understanding”; and sent forth the doctors as his new apostles.

. . . Levine painted a dire picture of an oppressed people, citing high rates of suicidal thoughts and attempted suicides. He blamed this predicament on a demonic society, dismissing any notion that transgender identity may contribute to mental health struggles.

It's unfortunate, though, that current controversies over grooming minor children have emerged at the same time as the controversy over Admiral Levine's other high-profile government colleague, Sam Brinton, who is currently sought on two felony warrants for stealing designer luggage from airport baggage carousels. It's worth noting, though, that Brinton, prior to his career as a serial felon, had actually been a high-profile advocate for just the sort of empathetic grooming advocated by Admiral Levine and woke school curricula:

Sam is one of the world’s leading advocates for LGBTQ youth. They are the founder of the 50 Bill 50 States campaign at The Trevor Project to end the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy, first in the United States and then around the globe.

However, even among the gay community there were doubts about the guy:

The criminal case against the activist is damning. Brinton had no checked luggage, precluding this being a case of accidentally taking the wrong bag. Video surveillance captured Brinton removing the suitcase from the carousel and putting the bag’s tag in their handbag before leaving “at a quick pace,” the police complaint read.

While this is a personal calamity for Brinton, the fallout faced by the LGBTQ community could have easily been avoided. The red flags regarding Brinton were overwhelming and obvious to all who cared to see them. Unfortunately, some of America’s top LGBTQ activists and organizations were willfully blind to Brinton’s shortcomings.

This is all a developing story. What I see right now, though, is a misplaced opportunism and premature triumphalism for the current Democrat agenda, which may be misreading the significance of its narrow escape from defeat in the midterms. Clearly pansexualism has become a major part of its current agenda, which has largely departed from traditional leftism centered on the working class. Right now, the focus of the Democrat and never-Trump establishment is driving a stake through Donald Trump's heart, when Trump himself is making this completely unnecessary and a wasted effort.

The problem is that at least as of now, the Republican who looks better for the 2024 nomination is Gov DeSantis, who has already recognized and built a solid record on the grooming issue -- and in fact, this record was part of his convincing November win in Florida. And grooming is a class-based issue, as we see with instances like the support for it at the expensive Parker School. Latins and African-Americans are not on board.

Two Spiritedness And The New American Upper Class

The photo above has caused a stir this morning on several right-wing platforms. "Bonchie" at Red State has the conventonal take:

Notice anything? If you are politically astute and have paid attention to leftwing rhetoric over the last decade or so, what’s wrong with the picture will jump out immediately: Everyone is white.

Well, to be fair, there does appear to be one woman of Asian ancestry, but regardless, I’ve been assured that this ratio of whiteness is proof of systemic racism.

They're represented as the female Capitol press corps, surrounding outgoing Speaker Pelosi. Almost all of them have the exact same hairstyle, the 1960s Joan Baez that Ted Bundy is said to have favored, in which Ms Baez herself is seen at left, altthough what's puzzling is that Ms Baez has moved on, as shown below right. Indeed, they all have somewhat dull facial expressions with phony smiles, and they're all dressed in something like the minimalist upper-class style one might find at a Georgetown soirée, although from their faces, I would think they might be a little dull for that. But then, as an Ivy undergraduate back in the day, I sometimes went to Georgetown soirées, and come to think of it, they'd actually fit just fine.

Anyhow, here's Ms Baez, as the Germans would put it, aktuell. My wife tells me this hairstyle is practical now, and it's favored by the more down-to-earth reality show stars like Minnie Beets on Gold Rush. (On the other hand, we would not find Minnie Beets at a Georgetown soirée, even though Ms Baez attends such things with the likes of Dr Fauci.) Another conundrum as far as I can see is that Speaker Pelosi is anything but minimalist; she's shrill and histrionic, and in fact, her own hairstyle, like her face, is high-maintenance, as we saw when she got a special hair appointment for herself during the COVID lockdowns, when every other barber shop and hair salon was closed.

In fact, I've often wondered if Speaker Pelosi is actually a drag queen, an over-the-top antifeminist caricature, and this goes to another part of the two-spiritedness of the current American upper class. Drag queens are in. They mimic women, but their style is anything but minmalist. Take the case of Sam Brinton, one of the federal government’s first gender non-binary officials, currently sought by authorities on a felony warrant for a second instance of stealing designer luggage from an airport baggage carousel. Would we see Mx Brinton at a Georgetown soirée? As far as I can see, whether the answer is yes or no, there's a contradiction, or as it might be put, a two-spiritdness:

If the answer is yes, he'd be welcome, including in the outfit at left, then why were no gender-non-binary reporters included in the photo with the Speaker? If gender is just a social construct, why exclude biological men who identify as women from the photo? If it's claimed that there are none such in the Capitol press corps, my answer would be you've got to be kidding. They're just in the closet. Why not coax them out? Why the discrimination?

If the answer is no, the invitation lists for Georgetown soirées somehow always inadvertently leave out drag queens, then why the discrimination? And why, if they don't welcome drag queens, do they nevertheless favor shrill and histrionic figures like Speaker Pelosi and Congresswoman Waters?

This is not a stable or sustainable state of affairs.

More On The Left's Two-Spiritedness

I wasn't surprised when Time chose Zelensky as its "person" of the year -- in fact, several days ago, I assumed the choice had already been published, and I just hadn't seen it, Says a lot about Time these days. What struck me most was the kitschiness of the portrait, the Kennedyesque visionary stare into the distance that in fact would have worked 60 years ago, but of course, we're in 2022. The other thing that hit me a moment later was remembering last year's choice for woman of the year, Admiral Levine. President Zelensky is a person; Admiral Levine is a woman, which of course she is not. In fact, Elon Musk just withdrew the Babylon Bee's suspension from Twitter for maintaining just this.

I was briefly tempted to call Time's successive choices inconsistent, but on a moment's reflection, I realized it wasn't inconsistent, it was just two-spirited. Recall that the Old Left saw the Soviet Union as the authoritative manifestation of world socialism, and this lasted at least until Sen Sanders spent his honeymoon there in 1988. (The New Left, of course, was always of a piece with the New Nixon, a remarketing of the same old product).

Around the time of the Soviet Union's fall a few years after Sen Sanders's visit, the leftist mainstream quietly revised its orthodoxy to explain the fall as a result of Soviet betrayal of real socialism, that in fact, authentic socialism had never actually been tried. Thus it's been possible in the most recent development, the Russian invasion of Ukraine complete with the hammer-and-sickle red banner on the tanks, for leftists actually to oppose a foreign and military policy planned and executed by the once authoritative mainifestation of world socialism.

Thus the received doctrine of the now-gentrified left fully embraces both the foreign and domestic policies of the current Democrat administration, an anti-Russian-but-not-Soviet proxy war plus a pansexualist home agenda. Recall that an effectively anti-Soviet proxy war in Viet Nam plus a highly uncertain relationship with the Lumpenproletariat reflected in the 1960s urban riots were what brought down Lyndon Johnson from the Left. Pansexualism wasn't really on the horizon at the time.

The removal of Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism as the authoritative model for the Left has had an intriguing result. It's now OK to wage a proxy war against Russia; the old New Left would never have permitted it. But with the disppearance of Soviet Russia as the Leftist model, the threat of world proletarian revolution seems also to have disappeared, justlikethat. Isn't that peculiar?

In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson's position vis-a-vis urban riots in places like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Chicago was uncertain; he was forced by Michigan Republican Gov George Romney to send federal troops to quell the Detroit riot in 1967, although New Left demonstrations against the Viet Nam war would soon make him decline to seek reelection.

In 2022, the conflict with urban rioters in the Lumpenproletariat has been resolved via an uneasy alliance with the defund-the-police gentry, while the US armed forces, occupied with supervising the Ukraine war from a distance, are also tasked with LGBTQ diversity training.

Isn't this peculiar? It's as though ruthless Marxism-Leninism has been purged from the Left, and working-class revolution is off the table. This in turn has taken leftism back to the bourgeois parlor pursuit it had been before Lenin and resulting in a whole new set of agendas completely unknown to Marx: an alliance of the upper bourgeoisie with the Lumpenproletariat, pansexualist anti-feminism, and neo-Malthusianism replacing popultation growth with climate stability.

And Time almost seems to want to make Zelensky the champion of this gentrified new world. Just wait until the EU tries to limit Ukrainian agriculture in the name of climate. I don't think this is a stable arrangement.

There's A Schism On The Left Over Ukraine

Whittaker Chambers made the point in Witness, almost in passing, that up to the 1920s, German was the language of international socialism. But once the Bolsheviks consolidated power in Russia, that position passed almost immediately to Russian. Chambers's sympathies strike me as having remained with a more German brand of socialism throughout his career as a spy, which may explain his eventual defection. But I think this also reflects a basic conflict on the Left, which might be characterized as the idealists vs the Tankies. According to this site,

A Tankie is an apologist for the violence and crimes against humanity perpetrated by twentieth-century Marxist-Leninist regimes, particularly the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin (1924 - 1953). More broadly, the term may refer to any leftist who is perceived to support or defend authoritarian regimes on the basis that they are enemies of the United States. This can include regimes that are not and do not claim to be communist such as those of Vladimir Putin in Russia and Bashir al-Assad in Syria.

The definition goes on to suggest that Ukraine has always had a special status among leftists over this distinction:

Tankies will often argue for persuasive definitions about genocide regarding the Ukrainian Famine, arguing that Stalin didn't intend for all of those people to starve to death and realizing he is still responsible for not feeding his people. In addition, Timothy Synder's Bloodlands argues that policies were instituted specifically targeting Ukraine to exacerbate the famine which may or may not have arisen from natural causes.

I think the single best US commentator on the Russo-Ukraine War continues to be Markos Moulitsas at the Daily Kos. I linked here last May to his first discussion of Tankies. Yesterday, he brought up Tankies again, remarkably in the context of the New York Times, although he doesn't mention the controversy over Times reporter Walter Duranty's coverup of the 1932 Ukraine famine, which has been renewed as a result of the current war. Nevertheless, Kos argues,

How is it, on the very same day Russia launched 70 ballistic missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets, that launching two guided drones at Russian military targets is considered, by The New York Times, an “escalation”?

. . . Unfortunately, The New York Times is taking its cues from the Biden Administration, which refuses to deliver long-range ATACMS rockets that could, theoretically, strike inside Russian territory. But there’s a difference: the Biden Administration doesn’t want an escalation between Russia and the United States, or anything that would trigger a wider conflagration. They don’t care if Ukraine uses its own weapons to strike Russian territory. We can argue whether that caution makes sense — I don’t think it does, and in any case, the U.S. could always require veto power over Ukrainian ATACMS targets — but it’s totally different than this ignorant take, that any attack on Russian soil is escalatory.

One expects this kind of nonsense from the Tankies, busy these days justifying the authoritarian regimes in Russia, Iran, and China. But The New York Times should do better.

I think Kos is maybe being less precise here than he could be. The odd thing about the current US political alignment is that the far right is as deeply suspicious of Ukraine as some elements of the Left and equally willing to look the other way over the Putin state's authoritarianism. Meanwhile, there seems to be an alignment in policy between neoconservatives, as represented by the Institute for the Study of War, and the US State and Defense Departments in the Biden administration.

In Kos's view, which I think is perceptive, the administration is happy enough with fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, but it's going to err on the side of caution over anything that might cause "escalation". However this might be in conflict with leftist principles -- I see a similarity in anti-Tankie viewpoint between Kos and Whittaker Chambers here -- I think the policy of avoiding escalation is unrealistic. The US, merely in supporting Ukraine, is depleting its own stocks of ammunition and precision weapons, and insofar as squeamishness over escalation prolongs the war -- which it must be doing -- it's defeating its own purpose by making the war unnecessarily expensive.

There also seems to be a stubbornness in the current diplomatic and military establishment to incorporate what we've been learning about the corrupt and ineffective Russian military in our ongoing strategy. The Ukraine war itself has rendered Russia incapable of waging any wider war, depleting its manpower and equipment by as much as half. But there doesn't seem to have been, at least so far, any visible recalibration of risk vs benefit in our overall Russia policy. This isn't how a Reagan would handle these things.

So we're looking at an odd alliance of an anti-Tankie, anti-Stalinist, Whittaker Chambers style left with what ought to be a more assertive neoconservative center, which is in turn aligned against a Trumpist right that's inclined to keep appeasing even the collapsing Putin state, which is itself strangely allied with the Tankie left.

Like the alliance, or attempted alliance, of the leftist gentry class with the Lumpenpoletariat, I don't see how this can succeed over any medium to long term.

Caroline Ellison Spotted In New York

PLEASE CONFIRM: A user claims that they spotted Caroline Ellison at Ground Support Coffee on West Broad in SoHo Manhattan at 8:15 AM. This would mean she is not in Hong Kong and is in NY not in custody. pic.twitter.com/QUduYO9GfZ

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 4, 2022

According to this story,

The citizen journalist also shared pictures of messages sent that also said a source was “99%” sure “it’s her.” The message also says there’s an “Alameda person” with her. In addition to the confirmations from the barista behind the counter, there’s also the sighting of a Golden Doodle puppy pictured at the bottom of the ostensible Ellison’s feet. FTX and Alameda executives shared a Golden Doodle pup called “Gopher.” SBF recently tweeted about Gopher before FTX collapsed.

. . . People also shared street maps showing that the coffee and sandwich shop was really close to the New York Attorney’s Office and the FBI. “After a close analysis, she’s snitching on Sam,” one person wrote. Since FTX collapsed, Ellison has been super silent about the situation, while SBF has been doing a media tour and speaking candidly.

The first thing to observe is that this is unconfirmed, and it's entirely speculative. On the other hand, true crime fans like me have seen enough scenes of detectives interviewing perps to know that they sell them on confessions by saying the first one in gets the best deal, and according to this story,

Ellison has been radio silent: no weeping lamentations on social media, no NYT interviews, no on-stage appearances. These approaches have obviously led to dramatically different optics. While Bankman-Fried was callously confessing to Vox that his effective altruism shtick was a front, Ellison was nowhere to be seen. And now it seems that as Bankman-Fried was spending this past weekend with the FT, clumsily walking back his prior statements about not knowing anything about Alameda’s financial health, Ellison was spending her time where it matters: in front of investigators.

. . . Unfortunately for Bankman-Fried, it seems Ellison got there first.

Nevertheless, assuming any of this speculation is true, Ellison would still be a problem for the prosecution, as well as for the conventional narrative. It seems to me that her defense could call any number of witnesses, not least of whom would be new CEO John Ray, to testify that in their judgment, nobody at the FTX condo was above intern level. Ray has already noted in his bankruptcy filing that the people running FTX (I would add "putatively") were "a very small group of inmxperienced, unsophisticated, and potentially compromised individuals", and if this applies to Sam Bankman-Fried, it applies as well to Caroline Ellison. He also said in the filing, "many of the employees of the FTX Group, including some of its senior executives, were not aware of the shortfalls or potential commingling of digital assets", and overall, he has been skeptical of any statements from prior FTX employees about the company's financial operations.

As far as I can tell as a lay observer, I think a judge would also allow Bankman-Fried's defense to cross-examine Ellison on what medications she had been prescribed, for what conditions, and what the potential side effects were. If it were established that she was being treated for adult ADHD, it seems to me that the defense would be entitled to call expert witnesses to testify that symptoms include carelessness, lack of attention to detail, inability to focus, and forgetfulness, which could undermine any specific testimony she might give against Sam, especially if her airhead demeanor we've seen in video clips is what she displays on the witness stand.

So far, the conventional narrative has been that Sam was the criminal mastermind, and Ellison was his dupe. At minimum, Sam is doing precisely what attorneys would tell him not to do, making copious public statements in interviews and on social media that could potentially damage him. However, his statements have been consistent, suggesting he didn't in fact know what was going on, and this in turn is consistent with remarks by John Ray and other informed observers of the FTX "insiders" at the Bahamas condo, that they were inexperienced, unsophisicated, and intern-level.

In that case, we've got to assume someone else was running the show; neither Sam nor Caroline actually knew what do do with the billions at their disposal, and to have either testify against the other is a futile exercise. I continue to think a shadow group was calling the shots, likely associated with the Professors Bankman and Fried, and possibly including the Ellison parents. They were criminals, which means their swindle would eventually be found out, but they were at least smart enough to carry it off for several years, which neither Sam nor Caroline had the actual ability to do.

For now, though, it's in the interest of neither the media nor the prosecution to pursue this line.