Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey aroused controversy after labeling a Medium article “great” that claimed there’s no “bipartisan way forward” in the United States and that the country is engaged in a “fundamental conflict between two worldviews that must be resolved in short order.”
Dorsey shared the Medium article on his personal Twitter account Thursday night, with the accompanying acclaim that it was a “great read.”
Great read https://t.co/O2djSQf8Qv
— jack (@jack) April 6, 2018
Author and media consultant Peter Leyden and political commentator Ruy Teixeira argued in the article titled “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War” that America is already in the midst of a second major domestic conflict of sorts and the way out is for the rest of the country to imitate California.
“In this current period of American politics, at this juncture in our history, there’s no way that a bipartisan path provides the way forward,” they wrote. “The way forward is on the path California blazed about 15 years ago.”
Essentially, the authors called for a complete marginalization of the Republican Party and its voters since they only care “about rule by and for billionaires at the expense of working people” and not “average citizens.”
California, despite its mass wealth inequality, growing lack of social cohesion, poverty, and soaring housing costs “provides a model for America as a whole,” according to Leyden and Teixeira. Interestingly enough, they claimed the state’s economy is booming, although arguably not for long. They also oddly claimed the state is running on surpluses without acknowledging its debt crisis.
“The public is happy with its political leaders,” they noted. However, California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, has a 44 percent approval rating. The article also does not acknowledge that the state has seen tens of thousands of residents leave annually for the last few years.
Leyden and Teixeira are somewhat correct that America currently faces a dialectic of “two political cultures already at odds through different political ideologies, philosophies.” Yet, they do not call for Democrats to try to understand their political adversaries.
Instead, they proposed Americans “take the Republican Party down for a generation or two” in order to save the country.
“America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war that can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two worldviews that must be resolved in short order,” Leyden and Teixeira asserted.
Dorsey’s tweet comes in the midst of growing concerns about his website’s treatment of conservatives. Over the last few years, Twitter has banned a number of right-wing accounts that it says violate the site’s terms of service.
Critics say the site is selective in who it punishes and engages in so-called “shadowbanning,” which effectively makes a user’s post invisible to others without officially taking the account down.
Twitter has denied these allegations.
Dorsey’s tweet brings up a more fundamental question: If he agrees that the country is in the state of crisis that Leyden and Teixeira believe, does he feel an obligation to use all tools at his disposal to help the Democrats “win” this alleged second Civil War? Is Twitter — a social media site with considerable influence over the media’s day-to-day narrative — a vehicle for Dorsey to help accomplish this goal?
If the country is in as dire of a position as the Medium article claimed, how can Dorsey not feel an obligation to help steer the country away from collapse?
Dorsey did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment via Twitter after he disputed DCNF reporter Peter J. Hasson’s tweet that he “loves” Leyden’s piece.
Twitter’s CEO loves this article about driving conservatives from public life and turning the rest of the country into California in the “new civil war.” Literally what it’s about https://t.co/b8DUxlC9Cw
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) April 6, 2018
Where did I say “love”
— jack (@jack) April 7, 2018
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