1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have...
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule..
As I ponder how Elon Musk rapidly morphed from a darling of the Left (and in particular the Green caucus) to a Bond villain in their eyes, it became obvious that several of Alinsky's aphorisms explained it all.
- Start with Rule 1. Twitter, at the height of its political influence, was dominated by perhaps 2% of the American population. By the numbers, at that time about 10% of Americans had a Twitter accounts and 80% of political Tweets (or was it all Tweets?) came from 20% of users. Despite that population being a tiny fraction of the public, politicians, policy makers, and Corporate America cowered in fear of the Twitter mob's Eye of Sauron looking their way. Cancel culture scared the bejeezus out of the most powerful people in our society, no matter how small a minority the cancelers were. Thus, "power the enemy thinks you have."
- This segues into Rule 5. Ridicule, especially when inflected with hate, was the Twitter mob's weapon of choice...
