Elon's favorite phrase is "Vox Populi, Vox Dei." He posts it about once a day on X.

As we've all realized by now, purchasing that platform was not about making money, nor was it about free speech. I know Elon stans will insist he spent the money to save free speech. But that just doesn't hold up when you consider all the evidence of him manipulating the algorithm to boost his preferred political candidates in the US and abroad. I guess you could say he is just exercising his own free speech by doing so. Ok...

My point is that "Twitter" (I admit I do enjoy deadnaming Elon's website) is worth way less in monetary terms than he paid for it, but in the new attention economy, its value is immeasurably greater. Even if the majority of his hundreds of millions of X followers are bots, it still allows Elon to keep a huge audience well fed with bullshit, and to distract legacy media with outrage porn.

"Vox Populi, Vox Dei" - "The voice of the people is the voice of God." This phrase signals Elon's attempt to rebrand our rule of law constitutional democracy into a mob ruled demagogic oligarchy.

But Elon has torn it free of its orignal context. The phrase originates in a letter written by an 8th century monk to King Charlemagne. The whole quote is “Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.”

Translation: "Do not listen to those who say the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the tumult of the crowd is always close to madness."

Elon’s end game is the reduction of our admittedly flawed (un)representative democracy to techno-oligarchic mob rule. The people think their will is being done. Their rulers feed them crumbs in public while screwing them in private. Where do you think Baby X overheard what he whispered to Trump in the Oval Office last week? Like the bread and circus of the ancient Roman emperors, our new techno-lords will keep us all just fed, frothy, and entertained enough not to revolt.