The government quitting Twitter won't stop Musk (but they should do it anyway)

Skip the displacement argument and let's talk about something real.

POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, we’re joined by Andrew Hunter Murray to talk about his new book (out this week!), and his experience at the EV charging Select Committee. Plus I try to sell Martin on why he should care about the National Data Library. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods.

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Sometimes when a problem is too difficult to figure out, it’s easier to have a displacement argument instead.

To pick the most wildly contentious possible example, we often see this in debates about the Middle East. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is impossibly complicated, and there is very little the British government can do to influence events in the region. Whether or not we restrict arms sales to Israel, or choose to recognise Palestinian statehood, we are basically completely irrelevant to events on the ground.

That’s why inevitably, when there is controversy over the conflict in Britain, it is often via a displacement argument. We argue about the use of words and symbols. We judge politicians by the positions they express on the conflict, even if it is very unlikely that Benjamin Netanyahu is nervously refreshing his phone, waiting to find out what the honourable member for Northampton West thinks about what he is doing.

And though, inevitably, these controversies dominate news agendas, spark thousands of furious posts and fray the bonds of countless friendships, at the end of the day the intractable problem of the Middle East remains exactly as it was before.

But no one wants to talk about what actual solutions might look like, because the question is too hard. So we displace it and argue about something else instead.

And the issue of the Middle East isn’t the only place that this happens. We’re also seeing the same thing happen over what should be done about Elon Musk’s stewardship of Twitter.