If, by chance, you happened to be invited to my house to play Mafia and eat some takeout from Nicky’s Thai Kitchen (I recommend the crab fried rice and the shrimp pad Thai) and you were greeted at my front door by my 2-year-old daughter, you’d probably think it was cute but mostly vaguely neglectful. Because why are we allowing a 2-year-old to answer the door? Still, you might excuse it away as some sort of new-age bougie parenting technique—perhaps something I read about in Fast Company or Lifehacker—and you’d walk in.
But if my daughter was also somehow carrying a machete—which, by the way, is a surprisingly (and terrifyingly) cheap buy at REI—and she took a swing at your legs when you walked past and sliced your Achilles tendon, you’d probably be stunned that we’d produced such a murderous, demon, machete-wielding toddler. And you’d be mad at her. But then, after the shock from the sliced tendons began to subside, you’d be even more furious at my wife and me. Because who bought her the machete? And who taught her how to hold the machete and perform a complex slicing motion with it? And why the fuck would we have allowed Baby GoGo Yubari to open our door and greet our guests?
Anyway, this is where we are as a country—as a world—right now. Where the only suitable analogy for what the president of the United States of America does with social media involves hypothetical murder babies who also know how to answer doors. And just as you’d (rightly) be pissed at my wife and me for your damaged leg, at this point, Twitter is responsible for whatever happens to the world as a result of Darth Cheeto’s tweets.
Also, after taking a glance at Twitter’s terms of services—particularly the section regarding violent threats and glorification of violence—Trump seems to be in violation of its rules.
Underneath its rationale, the policy states: “[W]e will not tolerate behavior that encourages or incites violence against a specific person or group of people. We also take action against content that glorifies acts of violence in a manner that may inspire others to replicate those violent acts and cause real offline danger, or where people were targeted because of their potential membership in a protected category.”
I don’t know about you, but I think teasing an already unhinged dictator about the size of the very real nuclear weapons this already unhinged dictator possesses is inciting some fucking violence. And as far as the part about people being targeted because they belong to a protected category, don’t we—the population of the planet—qualify as a protected category? If not, well, I’m sure that, out of the 7 billion or so people who live on Earth and would be affected by a nuclear holocaust, someone in those 7 billion would qualify.
Also, on its hateful conduct policy page, Twitter states that company offiicals “do not tolerate behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another person’s voice.” What is Donald Trump’s Twitter behavior if not harassing, intimidating and fear-inducing?
Look, we already know that the person who happens to be the president is unfit for the office. And not just the office of the president, but any building that happens to have an office in it. He is fit for outhouses and updated basements. But when is Twitter going to stop allowing this toddler with a machete to answer the door?