In the wake of the latest presidential election, it’s morning in America!

Well, maybe not, but a lot of people seem to be talking about Bluesky, which implies sun, which implies morning. OK, yeah, a stretch — the newly popular social media platform sounds more like an ELO fan site than a Reagan-era campaign slogan.

But the “newly popular” part — Bluesky launched in early 2023 as an invite-only beta, then in early 2024 to the general public — does seemingly have a lot to do with the presidential election.

My news feeds are all a-bulge this week with headlines and analyses about a “migration” from Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky.

The evidence for such a migration: Bluesky is growing quickly, X is shrinking slowly, and many Bluesky users have been very vocal about abandoning X for Bluesky because, well, MAGA.

Nothing wrong with that, I guess. Musk has certainly gone out of his way to cater to the MAGA set, while Bluesky finds itself painted, by supporters and detractors alike, as a “safe space” for moderates, progressives, Democrats, liberals, et al.

I’m personally sympathetic to those who prefer social media “silos” curated to their own tastes. Most of us live that way in meatspace — like me, you’ve probably never invited David Duke over for dinner or signed up for a Nazi bar pub crawl — and extending that to a “there ain’t enough room on this platform for both of us” philosophy doesn’t strike me as strange or inherently wrong.

On the other hand, nearly every social media platform allows considerable self-siloing, so there really IS enough room on those platforms for various people and groups who don’t care to talk to each other.

Follow the users you like, ignore or even block the users you don’t like. “Problem” solved.

One recent teapot tempest with X came about when Musk decreed that, henceforth, blocked users may view the posts of (although not engage with) users who have blocked them. Not a biggie, in my opinion, except to those actively seeking something to get upset about. Especially since it’s always been easy to get around the “no viewing” part by using an alternate account.

If you just can’t stand the “MAGAts” on X, or the “leftards” on Bluesky, you can leave one platform or the other … or you can learn to walk and chew gum at the same time by following, ignoring, and blocking to create the experiences you want in more than one forum.

Personally, I maintain accounts on many social media platforms (including X and Bluesky). I use some more actively than others, depending on how well their functions/environments serve my purposes.

But that’s just me. There’s really no wrong answer.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Confession: I’ve just never been much of an Alex Jones fan. I never saw the value, or even very much of the fun, some of my libertarian friends found in his crazed, bombastic commentary.

Nonetheless, I’m a free speech fundamentalist  who’s appalled that the court system allowed bad actors to enrich themselves at his expense by standing atop the corpses of dead children to complain about Jones doing … well, pretty much the same thing.

Jones was sued by family members of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, who managed to shift legal blame for their harassment, apparently by Alex Jones fans, to Jones himself.

I was momentarily encouraged when I learned that Jones’s “Infowars” brand had been purchased at auction by venerable satire publication, The Onion. They seem well-equipped to do fun things with his crazed presentation style and eclectic obsessions.

Unfortunately, according to reporting from Rolling Stone, The Onion “also announced that it had partnered with the gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety,” presumably to advocate for the evil cause of victim disarmament, aka “gun control.”

It’s depressing to learn that Jones’s former property will be used to promote exactly the same kind of harm done to the Sandy Hook victims and their families, in the name of “justice” for the latter and at the expense of someone who didn’t do that harm.

The United States and the state of Connecticut have, and have had for many years, plenty of “gun control” laws.

Those laws didn’t stop Adam Lanza from stealing a gun  (a crime) from his mother, murdering her with it (another crime), then violating the Gun Free School Zones act to commit 27 more murders at Sandy Hook elementary.

Those laws did, however, ensure that when Lanza arrived at the school, his victims were, by force of law, disarmed for convenient slaughter.

That kind of situation is exactly what the “Everytown” group advocates for in the name of “Gun Safety.”

That outcome is exactly what Everytown for Gun Safety and other victim disarmament advocates thought of as “justice” when they encouraged and manipulated the Sandy Hook families to pursue meritless and vexatious litigation against Alex Jones.

But while I’m sad that The Onion chose to make itself part of these vile proceedings, I remain a free speech fundamentalist and won’t support such litigation against them when the wickedness they advocate results in more innocents’ deaths.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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I hate election explanation columns. I had no intention of writing such a column for two reasons.

One is that the explanation for this election (and pretty much every other election) is too simple and concise to reach op-ed length.

The other — and the one justifying this column — is that no matter how many times people get told, they’re back next time with the same tired excuses (e.g. “it was rigged!”) and/or crowing (e.g. “America likes us — it really likes us!”) and/or fake, superficial soul-searching (“we didn’t EXPLAIN ourselves well enough”).

Let’s get the simple, concise explanation out of the way first:

Donald Trump won the election by getting, and because he got, 312 electoral votes, which is more than the 270 required to win a presidential election.

Kamala Harris lost the election by getting, and because she got, 226 electoral votes, which is less than the 270 required to win a presidential election.

Yes, it really is that simple.

Yes, it really is that concise.

And aside from one factor — the ability of the two candidates to enthuse their voters and get them to the polls — the reasons for the vote differentials are a dog’s breakfast of confusing details, each of which could have gone in other directions and changed the outcome.

To explain, I’ll look at Pennsylvania, a key swing state and in many ways a bellwether. Trump beat Harris there by about 140,000 votes out of about 7 million votes cast.

Why? Who knows?

Republicans thought Harris screwed up by not choosing governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate. They called her anti-semitic for passing him over, because he’s an Israel-supportive Jew. That may indeed have cost her some votes.

Democrats thought Trump had blown Pennsylvania after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a Trump campaign event. Persons of Puerto Rican descent constitute about 8% of Pennsylvania’s population. That may indeed have cost him some votes.

Then there’s the US Steel situation. The Pennsylvania-based company wants to sell itself to Japanese buyers. Many Pennsylvanians, especially among the company’s 20,000+ employees, don’t like that idea. Both Trump and Harris oppose the sale, but protectionist voters seem to find Trump more convincing/credible on that issue.

It’s not that Trump explained himself particularly well to people on opposite sides of the issues. Nor did Harris fail to explain herself well enough to those voters. Voters disagree with each other. Someone wins, someone loses … and other than the vote counts, the “why” isn’t usually all that clear.

All we can really know is that, among those who voted, more than 98% supported some version of militarism and authoritarianism, which in turn implies that we’re never going to vote our way to peace and freedom.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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