JERRY BOWYER: Chaos or Control? Musk is not our man, but his foray into Twitter could make a difference.

Current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal soon afterward announced that Musk would join the company’s board. Such a move would limit Musk’s ability to take over Twitter since the company caps the number of shares board members can hold.

Then, suddenly, Agrawal announced (on Twitter) that Musk would not join the board after all. Agrawal also took a few not-too-subtle shots at Musk, suggesting that the board would have had to vet Musk with a background check and insist he act in the best interest of shareholders if he became a board member. Musk is one of the most visible people on earth, and there’s nothing that a standard-issue board background check is likely to unearth that an army of hostile press have not. And as to the duty to act in the best interest of shareholders, it’s hard to square Agrawal’s comment with Twitter’s decision to join other large companies in signing the Business Roundtable’s statement endorsing “stakeholder” as opposed to shareholder capitalism. It’s also ironic to chide Musk over potentially not putting shareholders first. Musk’s skin in the game as a shareholder is roughly 140 times the size of Agrawal’s. Moreover, Agrawal is significantly underinvested in the company he leads. . . .

Volatility has been a constant with Musk in general and in this public battle. He has repeatedly tweeted and deleted a series of provocative comments, including a call to turn Twitter headquarters into a homeless shelter. This is on-brand for Musk, who has a long history of public mischief-making. He seems unable to bridle his tongue and is at times a case study in unstable leadership.

But sometimes providence uses chaos to undermine systems of control. Twitter has metamorphosed from what was claimed to be a free-speech platform to a self-appointed ministry of truth for the nostrums of the ruling class. Debates about COVID risk, vaccine effectiveness, the effectiveness of various treatments, and whether boys can force us to call them girls or vice versa are suppressed through outright bans or death by pseudo-fact-check, and always with a thumb on the scale pulling to the left.

Musk’s personal views seem to lean libertarian, techno-utopian, with respect but not commitment to Christianity. He is not the leader we’re looking for. But that is not to say that his moves against Twitter will not prove useful. These days, any serious challenge to the leftist direction of social media empires might be good news.

Fight the power.