The Worst Thing About Elon Musk Is That He Got Away With All of It |
The world’s richest man is nowhere near the world’s most generous, or sensible, or kind, or popular, or the most positive of anything.
Elon Musk was already a polarizing figure before he decided to endorse Donald Trump for president in July 2024, but that decision cemented his villain status and earned him the ire of most Americans. As of this writing, more than half of the country views Musk unfavorably.
Musk’s wealth (and possibly his ketamine habit) has given him delusions of grandeur about his intelligence, and a belief that he’s capable of coming up with an infinite number of good ideas. When Musk’s plans inevitably fail, his money protects him from any consequences and allows him to avoid introspection. He’ll blame one of his favorite scapegoats, usually meddling government bureaucrats or the “woke mind virus,” and his power and control will remain intact.
Musk’s estimated net worth of half a trillion dollars largely comes from government contracts, which also makes him the richest welfare king. That’s probably why he chose to work in government: to make himself richer and eliminate any obstacles to his science fiction pipe dreams, among them implanting chips into people’s brains and colonizing Mars.
His foray into government this year will have lasting damage so extensive that we are not yet even aware. Two events early in the year previewed how it would go.
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy! Chainsaw!” Musk, clad in black sunglasses, a black “Make American Great Again” hat, and a black coat, shouted from the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, pretending he was a rock star as he waved around a chainsaw he received as a gift from Argentinian President Javier Milei just seconds before. (Months later, Musk would regret this stunt, claiming it lacked empathy, as if he has any, and Milei would require a multi-billion dollar bailout from the U.S. government.)
As surreal as that moment was, it wasn’t nearly as surreal as Musk thanking supporters of Donald Trump on Inauguration Day a month before with two unmistakable Roman salutes, a gesture best known for its association with the Nazis. Both incidents would foreshadow the disaster that would be the tech oligarch’s........