Opinion/Editorial
THE HUSK OF MUSK
Twenty years ago, a younger man named Musk went about selling the U.S. government on starting his electric car company from nothing and with no experience. He pitched his space operation at the same time. The mystery of how he was able to get almost four billion dollars in subsidies, not loans, to build these operations will likely never be known. The money does not have to be repaid. The current stockholder in Tesla (of which Musk owns twenty percent) and the investors in Space X and Star Link get all the money and they get to keep it, somehow, Musk has been transformed into a self-made guru of mechanical brilliance. Neither of those two things is true.
He’s been, somehow and from nowhere, a brilliant salesman to elements of the U.S. government. Today, his Tesla cars are no longer selling well, his space division hasn’t lived up to its promises and Star Link founders. Musk has interfered in the Ukraine war and communicated with leaders there in violation of strict U.S. laws to prevent such things (like some billionaire lipping off and causing a nuclear strike because he’s dumb when it comes to international affairs).
Musk bought Twitter so he could have a giant voice. In doing that he succeeded, only to turn the ‘free speech’ nature of what he wanted to do into his organ of preferred speech and messaging. His new pickup truck has turned out to be something people buy to show they have it. When put up against anything like a Ram, F100, or Chevy truck the Cybertruck can’t come close to measuring up, and it’s way more expensive. It can go fast but only for short distances before it has to be recharged. It can’t pull anything for much of any distance either. The thing is a modern-looking and very expensive showpiece. SpaceX is stalled, and not in space. The dreams and predictions of landing on the moon, building a base, and going to Mars are all so far distant on the back burner that nobody talks about it anymore. Musk, with his governmental power, also blunted NASA, and that organization’s space efforts remain on the launching pad, except for stranding a couple of astronauts aboard the space station.
What happened to this man? How did his heart and innards get scooped out and some sort of science-fiction alien entity get re-inserted in their place? His money was generated from the sale of his PayPal interest and then with the whopping ‘gifts’ from the government. This all happened under the democratic leadership of Barack Obama, who was using taxpayer money to support his efforts to somehow gain control of the deterioration of weather across the country due to global warming. Electricity produced at hub center generating plants is significantly less polluting than reciprocating engine vehicles individually making tailpipe emissions.
Electric vehicles are supported by the liberal side and more and more resisted by the right wing. But what did Elon do? He went right, far right, in going against first unions and then all liberal causes including the environment. Now, his Tesla company is beginning to show the effects of not only his inattention to the company he and the government began but also expressing his right-wing views on Twitter and therefore beginning to alienate the very customer base that bought the cars and supported Tesla’s efforts technologically and environmentally. Sales are plummeting. SpaceX is going nowhere. Star Link is lounging around up there above all of our heads.
The Divine Right of Kings has overcome the Husk of Musk. He has come to believe that he is ordained by God to be the richest man on earth and with that has come the logical application that always follows the self-deification, and that’s making sure that the poor, also ordained to be in that condition by the same cold-hearted God of the billionaires, must be kept in their condition. There’s to be no sharing from the top, just as the rest of the country is experiencing the total failure of Reagan’s old hoary ‘trickle down’ theory. Two hundred and fifty billion dollars isn’t going to be enough for Musk, or any of the rest of them at the very top of the income and asset structure.
What’s going to happen with all of this economic shift everyone’s finally come to notice? Change will happen, as it has to every culture that has risen to sky-high heights in the past. None of that change is likely to be peaceful, fair, or helpful to the population. Currently, there is no method, way or even discussed solution to a very few people holding and controlling almost one-seventh of the wealth of the entire United States as a whole. That number, the number of multi-billionaires gaining ever more wealth continues to rise unevaded.
