The left hates Elon Musk because he can’t be controlled and he doesn’t tolerate BS. By Glenn Reynolds.
Why does the left hate Elon Musk?
It’s simple, really: Because he can’t be controlled, and because he doesn’t tolerate BS.
The left can’t stand either. It insists on control, to the point of systematically eliminating or co-opting anything that might serve as an independent power center. (Their fear is justified: “Music clubs” turned out to be a major factor in Czechoslovakia’s 1989 anticommunist Velvet Revolution.) And it insists on not merely spreading BS, but on requiring people to repeat and endorse its BS as a sign of submission.
Musk is thus a twin threat. As the sometime richest man in the world, he has a lot of power, and it’s not under anyone else’s control. And he’s a nerd, with a nerd’s low tolerance for bull. Where more socially “polished” people would go out of their way to show fealty to leftist tropes popular among the Gentry Class regardless of their absurdity, Musk is happy to point out that the emperor has no clothes. …
Musk is our greatest tycoon, and while NASA can’t seem to get a spaceship into orbit reliably, he’s been launching rockets and satellites and astronauts at a pace that no mere nation-state can achieve. And he’s doing this while also manufacturing electric cars that no one else can match, digging tunnels that no one else can equal, and dominating the field of residential solar energy. His critics, meanwhile, only dominate the field of kvetching.
And he’s had it with their BS. After Twitter censorship reached the point of ridiculousness, he responded by setting out to buy it. Now as a result of that effort, it turns out that Twitter is, well, kind of a sham. About half of President Biden’s followers turn out to be fake. (So do nearly a quarter of Musk’s.) Much of America’s journalistic and political agenda appears to be directed by bots.
Worse yet, Musk’s intolerance for BS is starting to spread to his fellow tycoons. Amazon pioneer and fellow space-enthusiast Jeff Bezos recently mocked the Biden administration’s Ministry of Truth by suggesting that it fact-check Biden’s nonsensical claim that today’s inflation is the result of corporations not paying enough in taxes.
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, has been a reliable supporter of the establishment. If he’s straying from the reservation, who knows what’s next?
This is a mortal threat, because the left’s BS can only flourish in an environment where no one challenges it.
Expect blowback: Musk recently warned that he would become the target of political attacks, and that’s already happening.
Musk might become enemy # 2 of the left, only slightly behind Trump. The MSM will make up dirt.
