The Lingering Smell of Musk

Last week, Elon Musk signaled the breakup of his bromance with Trump when he began trashing Trump’s budget bill.  And got more critical with each passing tweet.  A lot of Democrats, including those in leadership positions, because posting on social media and saying to the cameras how they agreed with Musk.
 
Whenever I could, I would reply that I wish they’d phrased that differently.  It’s one thing to say that you agree the bill was terrible and should be defeated – it’s another to say you agreed with Musk.
 
Musk is any great prescient voice slamming the Trump bill.  He hates the bill because 1) it doesn’t cut enough from areas that are critical to people. And 2) the reason the bill adds so much to the deficit, which he rails against, is because there are huge tax breaks to the wealthy -- that he wanted.
 
Furthermore, so many of the things Musk loves in the bill are anathema to Democrats – and most anyone with a conscience.  Cuts to research into cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.  Cuts to the National Park Service.  Cuts to NOAA weather tracking.  Cuts to grants for programs on domestic violence protection.  Cuts to FEMA.  Cuts to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Cuts to oversight of safety data for electric and self-driving vehicles.  Cuts to the Center of Disease Control.  Cuts to OSHA for worker safety.  Shutting down the independent USAID agency, the government’s main arm for distributing foreign aid, including providing vaccines for children in poor countries. (An action since reversed by the court as illegal.)  For starters.
 
It all reminded me of an article I wrote about Musk after he had bought Twitter and opened the door to lies, misinformation and racist and hate speech.  I thought it was a good time to revisit it, especially before too many others start saying how they agree with the anti-Semitic, megalomaniacal Elon Musk.

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                                             The Smell of Musk
                                               March 15,2023
 
I don't know how many people on these pages subscribe to Twitter and post there.  But I'm sure most are at least aware of the situation, if not all the problematic details there since Elon Musk bought the service.  It's not convoluted to go into them all, though annoyingly long.  However, occasionally a tweet comes along to put at least some of it in perspective.

Which brings us to a tweet Musk posted yesterday.

Side Note:  If I was an investor in a company like, say, oh, Tesla, and the owner was tweeting as much as Elon Musk does -- and he tweets A LOT, often about inane arcana, (How arcane and inane?  The other day Elon Musk tweeted a response to me about a criticism I had had made!  It was a cartoon that basically suggested everything Musk did was evil) -- I'd be very bothered.  Especially if the company's stock had plummeted the previous year.  By the way, I don't think everything Elon Dusk does is evil.  I just think a lot of what he does is wrong-headed, some of it disingenuous, infantile and with a deep thin-skinned persecution complex, and only occasionally evil.  Though "occasionally evil" is a pretty poor record.  And I should add that my description of a "deep thin-skinned persecution complex" doesn't come from viewing just a bunch of thin-skinned tweets, but reading many news stories about him taking vindictive action against employees who did something he didn't like.  And kicking journalists off Twitter who reported on things about him he didn't like.  For instance, my own tweet that brought his response concerned him publicly humiliating a disabled employee who Musk thought didn't work hard enough and then fired.  He later sort of "half-apologized" when he was not only widely slammed, but also learned that the employee was actually a major expert in the field and incredibly valuable to the company.  Musk offered the job back, though the former valuable employee hasn't decided yet.  But I digress...

​Anyway, what he posted was –

​That's Musk's big, supposed soap box.  Truth and free speech!!!

The problem is that if what he says above was even remotely true, he wouldn't officially allow known misinformation on Twitter.  Which he does for postings about COVID, but far more than just that.  And such misinformation isn't just wrong, but dangerous.

Further, as the owner who oversees and controls everything on the Twitter platforms, setting the rules and how they're enacted, if being "impartial" and "favoring no party" was the standard, he wouldn't post a tweet telling everyone that they should only vote for Republicans.  All Republicans.  In every race.

Putting aside that that doesn't seem very impartial, especially without explaining why, Musk is certainly entitled to his opinion.  And if that opinion is "Vote Republican, all Republican, all the time," so be it -- but when you're the judge and umpire and creator of the rules, you do take on added responsibilities.  And if you choose to voice your views while in the position as jump, umpire and creator of the rules, who can determine who is allowed on the platform, that is the hypocritical antithesis of "fair".

The thing is, when Musk says things like this (and he does often), he must take everyone as saps, who'll believe anything.  Unfortunately, he seems to have spent too much time around today's Republicans and thinks that attribute flows everywhere.

By the way, Musk's tweet above came as a reply to one of his own.  That was another disingenuous one where he wrote, "Fight for truth, whole truth & nothin but!​"

And of course, if he actually wanted people to fight for the whole truth and NOTHING BUT...he wouldn't make an official policy allowing known misinformation to be posted.

Further, as for truth, Musk said he would resign if that's what a poll he put up showed.  And that turns out to be what the poll showed.  But it should come as no shock that Musk did not resign.  He found an excuse by claiming that bots were used which manipulated the results unfairly.  (Gee, election fraud, go figure.)  Now, that might have been true, but he provided no evidence.  And bot may have manipulated results for him, a well.  Moreover, if that was now the Musk Standard, it's worth noting that his earlier poll to "Let the people speak!" that ended up allowing Trump back on Twitter was most likely also manipulated by bots -- in Trump's favor, it seems reasonable to think, given the Russian bot farms we know about -- but Musk didn't dismiss those results.  Nor has he offered a new poll about himself with bot security protections built in.

The short version of this is that "free speech, truth and nothing but!!" make for a great bumper sticker but don't enter into the actual world of Elon Musk.

Or put another way, Elon Musk should spare us all his faux sanctimony.