Citizen Musk
The world’s richest man is proving to be the world's biggest threat to freedom, even more so than the former president he helped to re-elect.
Elon Musk is being referred to as “President Musk,” and he is behaving as if he won the US presidential election.
He used his bully pulpit to squash a bipartisan spending bill that would have averted a government shutdown. His attacks on the bill led to the president-elect attacking the bill, which led to the bill’s demise.
He has been tagged by the president-elect to be one of the heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new government entity charged with reducing wasteful government spending.
Guess who will be affected most by any changes they make?
Hint: it won’t be millionaires and billionaires.
He is the living embodiment of an oligarch, and one can’t help but wonder how the people who voted for the former president feel about Musk’s shameless influence peddling.
They were already mistaken to think their candidate was a spokesman for the “common man.”
There’s zero chance they can use their twisted logic to reason that Musk is looking out for anyone’s interest but his own.
He doesn’t need money. He’s worth over $400 billion.
But wealth has never stopped an oligarch from wanting more wealth.
He has plenty of power and influence, but most people with power and influence never have enough of either.
He’s met with Nigel Farage of the UK’s Reform UK Party and is supposedly considering donating $100 million to the party.
Musk wants to influence geopolitics.
Given that his support runs towards far-right politics, rational people should be concerned about his ever-widening sphere of influence because he has demonstrated racist, anti-Semitic, anti-vaccine tendencies.
The US is already in danger of falling into fascist oligarchy.
He shouldn’t be allowed to influence American or world politics.
He’s not seeking to help the many, but the few.
His sympathies are for other rich people, and particularly himself.
Given the enormity of his ego and the president-elect’s ego, there will be clashes.
They will have major disagreement as time passes, especially as the president-elect realizes that Musk is more interested in advancing his agenda than his own.
How these disagreements are resolved will have a great bearing on future world events.
There are so many reasons that should have prevented the reelection of someone who should never have been president in the first place.
The fact that he was re-elected speaks to the lack of American intelligence, decency and morality.
When you elect someone for president, you not only empower them, but you empower the people who support them.
Elon Musk had power and influence.
In fact, he had too much.
Now, he has even more.
But this is what many people voted for, whether they realized it or not.
They voted to empower the mega-rich to become richer.
The already powerful to become more powerful.
And their rising tide will lift their boats and only their boats.
They don’t care about poor people, whether they are White or non-White.
They don’t care about the middle class.
They don’t care about the environment or world health.
They aren’t concerned about racism, sexism, and homophobia.
In fact, it is in their best interest that these issues not only continue but proliferate.
Elon Musk wants power for power’s sake.
He isn’t concerned with anyone’s fortunes but his own.
And his rising fortune means that someone else’s fortunes are lowered.
In this case, someone else is us.