This sounds like a trick question, but it isn’t: What does Elon Musk actually want?
He’s already among the richest people — if not THE richest person — in the world. He’s apparently a hit with women, given how many children he’s fathered with various partners. He’s certainly a hit with men, who will throw their bodies into social media woodchippers to defend him. He can snap his fingers and the media will write fawning pieces about his various ventures and plans, no matter the past performance of previous predictions and promises. He even owns possibly the most important social media site on the planet and is able to shape the discussion worldwide as well as get endless amounts of attention and adoring feedback.
The easy answer to what he wants is “more,” as that’s an inevitability for men of a certain income bracket. But he appears to crave something even more elusive than just being the world’s first trillionaire (barf) or achieving the world’s first neonatal triple-double (100 kids by more than 10 different women) or being the Guy That Got Humanity to Mars (not happening in our lifetimes) or even being this generation’s Hitler, with all the attendant glory and baggage that comes with that. No, what he seems to want most of all is something that’s both way smaller in scale but also infinitely less doable in practice: Elon Musk wishes to live a life without any consequences at all.
If that sounds childish and dumb, well, that’s because it is. Kids cross the line now and again, whether out of ignorance or assholery, and they tend to get snapped back into place in various ways by various adults, from a gentle word to “the look” on up to harsher outcomes. We’re all human beings with human feelings, and nobody wants to be criticized, told they’re wrong or acting like a jerk. But most kids eventually become adults and develop enough self-awareness to be an adult about it by ignoring what isn’t important and maybe even realizing that some of the time, it IS them.
But not everyone.
We didn’t need social media to know that some adults are just as petulant as mid-tantrum kids. I’m guessing we all know someone like that (or several someones). But one thing that’s truly been unmasked out there in the digital universe — and it’s across every platform, every interaction, every single time — is that what Elon Musk wants is actually what all the thin-skinned and weak-kneed people in power desperately crave, and that is to simply be above the very idea of “consequence.” Which is why so many of them, openly or otherwise, flock to to the inescapable black hole of gravity that is Musk’s preferred Leader of the Free World: Donald Trump.
Nobody has thinner skin than Donald Trump, and I don’t say that just because it seems reasonable to speculate on if his bronzer has leached into his bloodstream and affected his cognitive functions. He is a lumpen ball of grievance and bile, and inasmuch as he stands for anything other than rank bigotry, it’s that everyone should have to immediately redress all his complaints at all times.
Anyone can demand you listen to them, of course. But like Musk, he also thinks you and I should be legally obligated to nod along in agreement, and that’s … different. Trump’s superpower is his shamelessness, and few things are more shameless than a man born to unimaginable wealth and privilege spending his entire life complaining about literally everything. Whether or not he’s the worst president of this century is arguable. Whether or not his shamelessness has breached containment and spread among the worst people on planet Earth is clearly not.
It certainly offers at least one explanation as to why the media is so captivated with him. I don’t think they love his overt racism, though I’m sure they’re pro-tax cuts and appreciate the extra eyeballs he sent their way in 2015 and 2016. Still, that always felt a little empty as a reason why they so desperately cling to him, especially since most of those new readers and viewers wanted the media not to puff him up, but to take him down.
And then I watched some of the bluest-blooded elite media members cape for right-wing moll Olivia Nuzzi in the wake of her throwing away her career (and engagement to a separate stalker-weirdo) to sext with 70-something RFK Jr. and it hit me that just like Trump, they don’t think the rules apply to them. Did she violate the literal Prime Directive of journalism? Sure, but isn’t it worse, really, that people said some mean things about a journalist fucking a source?
The idea of shitty people trying to brazen their way out of a sticky situation wasn’t invented by Trump. It certainly hasn’t been perfected by him; his brain is too soggy now to convincingly stitch together a quilt of lies, something even a full-dementia Reagan could somehow manage in the late ‘80s. But all of it has taken on an entirely new vomit-colored sheen of grossness in an era when people simply know more about what’s going on and about the people in power. It took years of reporting to fully crack Watergate and make it into a national story. It eventually led to the general public getting to hear Nixon’s tapes of his paranoid racism. Meanwhile, today, Trump posts Nazi-level treason on his social media and it’s just … there. For everyone to see, and for the media to rather pointedly not remark upon.
I don’t think for a second that the ruling classes were nicer or friendlier about hearing a cross word in the past. It’s just that most of them never heard that criticism directly. How could they? A 1930s version of me likely would have been unable to tell Henry Ford that his cars looked stupid and he was Nazi scum, but I could do that on Twitter right this second with Musk, his ideological heir. (And the cybertruck, LOL … LMAO even, boy is that a stupid-looking piece of shit.)
And somehow, in ways I’m not sure anyone would have predicted, I think that capacity to hear from people outside of their world broke their brains even worse than what Fox News did to Boomers. Sure, the elite already have the softest possible cushion against anything bad happening in their lives, which are mostly spent failing upwards. But what good are wealth and power if Joe6942069 can call them an asshole on Twitter?
It’s why Trump’s most devoted followers are not the white working class, as so often lazily portrayed in the media, but their bosses. Most of them do like the racism and sexism, of course, but it’s more than that. Bosses don’t just want hard work from employees. They want fealty, and failing that, they want control. They see Trump making himself bulletproof and that’s their aspiration too, even if it’s on a smaller playing field. The very rich and very powerful? They’re playing a larger game, but they see the same ending, with them in complete control. It’s why so many of them tend to fall Trump’s way, even though his economic concepts of plans are already disasters and his first term was a dismal failure. That really might be less important to them than the control they think they can exert over the rest of us.
And quite frankly, it’s even true for the people of that class who don’t flock to him, too. They can say they’re standing against him, but they know deep down that it isn’t their asses on the line should he be elected. Sure, sure, it might be bad, but those tax cuts are gonna be nice at least, right?
It’s rare that something is more important than money to these folks, but it certainly was for Elon Musk, who set $44 billion on fire just so he could call his daughter “his son” without any platform telling him he couldn’t do a hate speech. I can’t psychoanalyze him from 4,000 miles away, so I don’t know if that’s the thing he really and truly wanted most, but his actions certainly suggest that was his plan. And if it makes things worse for his daughter — let alone America and the world — well, that’s not his problem.
And isn’t it worse, really, how rudely people keep complaining about it?
I think this is all spot on about the psychology of these people. I’d add one more feature, which is that they’re all so damn stupid.
Trump mangled the Covid response, even worse than his soulmate Cuomo, out of vanity and an absolute inability to think more than a week ahead. The economy crashed and anyone with a brain can tell you he will fail even worse when another crisis comes. Which of course it will. There is no economic argument for electing him, but a bunch of galaxy brains just think he’ll double the stock market.
And they also fail to see the obvious, which is that he never pays his debts. Again, anyone with a brain knows he will crush people out of spite for no rational reason, and he has a list of grudges that has only grown over the past few years. He’s already made it clear he wants to target Zuckerberg, Google, the NY Times, Hispanics and Jews, and that’s just enemies off the top of my head.
I guess it’s fair to ask where the stupidity comes from. Is it inherent, or is it a function of the twisted psychology of control? I think it’s some of both.
I think part of what drives the need for control is how mad they get when their intellectual shortcomings get pointed out by smarter people. And we’ve seen that being smarter than a lot of these people means just being an average thinker.
But I also think the psychology shuts down a lot of the functions of intelligence. It kills curiousity and flexibility, and it runs all evidence through an incredibly narrow filter.
Whatever the cause, they’re dumb and pretty clearly getting dumber.
I have no sympathy for Elon Musk, let me say that up front here. He’s a Nazi shithead and deserves everything coming to him for that.
But let’s also take the high view of this. He grew up rich and then as a young adult became impossibly rich. He’s famous and had public smoke blown up his ass about how smart and amazing he is for two straight decades. He no doubt has people around him constantly telling him how smart and amazing he is, too, and almost anything he wants in the world, he can have at a moment’s notice. How could he possibly BE normal under those circumstances? That level of wealth and power is like a house of mirrors where you can see yourself in every single pane of glass at all times. Of course he — and lots of people in that place — are going to turn out to be spoiled children.
Historically there have been the opposite of failsons from time to time, who break the cycle of privilege and insulation.
One of the factors starting around the 1950s was higher education, when legacy kids were exposed to both rigorous thought and a different set of ideals than pure class interest.
You can’t say universities were really progressive places, and a lot of legacy admissions stayed right wing, but they had a moderating effect.
Which is a big reason why the right has been waging war on them. And to be clear, it’s not just the values, they want to trash intellectual rigor too.
Every time you see someone making a crack about DEI, there’s an attack on reason and analysis too. Because people thinking too hard about improving systems threatens hacks who can’t organize a two car funeral.
I’ve said this same thing about professional athletes who do all sorts of heinous shit and people are like “what happened?” What happened is they were shielded from consequences since early childhood because they were good at a game. Give them 20 plus years of living outside reality and how do you think that will go?
I think you captured a lot of them including Emol. He never struck me as a guy who enjoyed pushback or feedback.
Based on what I’ve seen at work, most self entitled insecure assholes lean strongly towards Trump. They think the world owes them everything. Plus they get mad if you point out something wrong they did or criticize them aka thin skin.
Trump encapsulates the worst of authoritarians who lean towards the biggest bully. The bigger the bully, the more they acquiesce. This was one thing I discovered when I fought bullies as a kid. The meaner and nastier you are, the more they backed off.
The NY Times Pitchbot account has described a parallel situation where there is an abusive, bullying chair or dean of his department, and the college administration flat out refuses to deal with him.
They are full of earthy crunchy talk about understanding, diversity and acceptance. What that meant in practice though was bending over backwards to give the bully the benefit of the doubt, somehow thinking that he’d respect them for it and change. And of course he doesn’t.
This has all come with the twist that because he continues the abusive behavior, the complaints don’t stop, so the administrators have turned on the victims. They think of themselves as reasonable, thoughtful people who impact changeful-minded solutions (to use managementese). So when confronted with evidence that they’re wrong, they decide to blame the victims to maintain the illusion.
And of course kicking the can down the road is not just morally bad, it’s stupid. It just raises the risks of a lawsuit and increases the potential fallout. But the control impulse described above kicks in, and they’d rather lose control catastrophically than admit a lack of control early on.
That’s something my HR sister doesn’t quite get. She tells me retaliation never solves anything (if I tell her she reminds me of mom, well, I get an earful).
Elmo just strikes me as an insecure little boy who’s overcompensating for his shortcomings. He’s not particularly attractive, he’s not very smart, and he has zero charisma. What he does have is luck. He was born rich, blundered around and lucked into even more money, and managed, against all odds, to convince a startling amount of people that his success is because he’s a genius.
Every move he makes is because he desperately wants to prove he’s something more than utterly average. Fathering all the kids are to give women a chance to fawn all over him and to convince everyone he’s a handsome stud. Xitter is simply an applause machine so sycophants can reassure him about how smart and wonderful he is, and all his changes were to weed out anyone who would point out that the emperor has no clothes. SpaceX and Tesla and all the other stuff is to convince everyone that he’s a genius, but he’s not responsible for any of those companies’ successes, and in fact is actually responsible for a ton of blunders and misfires. The fact that any company he has isn’t bankrupt is a testament to his employees, not him.
Trump has a lot of the same qualities. Lucked into being born rich but too stupid to hang onto it, and has managed to luck into one scam after another to prop up his lifestyle, right up until he lucked into becoming president.
Neither of them has any sort of master plan. They just stumble along, looking for opportunities to show off. Some of the opportunities work, and some don’t. Musk just has better luck than Trump, so far.
They’re all like that, though. Investors are pouring another $6+ billion into AI today even though there’s still no actual plan for how it’s going to make money (or any particular demand for the product).
It’s almost entirely luck and circumstance all the way down, and as much as they might say and act as though they are the genius exceptions, the John Galts, the only main characters in the entire story, every move they make is as much about cementing that they can’t lose their status as much as it is that they can expand their reach. Some are more openly insecure than others, but they’re all very obviously uncomfortable with the idea that something could knock them off their perch and — perhaps more importantly — that if you start a lower rung it’s a lot harder to climb back up!
It’s always interesting when the family part of the bubble breaks. No amount of money is going to heal the rifts with Musk’s kids.
Melinda French Gates is sending a message after the divorce by quitting the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and having her name removed, although their website doesn’t mention it. She’s also starting her own multibillion dollar foudation with a strong activist bent, unlike the way Bill likes things (except for conservative causes where he makes an exception to his neutrality rule). She’s also speaking out directly against the repeal of Roe and unlike Bill has decided to endorse Democrats and has backed Harris for president.
MacKenzie Scott is using a lot of her billions from the divorce settlement from Bezos for similar goals.
Two of the Murdoch kids are trying to push the media empire away from Rupert’s rabid right wing impulses, although who knows how the Nevada judge will rule on the case.
Intradynasty fights go back to the ancient Egyptians, of course, but there’s something a little bit reassuring that sometimes at least familiarity breeds a lot of contempt.
I would still like to see him fight Zuck. It might be the only time I’d cheer for Zuck. Musk won’t follow up instead of making three thousand excuses because he is quite a candy ass (he flaked when I suspect someone told him that Zuck at least takes his physical fitness seriously.)
Yeah, Zuck is both obviously physically stronger and better trained and so Elon had no choice but to flee the scene in terror. But it certainly is a little bit like “Can neither win?” or “What about a meteor strike?”