They say that irony is dead... but it will live on for as long as Elon Musk tweets.
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To some, including himself, Elon Musk is a visionary genius. Others believe that the Twitter-ruiner is a dumb person’s idea of a smart person. But maybe he is just another self-absorbed dude who spent $44 billion on becoming the world’s foremost demagogue.
In truth, he is probably a bit of all of those.
After all, buying Twitter and turning it into his personal right-wing bullhorn was brilliant. Ask any narcissist whether they would spend 20 percent of their money on a gadget that would allow them to blast any idiotic thing that comes to their minds to nearly 200 million people, and they’d all take that deal.
As for that genius part… Musk either isn’t overly bright or must believe that his followers are morons.
Most likely, it’s both.
Take Monday night, when Musk engaged in his favorite pastime: riling up conservatives and amplifying some of the right’s most asinine talking points.
There was this gem, for example:
“Mind-blowing that the Democratic Party is massively outspending the Republican Party in swing states!” he tweeted. “The Democrats have become the party of the rich and entitled (just look at their donor list) and the Republicans have become the party of the people.”
That’s a bit rich (hee hee hee) coming from the wealthiest person in the world, who is not only spending untold (until future disclosure deadlines) millions on getting Donald Trump and other Republicans elected but also took a $30 billion loss to transform Twitter from a fun-ish hangout to something resembling a KKK group chat.
Of course, Musk isn’t the only billionaire backer of Donald Trump, the everyman who would gild his toilet if he cou… never mind.
And this ignores the fact that Kamala Harris and other Democrats have raised huge amounts of money from small donors.
Musk also likes to style himself as some sort of superhero… maybe “Liberty Lad” or “Triple K.”
Here he is responding to a tweet from right-wing icon Ian Miles Chong that praises Musk for taking great risks by opposing Harris and supporting Trump.
“If she wins, he will be targeted through lawfare and the Harris administration will show absolutely no restraint,” Chong tweeted. “There will be no guardrails to hold her back.”
Just in case you are living under a rock, the right has made up the myth of a “weaponized” Department of Justice to cover up the fact that their standard-bearer is a crook.
But this kind of stuff sounds good to Musk, who views himself as a sort of martyr for his cause.
“To be precise, the machine that controls the Kamala puppet will come after me even more than it currently does,” he tweeted.
That machine must be broken.
Earlier in the day, a federal judge dismissed a shareholder lawsuit that had sought compensation from Musk for making grandiose statements about Tesla’s self-driving technology to boost his company’s stock price.
Musk, who seems to lack any kind of self-awareness or sense of irony, actually tweeted about the dismissal earlier in the day with the words “Justice prevails.”
Just in case you are wondering which federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, it was US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin.
You probably know nothing about her, so here are some fun facts: She was born in Mexico, went to law school at the University of California, Berkely, worked as a civil rights attorney for the US Department of Education, was appointed by President Joe Biden, and now serves as a federal judge in San Francisco.
Oh, want to guess who cast the tie-breaking vote to get her confirmed? That’s right, Kamala Harris.
In other words, Martinez-Olguin checks just about every box when it comes to things that Musk rails against, and she still dismissed the case against him.
Unrestrained lawfare at its best!
Elon Musk, you are a clown.
*In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often funny analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
