Elon Musk is treating his cost-cutting crusade like some sort of game, but it's deadly serious to countless Americans and even more people across the globe.
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Americans don’t like Elon Musk and don’t want him involved in the Trump administration. It’s tough to blame them. We can’t print the word that best describes him, but, if there were such a thing as brass coal, it would rhyme with it.
Musk is what happens when you cross a white supremacist Internet troll with an unfunny middle school bully and then give that person $500 billion.
That alone would even have been tolerable. As a group, billionaires are among the worst, most selfish people on this planet (you almost have to be if you could get together with your pals and solve world hunger but instead spend your money on dodging taxes and extravagant hobbies like buying politicians). Musk would have been just one of many rich jerks if he had stuck to building rockets and cars.
Sadly, we find ourselves in the age of narcissism, so that’s not what happened.
Instead, Musk purchased a $44-billion blue checkmark so that people would be forced to pay even more attention to him and began amplifying his far-right views to a massive audience.
We all know what came next: The billionaire bought himself a president and now gets to run the country.
As a result, the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans (and even more people across the globe) are either threatened directly or now face uncertainty.
But to Musk, who will never have to worry about money or facing consequences of any kind, this is all just a joke or a game.
His timeline is full of memes, misinformation, and insults as though none of this mattered.
Even the fake department he uses to cut the government down to a size he wants comes from a meme.
Or take his new Twitter bio, which just says “White House tech support.”
Photo credit: @elonmusk / Twitter
That may seem funny to a billionaire with the mental maturity of a 12-year-old. But his callousness is no laughing matter to the people who are suffering because of him or the lawmakers who demand some transparency and accountability from him in light of his role in drastically reshaping the country.
Fortunately, the American people have caught on.
A new poll shows that even Republicans don’t want him to have a lot of influence in the Trump administration. Overall, just 13 percent of Americans feel that he should, while 46 percent think he should play no role at all.
Sadly, that near-majority is going to be very disappointed as Musk and his anti-government crusaders are gleefully tearing down entire institutions brick-by-brick (while collecting the personal information of millions of Americans).
The only satisfaction any of us can take from the situation is that Americans don’t just want Musk to stay out of the government, they also don’t like him.
A mere 19 percent of them (mostly Trump voters) have a very favorable opinion of the billionaire, whereas nearly twice as many have a very unfavorable view of him. Among independents, those with a “very unfavorable” view of Musk outnumber those with a “very favorable” opinion by three-to-one.
That’s gotta sting for a narcissist.
Not surprisingly, women, who often know a creep when they see one, feel more negatively toward Musk than men.
Of course, none of this amounts to the kind of accountability that is sorely needed, but it’s nice to know that even all the money in the world can’t make a majority of Americans like Musk.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
