Everything and it read like satire but I failed to find anything funny about it.
Yeah, only an idiot would say that.
Everything and it read like satire but I failed to find anything funny about it.
Yeah, only an idiot would say that.
Let’s start at the top and see how far I get.
The background of Musk’s visit is simple: Last year, the tech billionaire got himself into serious – and well-deserved – trouble by retweeting and endorsing an anti-Semitic tweet on X, the powerful social media platform (formerly known as Twitter) that he took over in 2022. Since then, he has been on what the New York Times gloatingly calls his “rehabilitation” (as in criminal) and “penitence” (as in sinner) tour.
This uhhhh…editorial might as well have been written by the New York Times. In fact, he probably plagiarized the whole story. Idiocy begets idiocy.
He has called his own nasty tweet “literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.” He has gone to Israel and de facto helped its government in its propaganda effort to “justify” its ongoing genocidal attack on the Palestinians. And now he has visited Auschwitz in an attempt to signal that he understands the gravity of anti-Semitism and what it led to, namely, a genocide. Contradictory? Indeed. We will get back to that.
This is a journalists idiotic opinion. Why does that journalist writing an editorial point out the obvious, that he went to Israel and Germany, unless he simply wanted to use that information to inject his self-serving opinion.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Let’s not simply assume that Musk is nothing but a deliberate and complete opportunist, doing anything he calculates he has to do in order to mitigate the consequences of his endorsement of an antisemitic message.
I assume he’s using this calculated opportunity to prepare the reader for his antisemitic message.
Let’s instead give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that, like most of us, he is acting out of both base and sincere (not the same as ethically correct!) motives. While (again like most of us) rationalizing away his more sordid motivations and idealizing himself as simply “true to himself” (as he has tweeted).
lolololol…i will have to come back to this but while we are on it, he’s not wrong lol. Musk is base, sincere and true to himself above all others. If that makes him a bad person, we are going to have to trade the truth for a lie and strive to be our baddest.
Once we see him as ordinary in that sense, then, clearly – and without any undue tech-hero worship or billionaire vilification – this is an important moment: Because it is not so much about Musk personally (although he gets no free pass on his great personal failure). Instead, it is about a pathological but also morally reprehensible blindness in much of the societies that make up, to use two shorthands, the “West” or the “Global North,” and especially among their elite
Here, this journalist opens the uhhh…editorial with his first opportunity to condemn citizens of the U.S. and Russia as pathological and morally reprehensible. Can you see how morally reprehensible this pathological liar is? If you’re in America, I’m certain you can.
*For Musk could easily have shown a true and genuinely compassionate understanding of what the lessons of the Holocaust are. Imagine the richest man in the world, who also has a lot of cultural (in the wider and more important sense of that word) and political influence, going to Auschwitz and saying one simple and (moderately) courageous thing: “The lesson of the Holocaust is indeed ‘never again’. And that never, actually, means never: never and to no one and by no one. Hence, the best – and, really, the only – way to honor the memory of the victims of the German genocide of the Jews is to now stand with the victims of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.”
This is another opinion we will come back to but while we are here, the journalist could have shown true and compassionate understanding of Musk’s view.
But Musk, probably very predictably, did no such thing. Instead, he took along the well-known right-wing talking head Ben Shapiro, who has recently spent much of his usual venom on running interference for Israel’s great crime. Once again, I cannot help but agree with Jackson Hinkel. His conclusion was spot-on: The visit to Auschwitz – a site to remember a horrific genocide in the past – was perversely instrumentalized to make us forget a genocide in our own time.
Predictably, the journalist venomously pointed out that Shapiro’s words were venomous. He also took this opportunity to perversely instrumentalize the Holocaust to align the attack on Israel as genocide against Palestine.
Regarding his initial anti-Semitic tweet, Musk is now pleading ignorance. Or, in his own words, he has come to feel that he used to be “naïve” about the extent of anti-Semitism. That is, on the face of it, a commendably frank admission. It’s shameful for a man of his age (and means) to choose to be so ill-informed for so long. Maybe there’s some merit in being open about it now.
Someone should inform him that his article is making us ill.
Musk, in his obsessive crusade against “wokeness” sometimes invokes George Orwell, whom – I suspect – he has never read, like most libertarians and other right-wingers who misunderstand that complicated socialist as their guru. Orwell would have kicked Musk’s behind, very hard.
lolololololol…here I think it’s important to stop and reflect on the journalists own descriptive words about Musk, that he is presuming Musk is base. I thought it was an amusing coincidence that he used that term to describe Musk because that is the exact word Musk used to describe Orwell in one of at least two posts on X. I call it a coincidence because I honestly believe he’s clueless about Musk and his view or he would never have described him in such a flattering manner. His agenda, imo, is to paint the whole world black. The only reason people do that is to lift themselves up from the failed state of mind they live in.
I will also point out here, it has been well documented that Musk loves to read, is passionate about books, spent 10 hours a day reading in his younger years and read two books a day, which I admit I found unbelievable at first and thought they must be small books but I guess you would need 10 hours to read 2 average 300 page paperback books.
…
I have to stop ranting here and go get ready for work.
Perfidious lol. He so smart.
While other great EV competitors such has Rivian, Ford and GM are falling short of production estimates and reworking their EV plans simply because consumers are not interested in driving an electric car, Tesla’s numbers are low because Musk’s reputation is affecting his consideration score, probably because he keeps offending woke CEO’s.
Who wants to drive an Elonmobile?
The same people who don’t want to drive a Rivian, Ford or GM EV.
China will and kind of already own the EV market.
I clicked like on Dan’s post because he’s right, not because I like it. China is looking like it’s going to dominate the world for a century.
Looks like China’s sales of EVs dropped too, though. Maybe Toyota was right. They make the best hybrids and probably have the worst EV in the market.
Warren Buffett backed BYD. Kind of lost some respect for him after that. That’s probably on me. They are a disgusting nation, to me.
I think we can agree on at least one thing here and that is that regardless what they manufacture, it’s going to be cheap.
While it’s true they make the best hybrids, they’re not right. They are making stupid decisions, throwing more money behind hydrogen, and not getting into the EV game aggressively enough. Their future does not look bright to me.
They are a disgusting nation, agreed, but they are poised to totally dominate the EV market (to my considerable dismay).
Toyotas aren’t particularly cheap. I have never owned one, but they are very reliable. The entire Japanese auto industry is just moving too slowly and is going to be in serious trouble.
Elon just closed the local offices of X in Brasil. I haven’t studied this carefully but on the surface, it seems to me that Elon is right and the Brasilero judge is wrong.
Bolsonaro repeatedly peddled false claims that Brazil’s electronic voting system was vulnerable to fraud before a tightly contested 2022 election.
“The decision to close the X office in Brazil was difficult,” said Musk, adding that if the company had agreed to the judge’s orders, “there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed.”
You should probably keep studying. If Bolsonaro was in fact peddling false claims that the system was vulnerable to fraud then Elon Musk was in fact spreading misinformation in the name of free speech. Instead of swallowing his pride he shamed the Brazilian government by forcing the closure, but Elon is right. The world is getting so weird.
You’re right. I studied it a bit more and I was probably wrong. X refused to comply with a judge’s order to close some accounts. Musk didn’t do it. I don’t envy Elon, but this seems no different than similar court rulings around the world and he probably should have just complied.
Moraes opened an inquiry earlier this year into the billionaire after Musk said he would reactivate accounts on X that the judge had ordered blocked.
After Musk’s challenges, X representatives reversed course and told Brazil’s Supreme Court that the social media giant would comply with the legal rulings.
Lawyers representing X in Brazil in April told the Supreme Court that “operational faults” have allowed users who were ordered blocked to stay active on the platform, after Moraes had asked X to explain why it allegedly had not fully complied with his decisions.
Probably, but that means nothing now.
“Operational faults” is too vague.
It’s not vague at all. It means “Elon didn’t want to do it so we’re now lying about why they weren’t blocked”.
It?
And what was the lie?
God, Michele. Elon didn’t want to block those accounts so he lied about having operational problems.
Yes, Reg. Geez! Why, though? Why did he not want to block those accounts?