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Richard Hanania continues his criticism of Musk, as a guest author for UnHerd. (Sidenote: On his own website, he wrote "I never thought I would write an article for Sohrab Ahmari, as we disagree on a lot and I’ve regrettably insulted him a few times, but he reached out after my recent piece on Musk and asked if I would like to write something for UnHerd.") It's a combination of criticism of Musk as an intellectual, criticism of DOGE, and contrasting the intellectual traits adaptive for business and non-business success. The closing paragraphs are interesting:
Have we considered how destructive having the political left be angry at you is to the sanity of people who aren't cut out for it? That is, people who aren't politicians?
As a prior example, I'm thinking of Jordan Peterson, who seems to have followed a similar trajectory of brilliant man becoming increasingly unhinged as political attacks step up.
Musk got on the political left's shitlist during COVID. I believe he was irrecoverably poisoned on the left when he expressed interest in hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment and complained about labor restrictions in California right as he saved Tesla from bankruptcy.
His fallout with Sam Harris over losing a bet re: the number of total COVID cases there would be in the US seem like early hallmarks of Musk's decline.
Since then it seems like the left's hatred of him has only intensified, not that he didn't help himself by indulging in trolling them back. Basically, having an irresistible urge to troll and being a target of the left can drive some men to ruin.
To some extent I'd argue that that's the crux of the entire culture war. The left, via their march through institutions as well as their early control over new media, gained access to a super weapon; the ability to point the whole of society against any individual. Western democracies, influenced by Hobbes, had gone to great lengths to make sure this could not be done without considerable hurdles. But suddenly this super weapon was not only available, but at the beck and call of anyone on the left with a good enough narrative. The only constraint was that it could only be pointed rightward.
So for a decade, we had ever increasing use of this weapon against a large number of people. But more often than not, those who were targeted were the "powerful", that is to say, successful people with something to loose . Anyone caught in the crosshairs was ruined; their career, social life, in some cases even freedom suddenly forfeit. But at the end of the day, those people were still alive. Still part of society. And as you said, I think the experience of having your world ripped away for seemingly no reason is enough to genuinely drive someone mad.
And that's what we're now seeing. A horde of these people, crazed to the point of mayhem, ripping apart the core foundations of society. And the left, like a child who shot their parent in a fit of anger, suddenly waking up to the fact that they destroyed their primary means of protection, and that there is no way to wind back the clock.
And while I think quite a few of us might take some grim satisfaction in that last statement, it doesn't change the fact that we're all on this ship as well. If it goes down, every one of us is going to suffer.
I actually have a different issue to raise than my earlier remark: very little of this is new. American business elites have been trying to roll back regulatory oversight, labor laws, and the welfare state since the minute they were created. Certainly the proposition that Musk et al are reacting to being 'ruined' is laughable. Even before he managed to make himself un-elected shadow president, he was one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. Sorry bud, libs hating billionaires isn't new either. All you have to do to get away from them is uninstall twitter.
The only thing new is that the conservative movement has become more reactionary and overtly illiberal.
fitting it would be in reaction to the lib covid hysterics' extreme illiberalism turning the state into a weapon against all of society with its fingers permeating every part of life and causing enormous harm to them
conservatives are the last liberals and it's why they've been losing for many decades
standing atop history yelling "stop!" to the rightwing who were desperately trying to roll-back what the leftists had managed to scheme their way into accomplishing a mere 10 years ago
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