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How should Elon Musk's role in the Trump administration and reactions to it make us update on boogeymen like George Soros/Koch Brothers/Yo Mamma!/Whoever and the rhetorical use of such boogeymen? If you can openly buy power like this, is buying "shadowy" influence more or less likely? Or should we not update at all, because Musk and Trump are so extremely weird (n=1, of course)? What does being a combination Musk-phile and Soros-phobe or Musk-phobee and Soros-apologist (are there Soros-philes?) say about someone?
I don't really see how it is "buying" power. Musk and Trump shared similar ideological paths. Starting as moderate dems that became disillusioned with an increasingly authoritarian left as their business projects hit endless red tape and corruption while interacting with government. Spoke up about it and got the state media attacking them. It's not at all surprising that they ended up influencing eachother, they're friends.
If you're referring to the election in general money wasn't the deciding factor, Kamala outspent Trump by like 50% or something, 1.6b to 1b. So whatever power was bought, less of it was bought by Trump. He won on policy.
Soros follows the traditional shady lobbyist m.o. where he doesn't bother trying to convince the voters like Musk does, he just buys low level politicians, or influences vulnerable populations, low iq minorities, vulnerable children at college campuses. It's not really the same.
The left mostly has themselves and their incredibly rigid ideology to blame for Musk.
AIPAC would be the more relevant group to compare to Soros. The things Musk is doing are all things Trump ran on. War with Iran and taking the territory of Gaza are not.
Trump ran on being the most pro-Israel president ever and openly discussed assisting Israel in the war on Hamas many times in the campaign.
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