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Notes -
WSJ Article on Elon Musk's Reproductive Habits
(Side note: I know WSJ is paywalled. Can one of you internet heroes find an alt link?)Thanks to @zoink:
Archive Link: https://archive.is/EVkGv
It's pretty weird. Musk, according to the article, references his children, collectively, as his "legion." He has a vision of a sort of compound in Texas for all of the women he's reproduced with along with the children. The cult vibes only get stronger until they run into cold hearted legal recourse. It appears, from the article, that drawn out family court proceedings, estrangement, and some sort of financial settlement are par for the course with Musk. Effective co-parenting or an amicable albeit non-exclusive relationship? Odds are low.
I've always been suspicious of Musk because a few reasons, but I'll decline to elaborate on those specifics in order to bring up a broader culture war point.
While "pronatalism" (loosely defined) is so hot right now on the right, there are some pretty major fractures beneath the surface. A lot of them have to do, unsurprisingly, with the centrality and importance of a stable nuclear family. Next to "the economy" (whatever that may mean), issue and topics of the family, I believe, are of paramount importance when drawing cultural and political lines. In the pronatal sphere, I see a two camp (at least) breakdown:
Have All The Babies All The Time (HAT-BAT) - This is firmly where Musk is king. The idea is simple mathematics with a dash of eugenics; if you are a "worthy man" have as many babies as possible. Multiple women? Fine. Selecting women based on your own rubric of "genetic desirability" also fine. This is where HBDers put their rubber to the road.
Have All The Babies And Raise Them In a Family (HAT-ARF) - This is the providence of traditional religious groups and a particular kind of secular cultural conservative (often, it's kind of hard to distinguish between these two subgroups because the latter will play-act at the religious part without really meaning it).
While it might seem that HAT-BAT and HAT-ARF might be able to leave each to their own and agree on "yay babies," I suspect that HAT-ARF will, quickly, stop to say "wait a minute, you actually have to raise your kids. A ton of data says that broken families have horrible social outcomes." And that right there is a major culture war split.
I'm a pronatalist, in the broadest sense possible, yet I do think it's too much to ask to necessarily tie that to some sort of religious requirement. Yet, I also don't see anyway to build functional societies without a nuclear family as the foundational unit. Spreading The Worthy Male Seed was the de facto method of world population for thousands of years. (Insert the stat here on how everyone in Central Asia is Genghis Khan's grandson/daughter). The result was a lot of continuation of the de facto state of man - war, strife, instability, and short lives. The formalization of monogamous marriage and all of the social and legal codes and laws that fractal out from there was a 2000+ year slow process that resulted in the stabilizing of families, of societies, and preservation of pro-social cultures. Destabilization of the family (sexual revolution etc.) has destabilized society and culture. Looking at it that way, the "Musk Mode" pronatalism is far more regressive that he - or others with similar strategies - would like to admit.
I think it's really interesting just how much republicans have changed that there's a middle aged man having lots of children and sex outside of marriage and there's almost no response whatsoever from the right. Like the bible is pretty clear about it too as far as I'm aware
Is this a sign that the religious right is meaningfully dead for such an unabashed and open sinner to have clear and direct connections to the Republican president? Or is it a sign that the many of the religious are simply opportunists who wield religion as a weapon against outsiders as many atheists tend to claim?
The president himself is not really an example on those matters
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Sex? They're IVF babies.
And Trump himself put the kibosh on the pro-life folks going after IVF -- he personally stepped in to the Alabama drama over it and talked about how they are making the most beautiful babies - the best babies.
I'm happy to share my impotent response from last year, here in Alabama. Not 100% against the practice, but it still sets off alarms for me.
/images/17448680462132971.webp
Because not too many folks (least of all Trump) “believes that life begins at conception” in the sense you do.
While abortion was the issue; this difference might have been ignored. With that done, the pro-life movement can’t rely on it to paper over fundamental differences.
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At the end of the day, you only get to choose which lizardmen rule over you, don't you?
Hobbits can’t be ruled by hobbits, only as hobbits.
I don't even have anything against that, I'm just asking why are all the elves so much into Eyes Wide Shut orgies, and reproduction via Brave New World horrors?
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I found that Musk's fixer is a Mormon to be one of the piece's more surprising details. Jokes about sisterwives aside, I thought that the ethical obstacles would be far too strong on that one.
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Has been for approaching decades. The religious right was a dying force during the Bush 2 administration, and was regularly losing culture war fights during and before that.
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