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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22607 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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NYTimes is reporting that aides to Trump are urging him to "cancel all of Musk’s contracts and launch several investigations into [him]" Bannon is quoted as saying “They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately.” The Investigations would look at Musk's alleged drug use and immigration status, and his security clearance would be revoked.

Quote from NYT megathread: „House Democrats are jumping on Elon Musk’s allegation that President Trump’s name is in the supposedly secret documents the federal government has on powerful men who were in the orbit of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. They immediately called for the release of the Epstein files.

„Elon Musk’s friends and associates on Thursday are in a state of disbelief. Several said they, like the rest of Washington, are glued to their computers as they watched their friend joust with President Trump, unsure what exactly his plan is.“

——————

State of disbelief? Me too, me too… What the fuck is happening?

On the personal level everyone knows that two galaxy sized egos will sooner or later clash, on the cultural level the MAGA jocks and the grey tribe nerds are not natural allies: As soon as Musk was out of the door Jared Isaacman‘s nomination for NASA director was revoked.

I am still shocked about the sudden implosion. The coming Moon landing and Artemis missions with SpaceX lander … not happening. Mars mission? Not happening with a hostile administration. Musk supported MAGA because Biden ignored him? Boy, will that be a rude awakening. On the other side: Trump has now an enemy with 200 million followers and who owns the dominant conservative online corner.

I think people are becoming increasingly aware that the Democratic Party might actually cease to exist as a going concern, and that from here on out all power struggles are going to be inter-factional ones within the Republican Party. So you’re seeing a higher willingness within the party to have these intense gang fights over policy direction. That’s also what’s causing the whole “woke right” squabble.

Have you looked at the projected electoral college map after the 2030 census?

https://vhdshf2oms2wcnsvk7sdv3so.blob.core.windows.net/thearp-media/images/PEP_Estimates_2023_2030proj.max-1000x1000.png

Now look at 538 and try to figure out what path a D has to win here? Florida has been well lost (RDS doesn't get enough credit IMO) as has Ohio. So even if the D candidate wins the "blue wall" state and Nevada they still lose!

Of course, a lot can happen in 5 years. GA or NC might start to be in play, but even still, the Dems have to ring up a perfect set of victories with no margin for error. And their bench is not exactly exciting either: Newsom, AOC, Pete. Gretch is a good choice, which is why they probably won't chose her.

GA or NC might start to be in play

They already are - Biden carried GA in 2020, and Obama carried NC in 2008. GA is about one point redder than perennial tipping-point state PA and NC is 2-3 points redder.

And they aren't going to get less in play - the extra EV each GA and NC are gaining is due to Democrats moving there.

On the bigger point, losing by 1.5% (popular vote) or 1.7% (tipping point state) would only suggest a defunct party if it happened under unusually favourable circumstances (like Neil Kinnock not quite beating the Tories in 1992 despite a recession and the Poll Tax debacle). That the Democrats came that close despite running a zombie and doing a last-minute switcheroonie for the ultimate Affirmative Action candidate suggests a party that can win if it avoids unforced errors.

I remember people expressing existential concerns about the party that last lost an election for at least a few decades now. It's never quite materialized as-promised, but your intra-party gang fight model does sound familiar from 2008, 2020, and maybe 2004 and 2016. Being the opposition is easy: governing is harder.

Elon Musk’s friends

Ah, the press. Always exaggerating.

Remember 2015, when Musk was unironically used by Scott as an example of someone who was doing good effectively?

Insofar as there’s no such thing as innate aptitude, I have no excuse for not being Aubrey de Grey. Or if Aubrey de Grey doesn’t impress you much, Norman Borlaug. Or if you don’t know who either of those two people are, Elon Musk.

Back then, it could be assumed that a Grey Tribe member would admire Musk, and there was certainly much to admire. By making EVs cool, he certainly made an important contribution to the decarbonization, and the SpaceX concept of recycling rockets certainly has decreased the cost of space flight a lot.

But since then, there have been few obviously pro-social successes of his. His social media persona was not very endearing, calling random people pedophiles will not make you look a great role model. Buying Twitter did not improve things. Openly supporting election denier Trump likely cost him most of his friends outside the MAGA bubble. Now this messy breakup with Trump likely cost him his friends within MAGA.

I am sure that he still has a following of loyal fanboys, self-interested grifters, and yes-men, who will sit in silence while he lashes out against them, but with his break with Trump, I doubt that anyone with an ego of a similar size as his is anywhere near him on a social graph.

Buying Twitter did not improve things.

You mean in the eyes of Blues / Greys, or actually? Because in my opinion it objectively did.

Very dependent on individual experience, of course, but it definitely seems like Twitter is much more of a slop factory under Musk. If we just look at things which are not just directly related to the changed political valence of the platform, scams and bots are way more prevalent than they used to be, even paid advertisements are pushing scams and the comments under any big post are utterly worthless because of the boosting of blue-check replies

Definitely messier, but that's what happens when you relax rules of expression. I for one like the democratization of ads. So random now, showing Americans' quirky idiosyncrasies in all their guy-or-girl-next-door glory.

Disclosure: I'm a proud producer of what is arguably definitely AI slop. (Check out my cheeky YT shorts channel, in fact: https://youtube.com/@ShockJonesy/shorts)

A slop factory is still an improvement over what it replaced.

If we just look at things which are not just directly related to the changed political valence of the platform

Yes, setting aside the single greatest improvement possible it sure seems like nothing had been accomplished.

If we just look at things which are not just directly related to the changed political valence of the platform

First, people are acting like the political valance of the platform has flipped, this is false. Progressives can post just as easily as they used to, they just don't want to do it when non-progressives have the right to respond.

Secondly, that's stacking the deck already, you can't just not look at it. It was total woke narrative control, even mild jokes used to get accounts nuked. A bit more spam is a fair price to pay for that, as far as I can tell. And it's objectively better that it's not like this anymore, as opposed to just better for one side, because you can't have a healthy ecosystem with one side nuking everyone that disagrees with them. Or put another way - a non-political person is better off having access to info from all tribes.

Progressives can post just as easily as they used to, they just don't want to do it when non-progressives have the right to respond.

In other words, they were accustomed to privilege, and now equality feels like oppression?

I specifically meant it did little to create the impression that Musk was advancing the capabilities of humanity, as with SpaceX or Tesla. Instead he spent a decade fighting in the trenches of the culture war. Even if he had fought on my side of the culture war, unbanning my allies or banning and name-calling my opponents, I would have seen that as less useful than what he did previously.

What he was doing before was very high value, so I certainly agree with you that even the rosiest view of his twitter acquisition is a lot lower value.

But from my POV it was a very good thing. At the time he bought it everything in the media, and social media especially, was so left wing it felt incredibly stifling and hostile. And as the desire for censoring anyone to the right steadily increased while people on the left chanted "its a private company if you don't like it make your own" it only got worse. The Hunter Laptop saga where twitter banned sharing a true story under the theory that it was bad for Democrats was more a fascism warning sign than anything Trump has done, and as I recall the proximate trigger for Elon looking into actually buying twitter was them banning The Babylon Bee for conservative satire.

In this environment having one of the more lefty new/social media sources suddenly become welcoming to me and no longer a threat was like a breath of fresh air. I do wish twitter had not gotten AS right wing as it has, I'd prefer balance, but that is more about lefties leaving because they can only handle sites that cater to them than anything else.

If Musk had simply acquired Twitter and quietly relaxed the moderation policies, I don't think it would have been seen as a big deal, and would have probably led to a better outcome overall. But between the explicitly political motive, the drama surrounding its acquisition, the Twitter Files, and the obvious boosting of favored viewpoints, to someone like me who was neutral through all of this it looks like he just swapped one ideological bent for another.

Even if we accept that this is the case, doesn't it seem like moving from a system where all social media is biased the same way to having at least one site be biased in a different direction is still a net positive?

Half a decade, tops.

Easily one of the most important and immediately impactful business decisions of my lifetime.

I’m amazed at people’s ability to forget how bad things were in 2020 / 2021 on the internet.

I suppose it’s easy to forget the constant fear /r/TheMotte was living under for years if you were always willing to jump ship to /r/TheSchism or some other wasteland full of doe-eyed quokkas ever willing to castrate themselves to placate the eye of Sauron

Less of this, please.

Sad. I hoped to see those two getting some things done (almost doesn't matter what, as long as "you can actually do things" gets signal-boosted). This kind of outcome isn't unexpected, but it certainly is disappointing.

Seems like E having some mental health problems. Not otherwise sure why you’d alienate a large portion of your EV customer base by going so aggressively right/Trumpist, and then burn that bridge 4 months in.

He has successfully made himself the center of attention though! 4D gigabrained play? I’m not really seeing it

Most likely Elon came in with incredible energy and his typical spirit of wanting radical change in a pace that leads to cities on mars with autonomous cars and humanoid robots in 10 years. He then comes into government and has to act with mainstream republicans that are tugging on Trump in the opposite direction.

The pace that gave us actual autonomous cars, you mean?

Maybe he can bring some of that spirit to his own companies, and actually deliver on some of the insane things he's been promising.

He was given quite a bit of power and room to play with DOGE, promised to find billions in waste and fraud, and came back with essentially nothing. The only reason he was even given this, is that he helped out by buying Twitter, and that debt needed repaying, but with time it became obvious he's a liability, so they had to cut him loose.

This whole thing where Trump's inner circle is pretending they believed Musk's promises is utterly unconvincing.

Musk is a known overpromiser. Any idiot can look at a pie chart of government spending and know obvious fraud is a rounding error. The DOGE cuts need to happen because they caught the open-secret financial life blood of artificial leftist movements.

What's left is stuff that feels like fraud but isn't. Veteran disability, disability in general, cost disease in the MI complex, and the straight up bad math of social security.

Musk is being ejected for some other reason. The cuts not being deep enough is just window dressing.

In my opinion, it's not about believing him, or not. The point is they gave him power, and what he did with it was thoroughly unimpressive, he can't blame that on the rest of the administration.

If it's because he was doing "typical Musk overpromising", maybe he should have thought twice before overpromising so much.

Musk is being ejected for some other reason.

Yeah, because he's causing chaos for absolutely no political benefit. Rubio at least brought some scalps when he was given charge of USAID.

The "save a trillion dollars by rooting out fraud" overpromise wasn't one of Musk's usual sort, though. Sometimes he disappoints by fulfilling a promise in a half-assed weasel-worded way ("full" self-driving?), and usually he disappoints by presenting an improbable if-nothing-at-all-goes-wrong timeline for progress that eventually takes at least twice as long, but this time the promise was something that obviously was never going to be possible at all. Many voters were dumb enough to believe it, though, so it's not entirely unlikely that Trump's inner circle believed it too, and even Musk consistently kept acting like he was drinking his own ketamine koolaid.

I disagree. All of his promises have turned out to be untrue. Someone with a reasonable understanding of all the problem sets he's worked on knows them.

You're correct that the level of each broken promise is different. What I'm saying is that nobody should have believed him. The electorate doesn't matter - they also believe that we can keep welfare and have lower taxes. They're too stupid to consider.

The administration has no such excuse. Arjin has it right - this blow up is garden variety power struggle and interpersonal dislike, it's not related to underperformance.

And there's hypocrisy in Elon demanding performance from Trump on the budget when he could not deliver. I think that leaves a bad taste in the Trump camp's mouth. But it also seems like he didn't even really try. Elon took major risks - Trump has played it very safe.

I'm not sure the personal (egos) is more explanatory than the lack of a common enemy. The woke left was sufficiently scary to bring together non-allies -- with them gone, it would be a wonder if the tech/MAGA coalition stayed regardless of personalities.

State of disbelief?

Quite the opposite

I'm actually somewhat worried he'll tank the whole MAGA thing by using his connections to Trump to try to save himself.

Since the whole "save yourself by using Trump" plan didn't pan out, looks like he's determined to drag them down with him. Hopefully they can cut him loose before he does too much damage.

Hanania's appealing to Musk to join team EHC:

https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1930698606966960494

If forced to choose, Musk is probably the less bad option, but it's really not a good sign that he's decided the to make the first salvo "Epstein client list." All that does is alienate smart people, he's not going to win the support of pedophilia-obsessed losers.

To be fair, it takes a really high IQ to watch a man go down in flames and say "I want in on some of that action!"

Only if you confuse getting attacked by a bunch of Trump accounts on Twitter with "going down in flames."

I might be confusing a lot of things, for a lot of other things. For instance, I might be confusing the abrupt breakup for an indication that Musk needed and didn't get a bailout, but I'm not confusing anything for Twitter drama.

Please don't kill manned spaceflight. Please don't kill manned spaceflight.

You cannot kill that which is already dead.

That is not dead which can eternal lie as a government boondoggle

Ok, were I a Musk aid I would be strongly advising him to shut his mouth. There's schizo theories galore, but at a basic level, Elon is a drug addict who happens to be good at math right now. And yeah, it's politically impossible to cut spending because everyone likes gibs. Old people, young people, black people, white people, poor people, rich people, small furry people from alpha centauri- they may not agree on anything else, but they all agree they like free shit. It keeps the lottery in business. It gets politicians elected. Promising something for nothing makes the world go round. Trump understands that and Elon is, I guess, not grasping there's nothing to be done about it. Brown Argentina, here we come.

Ok, were I a Musk aid I would be strongly advising him to shut his mouth.

This is a man who fired his entire PR team, the media equivalent of choosing to represent yourself in court. There are ways of making even extremely impulsive and annoying celebrities look better in the press by seeding certain narratives, but Musk is reliant on his friends, business partners, ideological allies and (ex) girlfriends doing this ad-hoc, and they all have their own competing interests with no real coordination.

there's nothing to be done about it.

This wasn't true for the first several hundred years of the country's existence. Heck, it wasn't even true in the 90s.

Nihilism like this is just a demotivational DDOS.

While the conflict is unsightly, the economic policy of 'lets continuously cut taxes and raise spending' is Zimbabwe-tier. America cannot afford to treat the rest of the world like retarded clowns forever, no matter how stupid and foolish other countries are. They're not going to keep buying these little bits of paper at a high price. Bond rates have been and will continue to rise.

A trillion dollars borrowed every 180 days? Inflation will inevitably spike and then interest rates will need to be raised, with serious consequences for refinancing. US is already at 124% debt to GDP, there's not much more room to borrow.

There are lots of people on the MAGA-right who don't seem to care about this at all, just the political impossibility of cutting spending. Being bankrupt isn't great politically either. Inflationary spirals aren't great either. Schizo tariff wars with the rest of the world... aren't great either. Trump and some of his key advisors have basically no concept of what it means to run the economy, they are not economically literate. It's like Soviet politburo members in the 1980s who had no idea how the Soviet economy actually ran, the complex dual-currency system that existed to prevent inflation. They had no concept of inflation. The Biden administration was little better, they did much the same thing. But one fundamentally can't expect loyalty from others if one flails around breaking things constantly in a position of power.

If Trump was smart he’d cut a deal with enough Dems who genuinely want infrastructure / railroad / whatever funding to pass a bipartisan budget that raises taxes somewhat on everyone (but especially on ‘the rich’) that can be framed as an ‘emergency national bill’ by all parties.

Are there enough Dems who genuinely want infrastructure / railroad / whatever funding to pass a bipartisan budget?

My recollection of the last decades was that the Democratic Congressionals were more than happy to raze the commons they might have shared with Trump, and that this inclination has only gotten stronger.

It's smart retail politics but it's awful power politics. "The rich" in the sense of owners of car dealerships and dialysis chains and the like have a lot of sway. You'd need to bribe them with something, and we're out of something.

I used to care about fiscal responsibility, but both sides (Republicans and Democrats) keep hitting the defect button. American fiscal policy in the 21st century is a spoils system. There is less in common and more in conflict between Red and Blue America. When one side pillages the Treasury, it’s a betrayal to your side if you don’t also pillage the Treasury once you get into power.

This will change, probably once Social Security runs insolvent within the next ten years. Then America, like a deadbeat Eurozone country, will be forced by necessity to implement austerity measures. And few of the current crop of geriatric politicians in Congress will be around to deal with the fallout.

I agree with the diagnosis but it's very harmful. Even 10 years might be too long a timeframe. What happens if there's some sudden crisis or emergency? Covid 2: More Gain, More Function. War with Iran. War with China. War with Russia. A recession. A great big AI arms race.

All of these will require massive borrowing, during a major crisis where everyone is already feeling anxious and skittish. Cutting taxes into a big deficit is not a good idea.

Who are they even pillaging it for? Dems are more PMC now so they are hardly all low income and will likely benefit from the tax breaks, especially the SALT deduction changes. There are plenty or rust belt Trump voters on medicaid that will lose coverage along with the inner city dems. The military gets more funding which seems to be a requirement of every democrat or republican bill so it's basically bipartisan. I guess the border funding? Seems like pretty lame spoils compared to Biden's term.

Who are they even pillaging it for? Dems are more PMC now so they are hardly all low income

Which explains Biden's abortive attempt at college debt forgiveness.

What the fuck is happening?

Elon isn't an idiot. He knows how math works. He successfully gutted foreign aid. Congradulations, DOGE shaved 0.5% off of the federal budget, maybe, who really knows?

Anyone who has ever spent more than ten seconds investigating the federal budget already knows that the bulk of the money goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense. I suspect that Elon has finally discovered the haunting truth that the rural white underclass loves gibs almost as much as the urban black underclass. Arguably, it is insulting to human dignity to be tasked with cutting waste while at the same time being barred from touching the giant money pit.

Elon isn't an idiot.

He does however have a history of aiming high and then working it out if he doesn't meet his deadlines.

He gets somewhat of a pass from people (going by Tesla's share price) because it's assumed he'll eventually get to whatever he shot for but this obviously doesn't work in a time-limited, government position like DOGE.

In retrospect, the biggest "win" of DOGE was cutting off some of the federal funding that was paying the salaries of ideologues and activists.

Insult to human dignity? Elon basically asked for this; he loved it until he realized that he was just a hype man. There's a reason the DOGE Twitter is spilling digital ink crowing over defending legume studies instead of posting sober cost/benefit analyses of Social Security.

He didn't even successfully cut foreign aid. Congress kept punting it, now they've said they'll cut 9b which is only 1/4 of USAIDs budget.

Yeah because it turned out that most of USAID’s budget was bribe money to local elites in the third world so they don’t defect to China, which Trump is set on antagonizing and competing against.

Yeah but everyone knew USAID was just a regime change operation and wanted it cut for that reason. That was the whole point. Neocon Rubio swept in and pretended like we really cared about mosquito nets to Africa or w/e

That’s more the CIA’s territory, it’s likely they sometimes get slushy with the aid budget but it isn’t its purpose. It’s mostly stuff like health/‘community cohesion’/education programs that get skimmed off by local elites who then bribe their own cascading hierarchies of clan members. Whether it’s value for money is debatable, but its purpose is clear and political especially because most of these countries have competing US and Chinese influence operations, and the current Trump admin policy is about maximally antagonizing the Chinese.

I doubt anything particularly serious will actually develop from this but if it does, it will be glorious. I'm going to need to stock up on popcorn.

NYTimes is reporting that aides to Trump are urging him to "cancel all of Musk’s contracts and launch several investigations into [him]"

Actually this is incorrect.

NYtimes said:

Stephen K. Bannon, who has been one of the most vocal critics of Musk for months, said he is advising the president to cancel all of Musk’s contracts and launch several investigations into the world’s richest man.

I don't understand how Bannon is still relevant in 2025. Sure he worked for Trump in 2017, but he hasn't touched political power in years and just runs a shitty tabloid. Bannon is a disgraced former pawn and is only being protected as a reward for his past loyalty

Bannon does a daily podcast with an extremely active base of people. It's not like anything else that I know of.

As much as he doesn't really have Trump's ear anymore, he does have the ear of a lot of MAGA.

He gets a lot of credit for having been a political prisoner.

Iunno he might be a decently popular pundit but it's hard to tell. It seems that podcast views are a proprietary number unlike yt or twitter views so it's hard to say.

Yeah he's not as influential as Tucker, but still has a decent audience. I don't really understand why Bannon still stans for Trump so hard tbh though. Trump basically tossed him aside early first term and never looked back. Trump really doesn't come close to Bannon's populist levels. First term Trump, Bannon wanted taxes raised on the 5m bracket to bring down deficits. He wants the dollar to stop being the reserve currency to help US production, etc. Trump is almost closer to Romney politically than Bannon at this point.

Yes, I also thought Bannon was irrelevant but a lot of moderate Trump supporters listen to his radio show pretty religiously.

This, more. Seeing the Bannon position (which- to be clear- is really old) being passed / smuggled as 'Trump is seriously feuding with Musk' has put this firmly in the 'can't trust initial reporting: ignore for now and come back in a few days to see what, specifically, has changed' zone. Both Bannon and the democratic media have been trying to meme a Musk-Trump blowup into happening for some time, and the information environment is already contaminated. Maybe that's what's happening now, but then Musk has been distancing from DOGE since its disruption phase was done in the first two months, reporting already indicated his allies were/are still there, and he's been reportedly wanting to go back to focusing on his business. It's not exactly hard to think of various kayfabe reasons* for a quote-unquote 'staged' breakup fight in a way that serves both his and Trump's political interests.

Or he could be ketamine-influenced and this will spiral. Who knows. I'll wait regardless.

Key things I'll look for to validate this being a Big Deal include-

  • Are Musk's allies purged from DOGE?
  • Are Musk's contracts frozen / suspended?
  • Any immigration-specific action against Musk.

*One amusing proposal from a friend: the Dems demanding the Epstein file log, which will be less damning to Trump than hoped, but catch some Democratic VIPs in a way that leads to inter-Democrat fratricide.

I think the more important question in the coming fallout - if this is permanent, as Trump has demonstrated a pretty remarkable willingness to 'get over' stuff like this in the past (Cruz, Rubio, Vance, basically anybody that isn't Barack Obama or Rosie O'Donnell), and Musk could potentially try and undo this by groveling - will be what happens amongst the other assorted figures within the tech world. Thiel is clearly closely integrated into the Trump admin, but figures such as Zuck, Huang, Bezos, Ellison who hold an immense amount of clout, power, and capital that spans far beyond the borders of the USA have been very friendly to the admin this time around but are far less intertwined with it.

My prediction: this doesn't fizzle out, Elon remains on bad terms with the admin, Trump makes an example of him albeit not in the most extreme sense, the tech world meekishly maintains its closeness with Trump for fear of retribution, and the economic position of the USA worsens as it demonstrates more dysfunction - and, most importantly, humanity takes a few more steps backwards from any end goal of expanding beyond the rock we are currently stuck on.

basically anybody that isn't Barack Obama or Rosie O'Donnell

He seems to be quite friendly with Barack Obama these days as well, judging from those pictures at the funeral.

My prediction: this doesn't fizzle out, Elon remains on bad terms with the admin, Trump makes an example of him albeit not in the most extreme sense

In this case can Elon retaliate? Him financing in the mid terms anti-trumpers (maybe even dems) would be a threat.

What a wonderful development. Get the popcorn.

Hopefully Musk learns what the majority of the rest of the grey tribe learned long ago: that Trump, while being useful for trashing wokeness, is broadly a thuggish buffoon. In a perfect world Musk would become an abundance Democrat, or give up on politics altogether and go back to making rockets.

What a wonderful development. Get the popcorn.

Indeed!

Hopefully Musk learns what the majority of the rest of the grey tribe learned long ago: that Trump, while being useful for trashing wokeness, is broadly a thuggish buffoon.

If there was such a thing as "Elite Human Capital" which, for whatever reason, decided that Orange Man Bad, I'd imagine it would be capable of grasping truly mind-bending unintuitive ideas like "let the retards fight", but alas not only is the "Elite Human Capital at home" not capable of that, they picked the wrong retard to hitch themselves to.

It will be fun to see what they'll come up with to blame their own decision on the populists, a few months down the line.

abundance Democrat,

There's effectively no such thing. If an Abundance Democrat ever gets into power and a Woke Democrat demands their Abundant policies be filled with Wokeness, the former will cave immediately.

The abundance democrats are also buffoons, albeit less buffoonish than other democrats. They're like paultards with a D after their name.

We're simply in a downward swing on the western civilizational cycle. The next boom we'll conquer Mars, Venus, maybe the stars. But the west doesn't have its shit together well enough right now and no one else has the capability and desire.

The Abundance Dems aren't even real. Let us know when they pass anything of substance in a blue city; until then it's pure marketing.

Diablo Canyon is was renewed for another 20 years.

I know this is thin gruel for what might be good news, but it's California and even Gavin understood that green energy has to actually deliver power to customers at reasonable costs. Before they said with the regulatory/green/nimby alliance against it, it would never get done.

So that's one thing of substance in a blue state.

The next boom we'll conquer Mars, Venus, maybe the stars.

Chinese are just gonna burn their space program while you're dealing with boomer entitlement and the chickens of the Civil Rights Act coming home to roost.

I don't think they will oblige.

I mean, the last time they had an advantage in exploration they totally did.

Yeah, for reasons that probably whoever was doing foreign trade fell out of favor at court. Well guess what - there's no money in space exploration. It's an endless money pit.

Whatever economy you build out there won't affect things down here. It is actually a perfect sink for the 'overproduction' problem China supposedly has.

there's no money in space exploration

The engineering challenges that have to be overcome to do this tend to create some rather interesting products; space manufacturing may also have unique benefits, and that'll likely require human staff if only to oversee and maintain the equipment doing the manufacturing.

Being able to pick things up from the planet and deliver them back down is the first step of that; nobody's bothering to build machines or research processes for space because we're still working on getting there from here.

Can you name any specific and forseeable advantages that space manufacturing may have? And if so, would they be significant enough to offset the disadvantage of needing to ship things from and to space?

Explain please. I'm lost.

I’m guessing this is a reference to the early Ming treasure fleets, in which case this is inaccurate as the treasure fleets were not exploring as much as they were re-establishing relations, and the ships were built for such.

Or this could be a reference to a brief period of theoretical Chinese naval superiority in technology between the Song and the Ming, before the Ming went all sea-ban and lost a lot of knowledge about building seaworthy ships.

Probably referring to the Ming treasure voyages. It's a fun little meme but I don't think it seriously applies. Chinese civilization is not going to randomly commit suicide in this era, certainly not more than everybody else is.

Do you think that will stop Leftists from trying to crowdsource his assassination?

It'll probably prompt Rightists to make thinly veiled comments, if it keeps going. About minecraft.

You often talk about worldview, predictions, updating, etc. Do you have an update to your worldview based on this thread?

On that one, it appears I was wrong right out of the gate, but I'm waiting to see the actual fallout. The whole thing seems deeply fishy for a number of reasons, but what will clear it up will be subsequent events. If either or both of them dedicate significant resources to striking at each other, then that will confirm that the breach is serious in nature, and that will bode extremely ill for my faction. In that case, I'd side with Trump over Elon, but reluctantly; more generally, this would be evidence that our leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional, and I would expect that to manifest in other ways in relatively short order.

What updates beyond this would you recommend? Where do you expect the thinly-veiled minecraft references to be directed?

If either or both of them dedicate significant resources to striking at each other, then that will confirm that the breach is serious in nature, and that will bode extremely ill for my faction.

...why? I mean, firstly, 'significant resources' is load-bearing here in a way that's difficult to falsify. Secondly, I recoil at the use of 'my faction' (where's the guy who was trying to address the address the hate in his heart with his pastor, or something like that?) but I guess that ship has sailed. Thirdly, what does it matter to you whether Trump cancels Elon's contracts or Elon doesn't show up for republicans next election? Your coalition is the same, the people who vote for guns and the people who vote for abortion and the people who vote for whatever else will turn out in 2028.

Either way, I'll go way out on a limb and predict that the presidency goes D in 2028, without knowing who either candidate will be. In the grand scheme of things, Elon-Trump beef is irrelevant.

this would be evidence that our leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional, and I would expect that to manifest in other ways in relatively short order.

Again, why? Obviously your leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional - how can you read what Elon and Trump are tweeting at each other and conclude anything else? Would you ever behave that way, let alone behave that way if you were representing a nation? They're just dysfunctional in ways that you or your 'faction' approves of.

What updates beyond this would you recommend?

You should probably update on at least the stability of Elon. Whether the drug of choice is ketamine or culture war, something degraded significantly in the last couple years, and I say that as a papa Elon fanboy.

I'd say you should probably update on Trump as well, but I expect you already think he's bonkers and love him anyways or you'll never change your opinion, so that's probably not a worthwhile conversation.

thinly-veiled

Was this meant to link to a pop song? If so, the reference went over my head.

Where do you expect the thinly-veiled minecraft references to be directed?

From Trump supporters, towards Elon.

I mean, firstly, 'significant resources' is load-bearing here in a way that's difficult to falsify.

For Musk:

  • Donating significant sums of money to anti-MAGA organizations or political campaigns
  • Orchestrating a serious political campaign aimed at attacking MAGA politicians.
  • Actually withdrawing SpaceX support from the Federal Government.
  • Tilting the X/Twitter algorithm against MAGA.
  • Successfully impeding passage of the "Big Beautiful Bill" through grassroots action.

For Trump:

  • Deploy the federal executive agencies to go after Musk's businesses.

These all seem pretty falsifiable, and I'm sure we could come up with other metrics. In short, I'm waiting to see what actually happens beyond mean tweets, which seems to me to be a solid general rule. I note that this spat is resulting in Musk departing Washington... right about the time that it was announced that he would some time ago, and Congressional Democrats now publicly calling for the release of the Epstein files, which is something that I and most of Trump's base is in fact all for and Trump ran on.

What does it matter to you whether Trump cancels Elon's contracts or Elon doesn't show up for republicans next election?

My hope is that these men will actually be able to advance my tribe's interests in concrete ways. We're short on elite backing, so we've got to take what we can get, and if even what we get can't get their shit together, that bodes ill for us long-term.

Your coalition is the same, the people who vote for guns and the people who vote for abortion and the people who vote for whatever else will turn out in 2028.

I mean, it's pretty obviously not. The entire neocon wing and much of the corporate wing has defected to the democrats, and we've picked up a whole bunch of former centrist democrat and working-class types. And I think this is a very good thing; realignment and reshuffling of the power blocks gives potential for a break in the deadlock and stagnation, potential for some measure of actual positive change. You mention guns and abortion; the guns we're actually seeing a serious push on, and the abortion we aren't; Roe has been removed, but there's no actual drive for federal abortion restrictions, and I think that's quite likely a significant change from the past. From an overall factional perspective, at least, this seems like a good thing.

And the thing is, The Democrats could do the same, and maybe will after this latest loss. What we've been doing clearly isn't working, so stop pushing on a brick wall and find some way to actually deliver positive change in peoples' lives. If the parties can't do that, policy starvation proceeds and we're all in trouble.

Again, why? Obviously your leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional - how can you read what Elon and Trump are tweeting at each other and conclude anything else? Would you ever behave that way, let alone behave that way if you were representing a nation? They're just dysfunctional in ways that you or your 'faction' approves of.

If the angry twitter exchange is the limit of it, then it is undignified, not dysfunctional, and dignity was a value most of us were priced out of long ago. We can survive and potentially even thrive without dignified leaders. If the beef actually compromises the mission, then that's a very bad sign for the rest of this term. Again, my hope is that we get actual progress out of this mess. If they can't do that, then everything gets worse, the odds of a win for the current D establishment in 2028 go up pretty significantly, and that's not an optimistic timeline from where I'm sitting.

You should probably update on at least the stability of Elon.

Sad but likely true; I'm still stanning for him at the moment as he's still one of the very, very few examples of someone who's actually made things better in a material way. We need much more of that, not less.

Was this meant to link to a pop song? If so, the reference went over my head.

I've always been a fan of music videos, and my eldest likes to sit on my lap with my headphones on and listen to them. SIAMES has a good one she was listening to, and that vid popped up in the youtube recommendations this morning. Watch it if you have the time, and tell me what you see as the sociopolitical vibe the vid communicates.

You mentioned veiled threats. From my perspective, they are absolutely endemic, unavoidable, permeating every facet of our culture. I am served them organically several times a week, and so I am not surprised when I read about majorities of progressives approving of outright political murder. The last time we went round on this, you asked me where the violence was, the day before Luigi murdered a CEO. The result was broad social support for his actions from the left, up to the media posting stories about how attractive he is and how many supporters he has and doesn't he sorta have a point here, let's have a discussion about this.

I do not think we're going to see thinly-veiled minecraft references from the MAGA grassroots toward Musk. But if you care about thinly-veiled Minecraft references as a general class, there are a lot of them, and a notable amount of actual minecrafting, happening right now as we speak. The violence is getting worse. Public figures are endorsing and encouraging it. Common knowledge continues to accrue, on both sides.

where's the guy who was trying to address the address the hate in his heart with his pastor, or something like that?

If you're genuinely curious, see the discussion about distrust of emotion here. I am instructed to love my enemies. That does not stop them from being my enemies. Factions are a fact, differences in values are a fact. The question is what to do about it, and renouncing hate means turning away from many of the obvious and easy answers.

Despite the uptick in political violence that the US has seen recently, political assassinations really haven't been a thing that much.

Also, people have a relatively short memory. Dems will never totally forgive Musk, but a sufficient number would probably be willing enough to tolerate his existence.

On the other side: Trump has now an enemy with 200 million followers and who owns the dominant conservative online corner.

I feel like this leads to Trump getting banned from Twitter again, right? It's hard for me to imagine Musk not taking the chance to spite-kick him off the platform.

Trump barely posts on Twitter as it is. He's still full-bore Truth Social, although I have never heard of anybody using the website for anything other than seeing what Trump has posted on it.

I don't know why people are so upset. Trump was awful, Elon tried to use him for his purposes, it failed, so he is now against him. There is no point for Elon not to be against Trump now. It all seems totally normal to me, that's how I would act in his place.

Same. This proves what I've always suspected: Musk was trying to use the Republicans to push a bit of fiscal responsibility. Now that it's clear that this isn't going to work, and after presumably fighting against the Big Beautiful Bill behind the scenes, he's calling it quits.

The real mistake was the left wing's decision to alienate Musk. The Democrats really should have seen this coming (since Trump falls out with all his allies sooner or later) and they should have refrained from spending the past few months calling for people to firebomb Tesla dealerships out of spite. If they had just kept their stupid mouths shut they would be in perfect position to welcome the highly influential CEO of Twitter into their camp, with plenty of time before the midterms. Maybe they could even drive Zuck and the rest back into the fold (look what an alliance with Trump gets you, better join the right team while you have the chance!)

If only the Democrats hadn't just spent the last few months proving that they punish their apostates more vindictively than Trump ever could, they might seem like the safer and more reliable ally right now. As it is they just look dangerously unhinged in a different way.

And all it would cost them is telling the Lina Kahn / Elizabeth Warren faction to shut up and vote blue anyway (what are they gonna do, vote MAGA?)

If the Democrats were capable of that level of self-control, they would have worked with the 90s-era democrat who got elected in a repudiation to the Republican establishment a decade ago.

The real mistake was the left wing's decision to alienate Musk.

It's all a bit chicken and egg, but I rather think he alienated the left, not vice versa.

The first big unambiguous attack I recall was Tesla getting shut out of Biden's joke of an "EV summit" ... but the first big conflict I recall was that Musk was heavily opposed to Covid lockdowns, back before being opposed to Covid lockdowns was cool. Not sure who you would say was doing the alienating in that case.

In all those cases I was totally on Musk's side. Lockdowns were terrible and now even Scott Alexander quotes studies that they didn't do anything, only destroyed economy even more and increased mental problems of people. This is where both democrats and republicans dropped the ball on science.

Elon deserved at least some recognition for EVs.

Elon's transkid? The UK banned puberty blockers for a reason. It turns out that most “transkids” stop being “trans” by reaching adulthood, but if they are given puberty blockers, then it is almost 100% guaranteed that they will continue this transpath. Not good outcome at all and only the most ideology obsessed people cannot see why this is a problem.

The only thing I don't like about Musk is his over promises, for example, selling self-driving cars (was promised to be ready in 2024)? Clearly a fantasy although the idea to develop them is good. Of course, sometimes I don't like his talk (calling some a pedo etc.). But that is not important in the great scheme of things.

I mean it all comes back to his trans kid, doesn't it? Who came out in 2020.

But Trump's election was specifically a repudiation of the Republican establishment's weakness on illegal immigration, wasn't it? Even his eagerness to be obnoxious to opponents was seen as insurance against the possibility of him becoming yet another Republican who would go weak-kneed and try to thread the needle between "grr, we hate illegal immigration" among their voters and "oh, but what can we do about it in a divided government? better trade another sweeping amnesty for some minor hypothetical enforcement concessions" in DC. The Democrats' only difference from the repudiated Republicans was that they were supporting the same outcome overtly rather than dishonestly, and Trump's base was centered around opposition to that specific outcome, not principled opposition to dishonesty, so there wasn't a lot of room for collaboration there.

The Democratic strategy of "help get people pissed off at an opponent who's pretty good at pissing people off" would have been a great one (for their own strategic interests; perhaps not for the country as a whole), if only they'd been able to field candidates and policies that weren't also pissing everyone off in different ways.

If only the Democrats hadn't just spent the last few months proving that they punish their apostates more vindictively than Trump ever could,

Never say never.

Technically I didn't say never, I said 'ever'. And I genuinely don't believe Trump has the power to punish Musk any more than he already has been.

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