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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.“
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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tribe nerds are not natural allies: As soon as Musk was out of the door Jared Isaacman‘s nomination for NASA director was revoked.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.
Ah, the press. Always exaggerating.
Remember 2015, when Musk was unironically used by Scott as an example of someone who was doing good effectively?
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.
You mean in the eyes of Blues / Greys, or actually? Because in my opinion it objectively did.
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?
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Half a decade, tops.
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