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Goodguy  17hr ago (text post)   Edited 14hr ago   5303 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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Biggest loser? Individually? Might actually be Elon Musk. He’s about to get investigated, hauled in front of Congress, bro wasted a half billion dollars almost on one of the worst losses in recent GOP history, tons of people hate him, and Trump is almost certainly NOT going to bail him out either

Elon is genuinely smart and talented, but has an issue common in such people, that he believes but is not good at everything. I think his active politics is holding him back. Especially if he exits the culture war, and lets politicians take table scraps of his unfathomable wealth (via “fines” and “settlements”), he should be fine; leaving those vices (and I really don’t he’ll be anywhere near poor, or even a mere multi-millionaire), maybe he’ll even find happiness.

I don't think Musk cares about getting to consume more than a tiny fraction of his wealth, but he does care about getting to invest as much of it as possible in building things. SpaceX is very vulnerable to interference of the "oh, you wanted to make even louder noise near a sea lion? we'll be ready to review your environmental impact study in a year or two" variety, and even Tesla can get shut out of Let's Boost EVs From Everyone Except The Guy Making Them All central planning for reasons as hard to avoid as "noticing what unions did to Detroit".

He obviously sucks at politics, but it's hard to fault him for trying after 2021. I love all the photos of Biden literally crossing a (Jeep) Rubicon at that summit. No screenwriter would dare be so on-the-nose.

Someone on twitter described the Michigan Democratic ratfucking as like "defecting to Germany during the fall of Berlin."

That's pretty much accurate.

I have trouble even feeling bad for Elon when he gets targeted with Lawfare at this point.

Why did he decide to tie himself so inextricably to Trump and the GOP? I suppose some of it is his genuine dislike of wokeism. Not doubt he is also a rejection sensitivity dysphoria sufferer and this would have been triggered by the Dems disrespecting him over the electric car summit and so forth. But just as a matter of basic strategy, how were his long-term business aims ever going to be served by not maintaining some manoeuvrability within a two-state system that was always likely to pendulum back and forth?

He's a regulations-hater and Trump also has a strong deregulation agenda. On twitter he kept bringing up how the regulators made him drag up sea creatures and put headphones on them to see if they were distressed by the noise of the rockets, he thought that was absurd.

Also he has a feud with California regarding the general Dem anti-billionaire sentiment.

I don't think it was predictable that Trump was going to go crazy with tariffs and Iran. Nobody expected tariffs, markets least of all, Musk fell out with Trump severely over that (now forgotten).

I suppose I understand on the issues why he'd be pro Trump. I don't understand strategically why he wouldn't give himself wriggle room anyway in preparation for the inevitable. I guess he's just an all or nothing, big-bets, everything is existential kind of guy.

I think, like a lot of people, he just got radicalized. Unlike the people who got radicalized in the pro-Dem direction by a trans child, he went the other.

I think he got hit too many times from too many directions with no sense that there'd ever be any let up if these people had their druthers. They were uncompromising on the cultural/trans front and were turning it into a loyalty test and they were moving in a more Lina Khan direction of opposing the rich corporations. Rarely do personal and private interests line up so well but, when they do, it's almost irresistable.

two-state system

Did you mean to write "two-party"? Though arguably it is two states of one state machine.

Did you mean to write "two-party"? Though arguably it is two states of one state machine.

I did. Israel/Palestine on the brain I guess.

One of his sons fell for the trans meme; it's fucking personal for him.

I mean sure, but he's got around 35 others so he should only be 3% upset about it.

The left was gearing up to go after him before he started supporting Trump and the GOP.

I think the key turning point was his affair with Nicole Shanahan, Sergey Brin's wife.

That divorce cut off a major source of funding for woke left groups. They wanted revenge.

Nicole Shanahan

Huh. I thought Musk only dated weirdo art hoes, I didn't realise he was a man of culture as well.

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