I like Elon Musk’s style, his refusal to conform to the dictates of the dictators, and his cool sci-fi villain’s name, but here’s the thing – I am under no illusions that Elon Musk is going to save us. A visionary thinker? Yep. A useful ally? Sure. But the guy who is going to save America? Nope. That’s not his intention and that’s not how this works. We gotta save ourselves.
Elon Musk is useful for discrete tasks that require both money and testicular fortitude, like trying to buy Twitter. Throwing off the censorship of Cupertino’s Dolores Umbridge corps – there’s a reference for you Harry Potter virgins – will be invaluable not primarily because it will allow the shunned the chance to tweet again, but because it will cheer our side and demoralize the enemy. Remember, our elite enemy is desperately trying to stick its soft, girlish fingers in the narrative dike to plug up the leaks of unapproved thought that keeps spilling out. The ruling caste knows it maintains its sinecure not by persuasion but by power; if they can’t silence and subdue us, they’ll be trampled in the stampede to those who actually can adequately perform the job of running society. That’s why suddenly free speech has morphed into a threat to democracy. And, of course, democracy is also a threat to democracy.
Now, let’s be clear who we are talking about or, rather, who we aren’t. Donald Trump is not one of these oligarchs. He was a celebrity with a personal brand built over the years. Yeah, he was a rich guy with his own plane, plenty of real estate, and top-shelf arm-candy, but he was also tight with a buck. Trump’s impact came from taking his place at the head of an orphan political movement no one else had the vision to lead. It did not come from him opening up his checkbook.
Money can be extremely helpful even though it is not a substitute for political leadership. The Elon Musks and the Peter Thiels and the rest of the not-left rich guys can be useful at times, but they are not conservative ideologues like us. It is not that they do not have a comprehensive political vision. It is that, except for Trump and maybe Ross Perot, they are not positioned to become the avatar of one out there in the electorate that existing pols have failed to claim and harness.
For that reason, to lean on the Crassus contingent, is to court consistent disappointment. Remember the Koch Brothers? They gave the libs fits, but they were not America First nationalists. They were quirky libertarians who, for every three good policy positions, held one that we reject, like freeing criminals or sending a bong to every high school grad. The last one is probably not a thing, but only because they didn’t think of it before fading away.
Again, they were intermittently useful, and in the main a plus, but they were not us.
Not surprisingly, the businessmen tend to focus on the businessy stuff. And the economic factors are important but are not necessarily determinative of the issues that really matter in our lives. What is really contributing to the falling quality of American life is not just the fact that gas costs so much you have to run a credit report to fill up your Chevy, though that is important. Sure, that a lot of manufacturing jobs departed to lesser countries is also an issue (and one the rich guys tend not to get super worked-up over), but that’s also not necessarily the main issue today.
The main issue today is culture, as in who gets to run it – us or the woke groomer mutants? And that issue is the one that the rebel oligarchs are least likely to rebel over. They don’t have kids in public schools. Little JOmNerf#$, or whatever bizarre name Musk laid on his last kid, is not going to come home and say “Daddy, my teacher told me I am privileged and also that my penis has nothing to do with my sex.” This is a problem that we less enormously wealthy people face. So, it’s probably not really on his radar screen; in Musk’s case, there is a literal radar screen and it will soon be tracking a rocket to Mars.
Even if he was interested, it is unclear what he could do to help solve this. Big money works in the macro, though Mark Zuckerberg’s targeted payoffs to Democratic municipalities to manufacture Democrat votes pioneered a new way to do it. That probably won’t happen again, as we’ll be watching for a rerun next time, and you know the Democrats will be watching for the same from us. What fighting these battles takes is really a hundred thousand outraged moms showing up at school board meetings and yelling and running themselves if they can’t scare the incumbents into doing their jobs instead of submitting to Big Woke.
This is something only we can do. Elon Musk can help at the margins, but he is not going to make it all better for us. Nor should he. Looking for a white knight with big bags of cash to pour out and make it all better is dodging our duty. We are citizens, and being a citizen takes work. Serfs and subjects have it easy. They toil in their masters’ field then kick back afterwards. But we not only have to do our own toiling in our own fields, but we have to take some of our free time to go participate in our own governance.
And that is how it should be. Let’s welcome the rich guys who want to help us out where they can. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is our country, and we are the ones responsible for taking it back.
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