Elon Musk is not perfect, though many people would insist he is. But he may well just be the perfect man for the moment. What he's done for free speech with Twitter, what he’s doing for the election with his own money – hell, what he’s doing for space exploration and communications in times of emergency – is unprecedented. There is no human being alive who is not benefitting in some small way from living in the time when he’s alive. I just hope he’s not getting ripped off.
I’m not talking about the businesses he’s in – he knows what he’s doing there. If you read his biography, you know he doesn’t mess around or like waste. Sometimes, he’s too hasty, but his philosophy is it’s better to cut back too far and be forced to backtrack a bit than never go far enough.
I wish the government would operate on this philosophy…before it went further and put large chunks of itself out of business. That likely won’t happen, but I can dream.
Back to Musk.
While I’ll likely never own a Tesla (I just can’t see it working for a family of 4 with two kids in car seats), I admire how good they look.
More importantly, I appreciate how Elon left what could be a comfortable life to fight with the rest of us for a better, freer America. I can write columns or do podcasts on the subject, and we all can volunteer, donate, work, vote, etc., toward those goals. What he can do, what he is doing, is more than all of that.
He’s putting his money – roughly that of the GDP of a mid-size country – behind the push for free speech and the fight to bear arms. Live in a swing state and willing to register to vote while signing a pledge to uphold those principles? He’ll pay you. He’s paying a small army to canvass swing states to get people to take his money. Hell, he’s now starting to give away a million dollars a day to someone in Pennsylvania who signs up. I’m no mathematician or actuary, but there aren’t many people in the grand scheme of things who aren’t registered to vote. For a shot, every single day between now and the election at a million bucks is pretty low odds compared to anything a casino or a lottery would give you. You’d have to be wildly stupid not to take advantage of this.
The last bit is important – the “take advantage” part.
Elon Musk is rich. Even though it’s “net worth,” not a pile of cash, he’ll never want anything money can buy for the rest of his life, even if he lives to a million. That doesn’t mean he should be ripped off. He’s also incredibly smart, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be conned out of a fortune.
Honestly, if someone ripped him off for a couple of million, he probably wouldn’t notice and likely would have made it back by the time he had how it was stolen explained to him. But A) I have no sympathy for criminals and B) we (and the country) need every bit of focus and resources to be directed toward the goal of winning, not lining people’s pockets.
Remember the Tea Party? Its spirit lives on, but most of its associated groups are gone. We’re better off for it.
When it started, everyone rushed to the front of the parade and claimed a piece of leadership in something that happened completely independently of them. Money was flowing—flying in the face of anyone who started a Tea Party-named group; people got rich—not much got done.
Republicans took the House in 2010, but that was going to happen anyway because Democrats were so horrible. And all those Tea Party groups? Except 1 or 2, they disappeared. Where did the money go? Who knows?
The conservative world – activism, media, radio, etc. – is full of a lot of people who swear they are about the cause of conservatism. Most, honestly, are not. Think of all the Never Trump former Republicans, many put forward on television and radio as respectable pundits and hosts, who are now voting and campaigning for Democrats.
They followed the money, just like many people swearing to love Donald Trump and conservatism are doing, only on the opposite side.
Politics is full of grifters, scammers and straight up crooks. Not everyone, but way more than there should. They are “tolerated” because whichever side they’re appealing to has enough of an audience desperate to hear what they’re willing to say no one notices they’re only in it for the cash.
Pro-tip: The louder they profess they aren’t in it for the cash, the more they’re lying to you. Smart people don’t tell you they’re smart, funny people don’t tell you they’re funny, honest people don’t tell you how honest they are, and people not interested in money don’t spend time telling you how little they care about or need money.
Elon Musk is the biggest fish in the ocean, and there are a million would-be Captain Ahabs out there hunting his wallet (I know whales aren’t fish; they’re mammals; get over it and accept the analogy). Aside from it just being wrong, our side can’t afford to let that happen. Everyone needs to be pulling in the same direction. We’re already fighting an uphill battle; we can’t tolerate people making the hill steeper.
I trust Elon to believe he knows what he’s doing, but I hope he really does because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in 20+ years of politics, it's that the sharks are circling. They aren’t principled; they smell money in the water.
(PS: I don’t know if this grifter phenomenon exists on the left, but I also don’t care. I always hope they lose, it makes no difference to me if con artists rip them off in the process.)
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and the author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. He is also the host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast, where the news is discussed the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.