There's an article in the July 23rd issue of the New York Review of Books by Mark O'Connell about Elon Musk titled "Space Oddity". The article is a review of the book “Muskism” by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, which is described as examining, "how Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, by selling a vision of the future that very few people would want to inhabit."
The article is fairly interesting, but this particular part caught my eye as being true not only for Elon Musk but many other people who take on the right-wing fascistic influencer/leader role in our society.
"Here we must recall Joyce Carol Oates’s devastating assessment of Musk, which went viral last year on the very social media platform he owns and devotes so much of his attention to:"
"So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates—scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the “most wealthy person in the world.”
Joyce Carol Oate's take seems pretty accurate for a fairly wide range of people who are lost in some form of ideological possession. As some people's dear leader would say, "sad".
I haven't read the book Muskism and probably won't since I find him fairly boring and one dimensional. He is certainly creepy and evil (in a cloistered 10 year old adolescent way) which isn’t particularly surprising given the all grown up depravity of his father and grandfather. Their stories are interesting, Elon is pretty similar to other right wing twits except he managed to score some highly lucrative government contracts and fool lots of easily fooled people…so a not atypical story of the U.S. kleptocracy/right wing flim flammery. Essentially an inbred class running the country into the ground for their benefit and to the detriment of working people.
On the plus side those working people have actual human lives.
Many people are uninterested in joining the hate filled world of the leisure class richey riches sniffing their own farts and telling each other they smell like roses. Living inside the right wing fascistic media bubble because the real world is too scary and complicated appeals to the weak and wealthy - people who fear freedom and must do all they can to escape from their inadequacies by becoming part of a mass movement. MAGA, GOP or ICE doesn’t matter as long as they can mask their own failures as human beings.
I did read Quinn Slobodian's book "Hayek's Bastards" and would recommend it as an interesting discussion of where some of the entrenched right-wing views about money, gold, race, discredited "race science", and power come from. If you've ever wondered where Ron Paul, or other quacks and kooks, got their ideas from this book will help.
____________________________
