No one elected Elon Musk

Remember in 2015-16 when the media did more than 600 straight days of stories about “her emails”? Of course, you do. And I don’t have to say who I’m referring to. So Mark Sumner of Daily Kos has the 2023-24 version of that: “He’s 80.” Media outlets are pushing that little detail into every story and every headline they can. Sumner wrote:

Biden’s age is a big concern. How do we know this? Because every publication on the planet appears set on telling us it’s a concern. Repeatedly. Biden’s age is the “but her emails” of 2024—the story that the press has decided to make the center of their hand-wringing, sad-faced, deeply somber expressions of apprehension.

There are also polls charting the concern about his age. But they don’t ask if people are concerned that he’s Catholic or he’s a liberal. They ask about his age. And when articles don’t mention his age they do such things as remark about how few events Biden has after 6pm, implying he needs to go to bed real early. Have you heard that Biden is 80? Over the last 18 months of the Ukraine war we’ve heard a lot about General Mud, who can grind action to a standstill in the spring and fall. Well, we’re approaching fall again. And Kos of Kos wrote mud season won’t be much of an issue for the counteroffensive. Mud slows the heavy armor the most. But Ukraine isn’t relying so much on heavy armor and with the pace of the attack the heavy armor can keep up. Another factor is the weather along the southern front, the area to the east of the dried up reservoir where Ukraine is pushing the hardest, doesn’t get as muddy. A third factor is the use of drones and missiles that Ukraine is using to shape the battlefield by destroying Russian equipment. They’re not affected by mud. Sumner discussed the latest about Elon Musk. As background he described how Musk disrupted the auto industry and the space industry, though he had nothing to do with actual designing and building. His SpaceX company disrupted the moribund space industry – and industry little changed since 1962 – by dropping the cost of a launch from $38,800/kg to $2,600/kg. That price differential helped Musk to become rich. It also gave him the opportunity of doing something in space that people wouldn’t consider until the price was 1/15 of what it had been. And what Musk did with that is send up a network of 4,500 satellites to provide high speed internet access to every person on earth, no matter the location, to create Starlink. And we learned what can happen when such an important service is in the hands of one man.

Last week, we learned that Musk personally intervened to cut off communications to areas in Ukraine to thwart an attack that was intended to sink Russian warships docked off occupied Crimea. That attack could have played a significant role in determining the outcome of the war. On Friday, Musk admitted that he took direct action to prevent communications in the area of the attack, which reportedly left Ukrainian drone ships floating helplessly. Some of those ships washed ashore near the Russian fleet and were studied by Russian authorities eager to block future attacks. ... Musk pretends that by preventing Ukraine from using the communications gear they had mostly purchased, that he was refusing to play a role in a military attack. But he played a role. He chose sides. He chose to protect the Russian warships because, he claims, he believed Russian propaganda about a nuclear threat. Musk chose to put his own opinion over not just the strategy, but the lives of Ukrainians. They are still paying for his decision—in blood.

Two months after Musk intervened he announced a Starshield service, featuring additional encryption for classified payloads. But after he showed his willingness to be a one-man arbiter in a war who will trust him? Now that he has close to monopolistic control of space will he also decide which countries he’ll allow into space?

The designs aren’t from Musk, but the ego and the willingness to create chaos certainly is. Right now, his actions have an outsized effect on labor, the environment, government policy, and national defense—for the U.S. as well as Ukraine. He represents a larger threat to national stability, the future of the nation, and to the whole planet than anyone seems willing to realize.

He’s also “a bigoted, racist, transphobic, antisemitic jackass.” In a pundit network for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

It is unacceptable that the world’s richest man can, at a whim, turn on and off such a vital communications network. I don’t know what Musk thinks about the possibility that Chinese President Xi Jinping will launch an invasion of Taiwan — though I do know that China is the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles and that Musk is trying awfully hard to sell Tesla automobiles there. I don’t know what he thinks about China’s border dispute with Pakistan or what he thinks about the Middle East. I really shouldn’t have to care. ... Putting men on the moon was an epic national quest, in which we were all invested. Landing humans on Mars is being outsourced to the billionaires. How to deal with the gravest threat to peace and security in Europe since the end of World War II should be a matter for our elected officials. No one elected Elon Musk.

Down in the comments are several cartoons commemorating the 9/11 attacks that happened 22 years ago on Monday. A cartoon by Dave Granlund shows a character with a long beard and rifle and hat that says “Osama.” He is holding a newspaper with the words, “US News...Hate Crimes...Book Burnings...Intolerance.” The character says, “9-11 worked as planned... They act more like us every day!!” Another cartoon, one by Bill Bramhall, fits in with my first topic. It shows the nasty guy holding the sign, “91 felony counts” and Biden holding the sign, “80 years old” and a red hat guy between them pointing to Biden and saying “Unfit for office!” Rachel Martin of NPR has been doing extended discussions on belief in a series she calls Enlighten Me. This past Sunday she had a 15 minute discussion with Perry Bacon. He’s a black man who wrote an opinion piece for WaPo about leaving organized religion and searching for a way back to it. What prompted him to leave was realizing the church he was attending had anti-gay policies. He hosted a small men’s group and one of them explained he could be a member but was not allowed to be a group leader because he was gay. Bacon, who is not gay, figured if a church talked about the importance of Black Lives Matter, that church would also welcome gay people. Bacon checked out a church online and saw nothing. Then he asked the pastor and was told we welcome everyone but won’t do a same-sex weddings. But why was the webiste obscure? Bacon is looking for a place to fit in. He wants a place that doesn’t say much about the theology, instead focuses on being compassionate and caring people. Until he does he takes his daughter to the local farmer’s market every Saturday. They don’t go to shop, but to meet and talk to the same people every week. The people have taken an interest in his daughter and he in their children. He has found a community, though not a church.