If anybody’s earned the next new spot, I’d say he has.
How Much Is Elon Musk Willing to Lose to Protect Free Speech?
Elon Musk is clearly a different breed of cat, but not enough people appreciate how utterly preposterous his life actually is. He’s not just marching to the beat of a different drummer; he’s breakdancing to the beat of his own turntable.Imagine Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg moonlighting as the CEO of General Motors, while also running Boeing. Impossible, right? It’s beyond mindboggling! But via running Twitter (X), Tesla, and SpaceX — multibillion-dollar corporate conglomerates each — that’s essentially what Musk is doing. (And when he wasn’t doing that, a few years earlier he cofounded OpenAI, the world’s most influential artificial intelligence company.)
If Elon Musk didn’t exist and a writer invented him for a screenplay, the audience would reject it: Too farfetched. Would never happen in real life.
And by the way, among the (many) things I’ve overlooked — i.e. developing Neuralink, launching global Internet access with Starlink, revolutionizing digital sales with X.com/PayPal, the Boring Company — each would easily qualify as a career-defining magnum opus for anyone else. But with Musk, they’re kind of superfluous.
When you’re the man who invented today’s electrical car industry AND privatized space travel, it makes the impossible look mundane.
But his riskiest business endeavor is the one he’s taking now: Elon Musk, champion of free speech.
Risking billions to protect an audience that isn’t his.
It wasn’t always like this: Until relatively recently, Musk was beloved by the left. He guest-starred on “The Simpsons” (collaborating with Homer), he mingled with Tony Stark in “Iron Man 2,” and he was the Patron Saint of environmentalists everywhere.
Then he started talking about social issues and tweeting about politics. Shortly thereafter, he bought Twitter for $44 billion.
Before Musk bought Twitter, 47 percent of Democrats believed Twitter was good for American democracy. Afterwards, that number dropped to 24 percent. (Wonder why?) The number of Democrats who complained about Twitter containing inaccurate or misleading information jumped from 54 percent to 68 percent. Whereas just 29 percent of Republicans said harassment and abuse was a “major problem” on Twitter, a whopping 65 percent of Democrats now disagree with them.
New polling hasn’t been recorded since Musk endorsed Donald Trump and hosted a “conversation” with him on Twitter, but it’s safe to assume that it probably didn’t increase his fandom on the left.
In all probability, his numbers have plunged significantly further. I’m talking subterranean.
At first blush, Musk seems to be an odd candidate for the Democrats’ vitriol: In addition to his environmental bona fides, he’s never once claimed to be a conservative! He describes himself as “politically moderate,” and he voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020. That’s not exactly Pat Buchanan 2: The Electric Boogaloo.
But right now, Elon Musk is up there with Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and Jordan Peterson: They’re the current Mount Rushmore of Men who Terrify the Crap Out of (the ) Left.
Yet these are the same people that Musk needs to buy electric cars.
It’s easy to be jaded and cynical. We’re so used to being disappointed by our heroes, cynicism has almost become our default-setting. But what Elon Musk is doing today is truly the most astonishing “Profiles in Courage” in American business history: The world’s richest man is jeopardizing the source of his wealth to protect the free speech of an audience that despises him.
It used to be known colloquially as “putting your money where your mouth is,” although it’s vanishingly rare to see it put into practice nowadays. Which just makes Elon’s rock-ribbed free speech absolutism all the more admirable, if you ask me.
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He’s having fun. Good for Elon.
Multi-tasker extraordinaire and successful at a huge number of them.
I think he should purchase* Mt Rushmore and put himself and Trump up there.
*Yes, I know it’s claimed the feds own it, but the Sioux also lay claim to it, something SCOTUS has confirmed by requiring the government to pay out something in the neighborhood of 100 million in compensation, which the Sioux have refused.