The Tech Right has failed. Credit: UnHerd
I once believed that the rise of the Tech Right was going to make conservatism smarter, orienting the Right toward a future of innovation and free-market dynamism. The movement wields great influence on the second Trump administration, most notably in the form of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. The policy implications have been a mixed bag. But one thing we can say for certain is that having some of the most accomplished people in business come into the tent has somehow made the Right much dumber.
No one embodies this paradox better than the world’s richest man.
He who controls Twitter, now X, exercises a vast power over the culture, and the website is now the personal playground of Musk. As a prolific tweeter with some 219 million followers, Musk would have a powerful voice if he were just a regular user who could amplify certain accounts. As it is, he has also changed the tone and ideological tilt of the public square toward his preferred direction through measures like revenue sharing and the algorithmic derogation of links (meaning, if you share a link in an X post, far fewer people are likely to see it).
To say Musk is biased in his posts or that he shows a disregard for the truth doesn’t come close to capturing the constant stream of nonsense he blasts out to the world. This isn’t a matter of being biased or getting things wrong like CNN occasionally does. His feed is more in the neighbourhood of InfoWars, where Alex Jones will typically point to a document that actually exists to make wild extrapolations about what Democrats or “globalists” are up to. Musk is somehow more reckless: the things he regularly promotes lack even that kind of nexus to something based in reality.
He approvingly retweeted a tweet about a story pertaining to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants being on the voter rolls in California, yet the link in the original post he himself shared was to a Snopes article debunking the claim. Musk has also falsely asserted that federal disaster-relief funds meant to help Americans were redirected towards housing illegal immigrants, even though the two are completely different programmes. When a pro-Russian account claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a 4% approval rating in Ukraine — in contradiction to all reputable polling — he was fact-checked via a community note, which caused Musk to flip out and charge that the system was being gamed. These aren’t isolated instances. Things like this happen all the time.
It might be reasonable to suspect that someone as successful as he is must just be playing dumb online, while displaying a hidden command when it comes to policy. Yet even if you are sympathetic to his goal of reducing the size and scope of government — as I am — focusing on firing federal employees is just about the worst possible way to achieve that end. Fewer people working at the Food and Drug Administration, for example, doesn’t mean regulators getting off the backs of pharmaceutical companies trying to bring drugs to market. Instead, it makes drug-approval processes longer and more arduous. Or consider: Republicans have tended to oppose student-loan forgiveness, but now cuts at the Department of Education may lead to there not being enough workers to collect debt. Put another way: Muskian methods may be enacting a de facto version of former President Joe Biden’s policies.
Federal employees are a small part of the budget, and Musk’s assertions that huge savings might come from uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse is not taken seriously by anyone who has looked into the issue. He has spread false claims about dead people collecting Social Security that were based on a misunderstanding of a government database. All of this is even before getting to the question of how much of what he has been doing will hold up in court, with many of his moves already facing legal setbacks.
Musk is not alone. Other members of the tech oligarchy close to the administration have regularly spread false or misleading information, albeit on a much smaller scale. The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen went on the Joe Rogan podcast a few months ago and made claims that were somewhere between vastly exaggerated and completely false about the Biden administration “debanking” its enemies. During election season, a prominent VC investor asserted that there was massive voter fraud going on in California based solely on a text message someone sent him.
All of this means that even for those of us who are true believers in the capitalist system, it has become clear that the traits that make one successful in business do not necessarily transfer into governance. Nor do they equate to having sensible, or even reality-based, views on policy.
Sure, successful entrepreneurs must have a high level of intelligence and a decent work ethic. But if Musk and other tech titans who have come close to the Trump administration are any indication, they seem to have other traits that imply they should be kept as far away from political power as possible.
What is going on here?
In a well-functioning market economy — assuming we are not talking about an exceptional case like a firm that peddles a highly addictive or otherwise harmful product — profit tends to be straightforwardly related to improving social welfare. People pay because they want a good or service, given conditions of scarcity and their own subjective preferences. Markets also take into account how workers are treated, the well-being of suppliers a business deals with, and an endless number of factors and interests that influence how capital and resources are allocated.
Government, in contrast, doesn’t have a similarly crisp measure of success. Sure, there are some metrics that guide policy makers, such as GDP and the unemployment rate. Yet leaders are expected to consider the long-term health and well-being of a society. They are supposed to respect rights and uphold fundamental values, even if we often disagree about what those values are.
As Musk goes on a firing spree and seeks programmes he can kill, we see that, in the absence of a widely agreed upon metric for success, he has decided to choose ones that will serve his private purpose. The fewer government employees and the less money government is spending, the better he thinks he’s doing. Again, even if you are a libertarian, this is a dumb way to go about achieving libertarian goals. DOGE has the word “efficiency” in its name, but efficiency is hard to define and measure, so employees fired and money saved have served as lousy proxies. Note also his influence on the latest congressional budget process, which was focused on reducing the page count in the legislation.
Of course, even in terms of Musk’s chosen metrics, success has been limited, as a government official, even a high-placed one, lacks the freedom of a CEO. Congress won’t let Musk touch the true drivers of government spending — namely, entitlements and defence. Musk appears to know this, but doesn’t seem to care when he is making exaggerated claims about what DOGE can and has accomplished. Grasping for metrics that are as useful as profits and losses in business has clearly led him astray. Note also that even when he finally acknowledged recently how much of government spending goes to entitlements, he felt the need to lie about these programmes and say that they are there so the Left can attract illegal immigrants to the country.
Compounding the problem is the information bubble in which Musk has imprisoned himself. On X, his engagement is overwhelmingly with con artists, conspiracy theorists, and grifters. He now follows Catturd, a man who believes in every conspiracy theory from anti-vax to chemtrails, and whose ignorance and sycophancy towards Trump are legendary among regular X users. When the Trump administration tried to stir up social-media influencers by giving them the “Epstein files”, the results were so ridiculous that even many MAGAs felt compelled to say so. Yet Musk was still spreading the narrative that the deep state was thwarting Trump’s attempts to get to the bottom of the issue. Understand that there is a hierarchy in terms of how insane MAGA influencers are, and even among them, Musk pushes narratives that only appeal to the worst.
There is no indication in his prodigious tweeting that he relies on any newspapers, serious books, or credible sources of information. When a data scientist at X once told Musk that he had fallen for a conspiracy theory that would only appeal to a person at the tenth percentile of gullibility, Musk cursed at him. The man seems to have a deep lack of intellectual curiosity not only about the arguments of his political opponents, but even those of informed observers who would be inclined to support his project.
Again, having a kind of tunnel vision actually works well in business. An entrepreneur can afford to ignore the business press and what is happening in other industries and simply go about pursuing his vision of change. Yet a political actor can’t completely discount the views and opinions of those he disagrees with, because they are going to be part of the landscape going forward. And wise leadership requires a broad perspective on legal, economic and political affairs that raw genius can’t compensate for. Having a policy idea, for example, requires not only knowing whether it will work in the narrow sense, but also whether it can get through the courts and the legislative branch. This doesn’t mean that it would be a good use of his time for Musk to be reading case law, as no one can be an expert in everything, but it is necessary to have a grasp of reliable sources of information.
This leads to perhaps a more important difference between business and political success, which comes down to the ability to negotiate with and placate one’s enemies. An entrepreneur or CEO can act like a conqueror, provided his product is innovative enough or his market power overwhelming enough. If he builds a better, cheaper, faster product, society benefits, and he conquers his sector — or even creates an entirely new market. He never has to even be in contact with his competitors, who are free to do something else if they are less talented or lucky.
In contrast, the fundamental question of democratic politics is how to peacefully settle disputes between individuals and parties that disagree with one another. Healthy democracies celebrate leaders who bring us together, or at least take actions that are conducive to long-term peace and stability. Musk regularly spreads completely fabricated conspiracy theories about his political opponents, has repeatedly implied that those he disagrees or has disputes with are sympathetic towards pedophilia, when not referring to them as pedophiles themselves, and recently called Sen. Mark Kelly a traitor after he posted his support for Ukraine. Mean words directed at a business rival hurt feelings but have little social significance. In politics, however, fortunes reverse quickly, and today’s defeated opposition could be tomorrow’s governing party primed for payback. Moreover, truly lasting change is usually a product of bipartisan efforts.
Finally, successful capitalists often have superhuman levels of optimism. The upside of such an outlook can be huge, and there is nothing wrong with this. If they fail, they simply lose money and distress their investors, who knowingly took on the risk. But public responsibility requires an appreciation for life’s tragic dimension and for the possibility that careless action, combined with bad fortune, can wreck society and millions of lives.
Musk’s reliance on sycophants like Catturd seems related to his overwhelming optimism. There’s little in his past to indicate he has ever sought out people who challenge him intellectually. Again, this trait may not matter in business, where so much depends on taking innovations that exist and bringing them to market. Drive and the ability to inspire a team can be what make the difference between success and failure.
But again, public life is different. Foolish wars are often started because leaders think they’re going to be easy — think George W. Bush’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein or Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Say what you will about communist regimes, one thing they have never lacked is optimism about how their plans will turn out.
To be sure, this analysis doesn’t explain everything about Musk’s recent behaviour. There may be other dimensions. I recently listened to a podcast he did in 2021 on the history of technology in warfare in which he seemed like a completely different man. He displayed not only knowledge in engineering, but history, including strategy and tactics in the Second World War. This supports the theory that something in this man’s brain broke around 2022, whether it was from drug use, social-media addiction, a combination of both, or something else. It’s possible that all his business ventures begin to fail from now, which would indicate a more general decline in his cognition and ability to regulate his emotions. Much reporting has been done on Musk’s drug use, which has been serious enough to worry many around him.
Yet if Musk continues to succeed as a businessman while being this dumb about everything related to public policy, he will end up having given us what was by far history’s greatest demonstration of the non-transferability of insight and skill across domains where wise leadership is necessary for human flourishing.
Richard Hanania is the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and blogs at Substack.
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SubscribePerhaps the answer is that Musk’s brilliance in all things managerial and political did not inexplicably desert him in 2022 (talent tends to be a sticky thing after all), but rather that a brain even as big as Musk’s would struggle to come to terms with the developments that occurred at or around the turn of that year.
Who the hell ever thought Musk would be perfect? This article smacks of blind derangement. The fool who wrote it should stay off Twitter for a month and see if his brain can heal.
If you want to write something credible, conceal your hatred until at least the middle of the essay when you have had the chance to make some actual points..
I have always thought Musk could be a perfect “figure of hate”, a bit like like Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s “1984” (although there was always some doubt about whether Goldstein, and indeed Big Brother himself, were real people). It can be quite easy to get a society to coalesce around opposition to an “other” figure or figures, something that is not lost on totalitarian leaders of all persuasions. I mean, Musk is rich and arrogant, as well as creepy and weird. He has also recently introduced policies that harm a significant percentage of the US population. He has the ability to engender hate from the Left (because they don’t like Trump) and from the Right (because they don’t like EVs). In short, he is fundamentally unlikable on every level. Will we see an Orwellian “Two Minutes Hate” for Musk? I’d be the first to admit that it sounds like fun.
Well said. What is somewhat new is the readiness of the online Right and MAGA faithful to embrace people that are hated by the Left, for that fact alone. Like some of their counterparts at the other end of the horseshoe, many on the New Right think their sociopolitical opponents are so uniformly evil/stupid that close to 100-percent of what they think is wrong. So a reflexive opposition is the “correct direction”. Again, there’s plenty of this on the Left too.
It’s difficult, I know, but pay attention to the comment. Never said I liked Musk because you hate him. You and Marty assume too much, and it reveals how poorly you understand the right.
As for me, I am kind-of on the right. I would buy an EV if it suited my needs. Half of the people I know who drive EVs are on the right. I don’t love Elon Musk because you hate him blindly. In fact I liked him much more in the past than now: back in the day when he was all rockets and cars and tunnel boring machines. Remember, you liked him too until 2022 when the media told you to hate him now and you slavishly complied.
It sounds like I am more “Right” than you then (albeit the old-school Thatcherite-Reaganite Right, and even then with a strong libertarian streak). You are correct in saying that I don’t really understand the MAGA-Right though. I would never buy an EV, because I am a “car person”, and I drive old school performance cars. My cars “guzzle gas”, a fact I am entirely happy with. I see EVs as basically electrical appliances (“washing machines on wheels”, as I often say). As to Musk, I have never liked him, for two broad reasons: 1) he is creepy and weird beyond the range of ordinary mortals, and that has thus always “rubbed me up the wrong way”. 2) He is textbook “apartheid era white South African”, but magnified 1,000 times. You may not have a lot of them in the US, but there are plenty here in Australia, and we know how what they are all about. I am amazed that people are surprised that Musk did a fascist salute. My guess is that he has practised them since he was a toddler.
I never responded to or addressed your comment at all. So putting aside your presumption to speak for the Right, which I supposedly know so little about, you lump me together with another commenter without good cause, seemingly assigning us to some blob called the Big Bad Left.
Again, there’s plenty of this on the Left too. Good point. I was always amazed by the support given by the Left in Western countries to obnoxious dictators, presumably on the basis that “the West is bad”, and that these dictators, who were opposed by Western governments, must therefore be “good”.
Aye. And that only hints at “classic” progressive apologies for places like China and the USSR in the mid-20th century.
I agree with the author, I just cant see why he is surprised that letting a bunch of creepy autistic weirdos and obnoxious incels loose on something is unlikely to make it better.
I just had a brainstorm. Now that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia is old hat, how about making incels and autistics into the next helpless victims for devoted activists to protest about?
Good plan. Not all incels and autistics though, just those who have (like Musk) declared war on the human race.
For their own good of course. Then he can flee to Mars.
People keep saying he’s going to move to Mars. I think he should do so tomorrow. I am on record as saying that I will help him carry his bags to the spaceship.
We need to be very honest with the convergence of events now facing us all. There is no DOGE without AI. Twitter first and now the Federal Government. How does an entity rid itself of headcount as fast as possible and what’s the impact? It’s a huge experiment that wouldn’t have been remotely possible if our institutions weren’t already severely suspect from corruption and degradation. How many rockets did Elon crash before he finally got one to launch? Countries aren’t that easy to rebuild. That’s probably the entire point.
Not at all. Crashing the Dept of Education or the EPA or USAID with a hatchet are inconsequential and won’t crash the USA. The more important segments like DoD and NIH are getting a scalpel treatment. This will work out fine if the flibbertigibbets on the left and in the MSM can contain themselves. Judge Musk by his results not his words, and certainly not 6 weeks into the job.
“Judge Musk by his results not his words“. Well, he’s made a huge number of people around the world hate him, and start vandalising his cars. I guess that is a “result”.
It’s no secret that federal employees strongly resisted the agenda of a democratically elected president from 2016-2020. Several hundred of them actively participated in schemes to have him impeached, from Russian collusion to fabricated rape cases to his business dealings years ago, and most of them make no secret of supporting his opponents, even in their official capacities.
Federal agencies also frittered away billions on utterly unnecessary things like “climate justice,” DEI, and bizarre study grants for such things as transgendered mice. Billions more were stolen, from COVID relief funds to foreign aid, with little or no apparent oversight.
Hanania can’t deny this – our government was, clearly, extremely irresponsible with taxpayer funds. There have been no tangible improvements in most people’s everyday lives, and in fact things like law enforcement, infrastructure, education, and health care became worse, despite enormous levels of taxing, borrowing, and spending.
Our government does not exist for its own benefit. It exists to benefit the public, which it seems to view with disdain, as Hanania does. Credentials aren’t guarantees of successful or sensible policies, and experienced, supposedly knowledgeable people, in what were once well respected institutions, are perfectly susceptible to foolishness and failure.
In reality, we hardly need the guidance of these supposed “experts,” when these experts turn out to be, routinely, both very wrong and very self serving.
It is true that Elon can be an odd character. He does on occasion make unusual and sometimes insensitive remarks. He can be arrogant, as many people with high IQs or extraordinary amounts of wealth can be, and is a contrarían, which is often unpopular. He also spent billions on a social media platform solely, it seems, to disseminate dissenting, sometimes offensive, and occasionally prevaricating views.
I don’t particularly care. I pay tens of thousands of dollars per year to the federal government, and see very little in return. I also directly see the results of wildly irresponsible policies, such as inflation, crime, immigration levels that nearly resemble an invasion, and winking sympathies for despicable groups like Antifa or Hamas. Like most people, I dislike seeing public funds spent on terrible policies, with predictably terrible results.
We can easily reduce federal employment by significant amounts, without any harm to people who truly need help. Practically anyone whose worked with our government would have a difficult time denying this. We can also return prosperity, growth, power, and freedom to the private sector. Ridding ourselves of unelected, unaccountable, unnecessary bureaucrats should be step one.
If a few tall tales from Catturd or a Joe Rogan guest are repeated and believed, that’s a small price to pay.
The federal bureaucracy is effectively a fourth branch of the U.S. government. There’s no constitutional basis for it, and it’s unelected and therefore not answerable to the citizenry. Many people have come to realize and resent it deeply, therefore they’re willing to risk change, but it can’t be achieved by baby steps.
Fabricated rape cases?
Yes, fabricated. This is why Stephanopoulos and NBC? had to pay millions, as they called him a rapist on air, when you have to be actually convicted as such to be considered as such. He was never convicted of rape despite trials.
.
Meh. Standard liberal talking points you can find anytime on CNN or MSNBC. Many of Hanania’s criticisms are valid. Musk, like Trump, needs to STFU sometimes.
Despite his flaws, Musk rescued Twitter from the censorious thugs who used to run the joint. He’s certainly not the free speech absolutist he claimed to be. Musk routinely depresses tweets promoting anything on Substack, where Hanania writes prolifically. Despite this, twitter is infinitely more open than it ever was.
Hanania fundamentally misunderstands the importance of cutting the bureaucracy. Musk isn’t stupid. He knows that you won’t balance the budget by cutting jobs. The point is to wrestle control of govt away from unelected bureaucrats. This reality is well understood in Britain.
I love this quote. Hanania is engaging in the very same hyperbolic conjecture that he accuses Musk of doing; “Republicans have tended to oppose student-loan forgiveness, but now cuts at the Department of Education may lead to there not being enough workers to collect debt. Put another way: Muskian methods may be enacting a de facto version of former President Joe Biden’s policies.”
Ultimately, Trump and Musk will be judged by their results – and the jury is very much out. There have been some early successes – reducing illegal immigration to a trickle, tackling the oppressive regulatory regime, dismantling DEI etc.
But this might be wiped out by Trump’s apparent obsession with tariffs. Voters elected him to tackle inflation and grow the economy. Tariffs don’t do any of that. If Trump’s policies make people poorer, or less safe, the GOP will be punished for it by voters.
Although I don’t take issue with much of this essay, a lot of it is just more noise. We get enough of that from Trump.
Trump and Musk are fundamentally different though. Trump is an elected politician, and barring death or serious disability, remains in the White House for his whole term. Musk isn’t like that. Him wearing a DOGE hat is at the whim of Trump, and he could be gone from that role by lunchtime tomorrow. Ok, Musk would still have his businesses, but unfortunately for him, he has set about damaging Tesla, his biggest business, by his DOGE actions. Because that business sells largely to individuals, it is uniquely susceptible to boycotts, as Musk is now discovering.
He doesn’t claim to be a politician. He is a person employed by a president for however long. Musk is not essentially driven by money.
No, he is driven by a self-important belief that he alone can save humanity and society. And when that doesn’t work, he can upload his giant brain to the cloud or flee to Mars with a handful of others.
I never said Musk was a politician (in fact, I said the opposite). As to Musk “not being driven by money”, he seemed pretty upset at the fall in Tesla’s share price (I saw one interview where he was almost crying).
I read (can’t supply a reference – sorry!) that Musk recently visited a Japanese car maker who claims to have produced a very low emission internal combustion engine (ICE).
Given this and the obvious differences between Mr Trump’s agenda and the electric car culture it’s just about conceivable that Tesla will morph into an ICE based car maker. Musk is both technically savvy and strategic.
Musk is the first Autistic person to have the World’s attention at his fingertips. The Neurodivergent was supposed to be considered an extremely oppressed class but Musk transcended the prohibition against attacking the Neurodivergent by working with Republicans.
Neither party has a monopoly on Conspiracy Theorizing. Musk absolutely reposts nonsense because he thinks it’s directionally correct. Most people think directionally not with precision. You don’t have time. The Congressional Democrats are some of the most imprecise politicians in history but the mainstream media doesn’t feel it necessary to fact check them.
Why does “Fact-Checking” only go in one direction? Fine, call out Trump and Musk but call out Schumer, Pelosi and the entire group of hyperbolic conspiracists on the Democrat side. Everyone is being directional not precise. It’s completely fine to check Elon or whoever but let’s not act like speculating or distorting facts are mutually exclusive.
Musk has been subject to community notes (fact checking) on X and is fine with it.
No Musk is not “fine with it”. He has shut down the function on posts of his that were subject to damning community notes.
I have seen the opposite. I follow him assiduously.
No one else within the government is doing it at the same scale, with the possible exception of Trump. Or perhaps you can name lies Pelosi or Schumer or Schiff or whomever have promoted with the same combination or shamelessness and irresponsibility.
You’ve predetermined the correct direction for our country and there’s just about nothing associated with Trump you won’t defend or remain silent about now. Correct?
As soon as someone or something gets sucked into the Trump orbit you’re onboard, it seems. I strongly suspect you have more nuanced private views—like you did about a year ago when you thought DeSantis could win the White House, or perhaps that Trump’s act had played out after 1/6/21–but you defend or overlook even total folly and blatant lies that bend in the “direction” you see as correct. Perhaps some this is unfair, but I am not trying to exaggerate or insult you. I’m genuinely curious to see whether you will call out any of this administrations missteps, or if that is an off-limits direction for you now.
Is a chainsaw a symbol of common sense? How about tariff tantrums. Or picking international friends and enemies according to personal impulse, favoring Putin and endangering Zelenskyy because the Ukrainian wouldn’t do Trump’s dirty work against the Bidens for him.
Does anyone know how the Pelosi creature became so fabulously rich?
Surely the US Government doesn’t pay THAT well?
tucker had a guy on who developed an app that tracks politicans investments, the guy is not political, but he just tracks their investments on both sides
Pelosi was apparently very lucky mutlple time in making the right investments in companies, that amazingly where about to get a boost from some new goverment incentive
Not Pelosi , but there was an instance where a state was going to mandate water meters or something, and the major water meter company for that state, lol and behold, many state politicans invested in it just before the announcement
If you know what horse is going to win before the race, it’s very easy to make a lot of money
Thank you so much.
’We’ used to hang people for less.
Well her husband—the one some deranged * *internet junkie [ok?] bludgeoned with a hammer—is a successful venture capitalist who runs a major company. She’s also the daughter of a congressman. So there’s plenty of access, but no proof of UNUSUAL greed or corruption. Not that I’ve heard, and I’m pretty sure any credible case would be all over MAGA-leaning media, including FOX News and these comment boards.
The guy who bludgeoned Pelosi’s husband had severe mental health issues. His social media feed was politically incoherent, like you would expect, and certainly not pro Trump.
Maybe that’s a sloppy shorthand on my part. He is known to have embraced Trump’s claims of a stolen election, and QAnon and Pizza-gate. And Trump himself chimed in to claim it was a “false flag” crime. What part of that do you dispute, or how are you certain he didn’t support Trump?
Not disputing any of that. Just saying he was all over the map politically.
Perhaps a little ‘waterboarding’ is in order? After all it’s not torture.
Yeah. Do you think Musk or Trump will agree to go through the process?
No, I doubt it because both are probably a little squeamish.
True. Who wouldn’t be, whatever the state of his conscience or definition of torture?
Training is available or certainly used to be.
I do get a kick out of your dark humour sometimes. No need to remind me that some of it comes from your real experience.
If we’re agreeing that the greed, corruption, and deception are not unusual, then why should we expect any better from one side or the other? The fallacy is to believe one side is good and the other evil, truth and untruth, righteousness and wickedness. The reality is that we’re all human and none of us can say with any certainty which is objectively which, or that there even is such a thing. The reality is that both sides have their own goals and one side is my ally and the other my enemy. Right and wrong have nothing to do with it. Facts and lies have very little to do with it.
The source of both much of Trump’s appeal, and most of the major complaints against him, is that he has the audacity to do authentically and openly what other politicians try to hide and sweep under the rug. Should he be praised for it? No. Should he be condemned for it? Again, no. He should be assessed as any other politician or leader, by his policies and what they accomplish, for good or for ill, whichever history decides that it is, and as I often say, history’s judgement usually has more to do with who wins than who was right.
It is what it is. You were completely right when you said above that T Bone was equivocating and excusing Trump because they agree on their basic goals. He was, and so are you, and so does everybody else. At the end of the day, that’s all it’s ever about for any side. There’s ‘us’ and there’s ‘them’, my friend and my enemy. That’s tribalism, and it is part of what makes humans what they are and not some other kind of creature. Take it from someone who actually doesn’t see the world like this. Normal humans will never escape this and cannot avoid it. Any attempt to do so is doomed to fail and likely to cause worse problems. See globalism in general and the state of the world at present, closer to WWIII than we’ve probably ever been since 1963 at least. Trying to get rid of tribalism, racism, sexism, or any of the other isms that so cloud our judgement is a fools errand.
All one can do is try to eliminate these vices within oneself and one’s direct vicinity through their words and actions. I cannot prevent people from being tribal. I have no hope of doing so. I can understand the errors of logic that tribalism creates and try to help others see them as well, but I can’t fix the world or make it a better place any more than that. The moment it becomes a political or moral ’cause’, it inevitably takes on all those aspects it would strive to prevent, and there’s no way around that.
I’ve seen you make a version of this argument many times. I’m not saying there’s no validity to it. But at the level of insistence and intensity that you use, it becomes a cynical or defeatist perspective, in my view.
Matters of degree matter. Everyone has lied; not everyone is a shameless Liar with a capital L. All have biases and blind spots, but leaning into them or pretending they are a feature and not a bug is another level of beclouded thinking, one that is to some extent voluntary, and to a degree correctable.
Of course we can only best work on ourselves, but persuasion and misdirection exist, and social norms and standards matter for how we speak to and act toward one another. It’s true I’m not a model for consistently civil speech—and never will be unless life is 1000 years long—but I am working on it.
Far from opposing it in a way that, I admit, would be at some level futile and counterproductive, I see you advocating or celebrating tribalism of late. I know you have an atypical perspective, often an insightful and valuable one. But I think you’re profoundly mistaken to endorse nationalism and tribal sympathies run amok—of course you’d not use that language; I’m expressing my sincere opinion.
I don’t agree that my defense of the center and center-left is as onesided, unyielding, and tribal as T Bone’s right now. I don’t think it’s even close. In NYT comment boards I tend to defend the center and center-right. I am a very moody person who likes to see balance and cooperation, but lively and rigorous debate too. Then again, we all have some measure of self-serving bias, and tend to view ourselves in a far more nuanced and forgiving light than we shine on others.
Tribal loyalty and love of country CAN go in a noble direction. I agree that, to some extent, they are both natural and inevitable. But they should be tempered. We need to keep our natural and inner eyes on potentially destructive forces within ourselves and societies.
Or else declare a nihilistic free-for-all in which any pretense or what is moral or good is abandoned for fear of becoming self-righteous crusaders, every move toward group (or even personal) improvement tainted or doomed to failure. To such familiar arguments I respond: Some things are not a matter of debate or mere preference, and such moves are not doomed to TOTAL failure.
It’s not allowing my initial response to you from earlier.
You’re absolutely correct that I am biased towards Republicans right now. I’ve also voted Republican all but twice in my life. I’ve put that out there to let you know I’m considering my bias when evaluating.
I genuinely think from top to bottom Republicans are a superior party to the Democrats right now. I also don’t think they’ve reached their popular ceiling yet nor have the Democrats reached their floor. You seem to think there’s going to be some moment where Trump supporters realize their folly. I’m trying to explain why that’s unlikely. Comparative Analysis.
Just because Democrats are “out of power” doesn’t mean their actions are irrelevant. They’ve been in power for the vast majority of the last 16 years. You are focused on Trump and Musk. That’s fine but you appear to be completely ignoring how bad the Democrats are right now. I again ask you to watch the 6.5 hour DNC Chair Election. Just scroll through it. It is lunacy from start to finish.
I am doing comparative analysis between the two parties. To me you’re alnost exclusively analyzing two people (Musk and Trump). If you put a microscope on anybody for long enough they will give you a highlight real of stupidity. With the Democrats you don’t need to do that. You can literally just watch basic interactions and interviews to see how out of touch they are.
I am focusing on Trump and Musk—the two most powerful people in America—largely below articles that are focused on one or both of them. Of course you’re entitled to prefer Republicans, with rare exceptions, over your lifetime. That’s fine, and no surprise. In part, I think that reflects your background and upbringing, as does my reverse tendency. Not that either of us are in blind lockstep, but influences matter.
What I don’t accept as a fact is the way you treat your strong partisan opinion as a self-evident truth, or “settled science”, or something. The Republicans are more popular at present, but not by a landslide. And stronger, but largely in a bad way. They are almost totally sold out to Trump, which is a kind of servile unity even if it seems undeniably bent in the correct direction to you.
To me the notion the baseless accusations of pedophilia could be “directionally correct” is totally twisted. As bad and mistaken as when some people claimed Jussie Smollett’s hoax pointed to a “larger truth”. I’ll call out lies and shams on both sides. Not with the exact same tone and frequency, but with some balance.
I’ll take your word on the DNC election, since I’m not gonna sit through 6.5 of lunacy that probably isn’t entertaining or enlightening unless you are doing oppo research as you are. (Send me clips or excerpts if you want; I could share plenty of madness from your side). But I’ll continue to insist that such proceedings, like Party Platforms, have little to do with how most in a party think, or govern. And the current RNC Whately is a prominent election denier.
I really don’t like the current crop of Democrats overall. As I’ve often said, I’d like to see a viable, less sold out third party emerge. But I absolutely think the current Republicans are more reckless and sold out than even this batch of Democrats. I know you sharply disagree, but I’d just ask you to consider that the case may not nearly as one-sided as you think.
I’ll be following along with you, from a mostly divergent perspective, as Trump’s still-early term plays out. I’m curious to see how insistently you will play your tune when Trump’s White House goes haywire again. If it does, that is.
It’s not “settled science” and I don’t declare myself an Arbiter of Political Science. My confidence level is so high because Democrats appear to be severely limited in Narrative Chess moves. Literally every complaint they make about Republicans are things they’ve done in the recent past. I can’t stress enough that it looks like a comical level of projection.
Democrat voting groups are PERPETUALLY engaged in radical protests that blur the lines between speech and what you might easily define as an “insurrection.” Occupying a building like Trump Tower is a violent action. Jan 6 is repeated like a bingo card in almost every Anti-Trump argument. Have you ever commented on the violence of Jan 20, 2017…ie Trump’s first inauguration. No nobody even cares.
Democrats engage in so much radical activity that I can’t just lob three or four simplistic narratives or bingo examples at you to prove my point. They perpetually flood the zone. So to be upset about Trump and DOGE have been flooding the zone with executive actions and declarations of cuts seems laughably unaware to the typical Republican.
The narrative that Republicans are “feckless” and falling in line with Trump’s whims also sounds like collectivist projection to the typical Republican voter that’s paying attention. It was far easier for Biden to get a party line vote. You seem to believe that on order to be good Republicans, they need to act like Mitt Romney and perform occasional opposition while posing no threat to win a plurality of votes.
Republicans are not inherently collectivist. You’ll notice they have an infinitely more difficult time passing a vote on party lines than Democrats. Democrats are believers in the principle of solidarity. Solidarity is a form of Democratic Centralism that limits dissent in order to achieve Party unity leading to political success. You will see no shortage of wild disagreements even within Trumpism. It is ideologically diverse. There’s no “messaging memos.” Nobody is told what to say.
When you make a statement like “Republicans are not inherently collectivist” you seem to be involved in a different exchange or responding to something I never said or suggested. Of course they are not. But they have been intensely lockstep since Obama. Not that Dems are highly bi-partisan, granted. But more criticism of Obama and Biden was allowed among Democrats in the legislative branch.
This is a hugely loyalist administration, where criticism of Trump makes you a target. That’s not some collectivist projection at all. It’s Project 2025 in action.
Apologies if I begin to sound repetitive. At some point it will become repetitive even to me and I’ll probably disappear into the fog of the Internet never to be seen again, but until that time comes, I do enjoy our debates. Your arguments always give me something to think about and challenge my intellect, and that’s frankly most of the reason I do this.
On one level, I am not celebrating tribalism, nor am I condemning it. I am simply saying that it exists and it is pointless to deny it exists. To use a comparison, there are those who believe the earth is flat despite considerable evidence to the contrary. They have the right to believe whatever they like, but man once said truth is what remains whether we believe in it or not. My argument can be summed up as follows. Tribalism is an intrinsic part of human nature with both good and bad effects. Trying to abolish it by government fiat is on about the same level as declaring a man can be a woman, which is another liberal talking point, sadly enough.
On another level, I do celebrate the positive aspects of tribalism. Tribalism allows unique, distinct, and diverse cultures, arts, religions, philosophies, etc. to form and develop organically. For most, this forms a core part of their identity and personal sense of self. For me, I just enjoy seeing diverse forms of architecture and different ideas and philosophies. I consider this to be true diversity of a sort that can and should be celebrated and embraced, though I recognize that others may not share my opinion. Of necessity, tribalism also logically requires members of a tribe show some level of favoritism and loyalty to that tribe over and above other tribes, however the tribe is defined, whether that be by race, religion, color, nation, style of dress, or some other factor or combination of factors. This implies, of course, at least some form of those things condemned by many on the left, such as racism, religious discrimination, etc..Nationalism, considered in the traditional sense, means attempting to unite all members of one tribe or some set of historically connected tribes with one another in a set area defined by national borders as a more effective, peaceful, and productive means of human organization. When I speak positively of nationalism, this is what I am referring to, not the toxic variety of nationalism that emphasizes conflict, violence, and conquest. That kind of nationalism can grow from the former, and it is something to be discouraged and guarded against, but no system is perfect. There are always risks. This allows tribalism to function in a mostly natural way while allowing for large and economically efficient states. Trying to go beyond this and unite the world simply won’t work, at least not the way some think it will, because the good aspects of tribalism and the bad are inseparable. One cannot exist without the other, and I would prefer unique, vibrant, and ancient cultures not be damaged or destroyed by purposeful action. That’s really all I mean to say, though at times I fail to communicate effectively.
I myself am no conservative, nor would my own views put me exclusively on the right. I am a true radical revolutionary of the non-violent variety. Were I given unlimited power, my own views would seem bizarre to most because it’s a mixture of Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, basically libertarian socialism. I don’t honestly believe in Trump or his policies. If you asked me to lay down money, I’d bet he will ultimately fail in what I think he’s trying to accomplish and be remembered as a failed attempt at reforming and rejuvenating a declining empire. I don’t think he goes nearly far enough to confront the billionaire class. I prefer the Sanders approach myself, a direct wealth tax, and I’d go farther and international finance and the free movement of money, which would do far more to undermine globalism than anything Trump is doing or will even consider.
I have gained some respect for his demonstrated ability to understand the basic political situation, his insistence on hard headed realism in international affairs, and his perseverance in face of the adversity he has experienced, including multiple assassination attempts. I cannot honestly say I myself would be able to muster that level of resilience and determination. For these things, he was earned a level of personal respect that I give grudgingly. He has showed he is more formidable and serious than the incompetent clown I believed he was. He’s marginally better than someone like Harris who is a tool of internationalists who have no sense of history, no understanding of basic human nature, and no clue what’s going on. They didn’t think anything was wrong, but the evidence says otherwise. Things had to be very wrong for Trump to succeed.
That’s just incompetence. Had the Democrats demonstrated they were aware of the problems and had a plan to change and reform things themselves, I think they would have done better. They also screwed themselves by failing to recognize how far gone Biden was and got stuck nominating a candidate who was appointed as much because of her gender and race as for any ability to govern effectively, a candidate whose own presidential campaign didn’t even make it to the Iowa caucuses. Again, more incompetence. Where in all this does one find any credible evidence of governing skill or political understanding. I doubt Trump’s ability to lead and govern effectively, but he at least demonstrates a level understanding of the American people and the political climate. Small comfort, but better than none at all.
Thanks for your explanation, and hard-to-pin-down perspective. I respect your smarts and genuine individuality of mind. I’m quite a solitary and idiosyncratic guy overall myself, though I also have a social and even charismatic side–musical performance, comical rants, speechmaking and such–both in good and bad ways.
I think part of our apparent disagreement comes from a differing or unclear definition of “tribalism”. I don’t consider fondness for one own culture–music, mores, food, etc.–to be tribal in and of itself, but only when it becomes hostile or warlike toward other cultures. Or very insular and closed off.
Let’s discuss Trump another time, perhaps after more “evidence” comes in, one way or the other. I’ll just say that I find myself to be in more agreement with you than with most other outspoken commenters at UnHerd.
I’m repetitive pretty often myself–hope no one’s noticed! I enjoy our exchanges and could stand to take a paragraph or three out of your polite and humble approach. Cheers.
Wiser men than you and I have observed that most arguments can ultimately be boiled down to semantics. We debate tribalism though it is hard to define and if we asked ten people we’d probably get eleven or more definitions.
I see it as a scale. In the middle is the things of you don’t see as tribal at all. It’s love of country, culture, family, neighborhood, or however one defines their tribe and some sense of loyalty, duty, and preference for one’s own as opposed to others. As one goes further down the scale, things get dysfunctional. People start thinking of themselves as superior, then belittling other cultures, then believing they have a right to rule or even declaring anyone outside their tribe subhuman. We know from the 20th century what toxic nationalism looks like.
Going the other direction leads one first to a bland, listless apathy towards nation, culture, and eventually other people in general. It’s an atomized society with low levels of trust, high levels of crime, hyper competitive at the individual level. The USA is already pretty close to this on account of it being a very young country with a unique and anomolous history. The USA has thrived mostly hecause of the equally complicated system of government it has, which pits states, regions, ideologies, and factions against one another in a system thats nigh impossible for any one faction to dominate for long. Pushing beyond the USA is the globalism we see in the neoliberal order. Globalism threatens to recreate the same conditions, but on a larger scale and with no single system of law or government to manage the conflict. I don’t see this as desirable or viable
And it gets worse because farther down the scale past apathy, lack of social loyalty, past the atomized, impersonal society, you get the nonsense that we see on the extreme left, cultural self flagellation and people who hate their own culture or all culture and seek to destroy it. They begin to see every social standard and norm as oppression and subject to change at the whim of any individual, hence the left insisting men can be women on nothing more than their say so. They are just as bad as toxic nationalist conquerors, and maybe worse since civil conflict is nearly always more brutal and costly than organized warfare. Historically, this almost never happened, which reemphasizes to me how dangerous and abnormal our current situation is.
Whatever definition we use, our debate always seems to hinge on how much and to what extent the “good” and “bad” aspects can be separated. I take the pessimistic position that they’re linked intrinsically and trying to eliminate the bad will simply recreate them in other forms and you the optimist who has more faith in humanity individually and collectively. In the end we may be debating nothing so much as whether the glass is half full or half empty. Either way, cheers to you as well.
I agree with that, with the exception of the pessimism. I’ve long hated the far-left or radicalist idea that every cultural inheritance, from family to social norms are some bad inheritance we can easily improve upon, a “toxic social construct”. I also despise the arch-right idea that what is traditional and time-honored is therefore good, no questions asked or hardly allowed. And the deep pessimism about humanity that is betrayed by either extreme: to the left, a distrust of all culture and tradition; to the right, a gloomy view of human nature and societal improvement. Surely a Middle Path is possible (?).
It must pay well because Joe Biden has been in congress since 1974 and now he is a billionaire!
No wonder he had to ‘dish out’ so many pardons!
I’d be interested in the basis of your assertion that he is a “billionaire”. All indications that I can find are that he is worth about $10 million, based mostly on his good sense in buying land about 100,000 years ago when he was a young man.
AJ- When you start saying things like the guy that attacked Paul Pelosi was a Trump supporter (as you did below) than I don’t know how much discussion is left to be had about fair standards of judgment.
I have all kinds of critiques of Trump but I am going to defend him until the people that created the prohibition against “Bothsideisms” permit Whataboutisms.
My position has continued to be the same. Republicans are held to a standard that is comically higher than Democrats. The standard is Repressive Tolerance. A pathological Unfairness that tolerates left wing active measures and hysterically rages against all Conservatives as Pre-Fascist. Explain to me the concept of Bothsideisms and how it came to be used by the MainStream Media?
The “International Friends” you speak about have favored the Democratic Party for at least 16 years. That is why Hyper-Progressive Culture went International. We give aid in return for their governments becoming hyper-progressive. By restricting aid they have no choice but to become autonomous. In the process of becoming autonomous they will become more Conservative and frugal out of necessity. Luxury values are something only afforded to nations unconcerned with self-protection.
I made an honest error to call him a Trump fan (though the picture is not one-sidedly in the other direction either). Your critiques of Trump are private, or implied by your omissions, and generalities when the specifics are pretty much indefensible. Your defense of Trump and Musk and others is public (though anonymous, like mine) and damn near total. Mistakes and even outright lies about conspiracies and fabricated crimes are ok with you if they come from the home team, or bend in the perceived correct direction.
Your capital-letter Comparative Analysis contains a great deal of polemic and rhetorical craft. So does mine; I just want to stipulate that fact. You seem to admit you are entirely biased toward one party right now, right or wrong.
I think it is outrageous to suggest that double standards only benefit Democrats. Republicans tend to be considered strong on the economy even when it’s terrible, getting away with wild spending on defense and massive tax breaks that would more than offset even the most ruthless and reckless cut DOGE might make.
I don’t accept most of your Grand Premises at all. The Fairness Doctrine was attacked by conservatives first. And one of the first MainstreamMedia outlets to abandon it wholesale was FOX News (“Fair and Balanced” disappeared). And FOX is most certainly Mainstream Media, in my view. The most popular news channel, by a clear margin. I don’t like the squabbling outrage mongers on MSNBC or CNN either, even though most of them share my opposition to Trump. FOX and MSNBC are mirror images of awfulness and social irresponsibility. FOX lost two of its most fair and moderate voices: Chris Wallace and Shep Smith.
Plenty of conservatives and even illiberal populists have been elected in the West during the same period you characterize as one of collusive “hyper-progressivism”. I don’t think that belief is a fact and I suspect its been influenced, to a degree, by conspiratorial paranoia you’re exposed to.
I don’t think I’ve ever used the phrase “International Friends”. The worldwide, conclusive victory you envision for right-nationalism, populism, or some other contorted offshoot of conservatism is very much still in doubt. I’ve heard you be opposed to inequality in the past. Will Trump, Musk, and his other newly subservient broligarchs help the common man and woman? We’ll see.
I agree that Fox News is clearly slanted toward Republicans. I would only qualify that it’s simple business sense to staff it with right-wing polemicists when the entirety of mainstream television does the opposite. Half the market share is ripe for the taking. It’s effectively a Monopoly. I think NewsNation is pretty balanced. Leland leans right, Cuomo leans left and Abrams is a straight shooter.
I don’t envision a “worldwide victory” for Conservatives. I’m just pointing out that the Atlanticist coalition has coasted off the US for decades. They can’t even defend themselves. All their money goes into social welfare because they aren’t concerned with defense. It creates a society detached from national responsibility. I love that Canada and the Euro nations are getting some chops and leaning into Patriotism out of necessity. It will serve them long term.
There has been a clear attempt by the UN and other international bodies to create an environment of inclusion and cooperation by transferring funds from wealthy countries to less prosperous countries. You act as though there isn’t a massive international movement to erode the autonomy of the nation state through climate reparations and mass immigration.
I don’t like Tariffs in general but I’m going to let it play out because I do see the vision. It’s obviously a poker game and assumes the US has sufficient leverage to create a more reciprocal trade environment. There are valid questions about whether trade wars are a good idea but I agree with the notion that many of these countries have been taking advantage of the US. I also think trade wars are far superior to hot wars. Grandstanding on moral gestures doesn’t work.
There are just so many things in flux at this very moment, including the radical-throwback tariff spasms and bombs in Yemen.
I don’t think corporations or individual governments should have full autonomy over our shared air, water, and soil. And eliminating barriers to pollution hurts individual people including farmers, homeowners, and the neighbors of the most irresponsible companies and individuals. I agree that there was overreach in terms of impossible goal and “environmental justice” initiatives. I don’t think full de-regulation and edge lord style chanting of “drill baby drill” is a common sense corrective.
You see so much conspiratorial acting, but none on the hard-right? You act as if Musk didn’t try to sway a foreign election (Germany) with his giant platform, or as if Trump isn’t purging the security arm of the federal government according to personal grievance around his gross misdeeds after losing the 2020 election. Anyone who attempted to hold him accountable is a target; anyone who excused his behavior is favored.
I see a fundamental difference patriotism and nationalism. Love of homeland and willingness to defend it is patriotic. Hostility or superior-mindedness toward other nations is nationalistic. I’m not saying that’s a complete definition or unanimously accepted distinction, but that’s how I see it.
The notion that we can best assist other countries by abandoning our commitments all at once seems a bit rich. Trump’s lost a lot of former fans in my birth province of Alberta, which is right-leaning and individualistic by Canadian standards. The 51st state? What an insulting joke! But he appears to be at least somewhat serious. Even saying that repeatedly is total bullshit, at best.
How do Trump’s expansionism and economic shenanigans fit with any notion of helping or even giving a damn about the little guy?
Paragraph 1- These are targeted tariffs and airstrikes. You can disagree with the judgment but they are not arbitrary
Paragraph 2- Balancing economy and pollution is hard. ESG is the idea that a “just transition” needs to be “equitable.” So Trump is not just making random cuts, he’s making cuts to a specific global agenda that was focused on transitioning energy sources and then remediating economic fallout. Its not possible to do “progress” without increasing inequality. Hence why Greta sided with the “indigenous people” over climate planning. She wasn’t hypocritical to do that if climate transition and economic inequality can be reconciled…which they can’t
The slogan the “rich get richer” is just a basic unchangeable observation. People with more opportunities will as a group always outperform those with less. The socialist (bureacratic centralism) concept has always been about eroding inequality through government action. Basically giving government the tools to cap the ceiling and the floor on individual outcomes (equity).
ESG is basically a slow process of weaning western countries off Fossil Fuels while everybody else gets grace. What tells you that China or India is going to value environment over profit? Nothing. ESG weakens the US ability to produce against countries with dirtier energy standards. That’s a problem for the dollar and environment.
Paragraph 3- I’m not talking about conspiracies, I’m talking about international agreements and policies. There are 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. The world has been implementing these goals. I’m totally fine with you disliking Project 2025 but don’t act like there is no alternative vision its competing with.
Musk voted Democrat his whole life as I understand it. The left wing turn on Musk is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. Do you not think he was a loon when he was getting subsidies from Obama? Because everybody loved him then. That you hate Trump ok. But that you also hate Musk is disorienting…unless you’re tribal yourself.
Paragraph 4- Absolutely. Patriotism is a far superior conception than “Nationalism.” Patriotism is an idea behind the land whereas Nationalism is like a “land with an idea.” In Patriotism, primacy lies with the idea.
Paragraph 5- We’re not “abandoning our commitments” by asking other countries to pay an equal portion of GDP. Look at Canada’s defense spending. Its nothing. They feel totally secure due to neighboring the US. I’m done listening to how Canada has all these universal programs. Congratulations, must be easy to budget when you’re not protecting the world. I have great affinity for Canadians. Part of my family were French Canadians but the lecture period is over. No they won’t be the 51st state but they deserve the rib.
Paragraph 6- He’s not expanding. He’s acknowledging the Monroe doctrine and protecting the US sphere of influence as any responsible President should.
1) The targets are shifting and inconsistent—“arbitrary”? Ok, maybe not. Like his domestic targets, they are often motivated or at least influenced by his personal dislikes and appetite for revenge.
2) The claim that inequality must be increased to achieve “economic remediation” is quite wild to my ear. It’s a different thing to say the “balance must be shifted”. Trump and his pro-extraction insiders have given the “pollute away” green light to big interests, and spat all over alternate, less-damaging sources of energy.
It’s very frustrating when you launch into generalities that put this particular, extreme right wing agenda against some abstract takedown of socialism. Not everything to the left of Project 2025 is Marxist, or whatever. Project 2025 may have defensible logic in the abstract, but I see it as deeply un-American in its attempt at consolidation of king-like power in a single man. Also, Trump pretended to disavow it during the election season—a total lie.
3) You were talking about conspiracies and outright lies when you suggested that Musk’s misstatements were “directionally correct”. This “my team, right or wrong” mentality is a huge part of what is wrong with America right now.
Anyone who shills for Trump on a massive scale, claims South Africa is reverse racist, and pokes his nose into Europe with the notion that the AfD is “only hope” for Germany, is far over to the right in many respects. I think tech-bro culture and online meme-sters have contorted his already atypical, antisocial worldview. He thinks he can save the world through digits and gadgetry, then flee to Mars when that doesn’t work. I’ve disliked much of his outlook for at least a decade, whether he’s been aligned with the left, center, or right. (Remember that I live in Silicon Valley, where Tesla started). It’s true I’m not devoid of tribal sociopolitical sentiment, but making the Dark MAGA Lord into some litmus test of my total tribalism is off the mark. His approach to federal government reform is crude and simplistic, and quite hypocritical given the federal subsidies his own companies enjoy. I also think there’s something good in Musk, and he’s obviously brilliant in the IQ sense, so I hope he snaps out of some of it.
5) Siding with Russia to such a large extent is backing out. Starting a trade war with both your North American neighbors is backing out. Being more in league with Occidental autocrats than with Europe is backing out.
6) Publicly threatening the sovereignty of Greenland and Canada is expansionist in a way unseen from the U.S., with good reason, since 1898. Not a cute or deserved “rib”.
Anyhoo, once again this just goes close to nowhere between us. Especially when most have abandoned this comment board. Maybe we can find more fruitful territory in the future. And speak to rather than past each other a bit more. Maybe not. Have a good week.
I’m on vacation so less time to respond until late.
I enjoy these type of discussions. I do find them fruitful when everybody leaves but to each their own.
I was trying to pack a ton of material into Paragraph 2. Unfortunately I wrote it in away that could easily be misunderstood. I was trying to make the argument that the concept of “Global Governance” which relies on Global System Interconnectivity is an attempt to transition the world economy. Planners know that a transitional economy creates more risk for the poor than the Rich. The concept of a “Just Transition” means the global poor need to be given advantages because their economies are not fully developed.
I am not attempting to describe a “conspiracy” nor am I claiming every global planner is some diabolical Bond villain. I am merely trying to describe what is meant by “Just Transition” and how it is designed to change the world economy.
The JD Vance 20 min speech in Munich stated everything I believe about Atlanticist security. I’ve yet to hear a sober, reasoned rebuttal to date.
I enjoy and value them too—when they are discussions. I have a pretty robust appetite for arguments without consensus*, but not an unlimited one. I admit that I’ve only heard a portion of Vance’s speech. I’ll listen to the whole thing soon, and make an effort to take it in, instead of pre-planning “a sober and reasoned rebuttal”.
*by “consensus” I mean points of common ground or increased understanding, even when full agreement is not on the horizon. We have some of that, but I think we both tend to have a pretty combative approach, without much emphasis on common friends or even shared enemies.
Enjoy your vacation, even if you carried your political baggage with you
Ha. Touche.
By “sober and reasoned” I just mean taking all emotions and accusatory hyperbole out of the response. IE not treating the holder of the opinion as stupid and/or a bad person with malign intentions.
I’ll give it a try, but it might hurt my feelings and take me a hundred years.
I don’t actually agree that emotion in the sense of passion and conscience should be removed in all cases, but in terms of hyperreactiveness and likely insult, for sure. I’ll let you know when I’ve done my 20 minutes of homework. (Or conquered my emotions).
I sense some sass haha.
Yeah. My sense of humor anyway. Catch ya on the next board.
I’m a little disappointed you’re killing thos thread. I’m genuinely interested in your opinions and I’ve never felt “vitriol.” You may feel that toward me but I don’t.
When you talk about shared enemies- I’m fairly certain if we were both being honest we could reach common ground there.
Ok. Give me a maximum of 72 hours and I’ll listen to all of what Vance had to say, then respond.
All good. Spent today on the Gulf of America.
Well I’ve watched Vance’s unedited speech and I have a few remarks:
I agree with some of the broad strokes, and some of the details, including that the prosecution of Adam Connor-Smith was disgraceful. I don’t think Romania was right to invalidate the first round of an election.
However, Vance accuses the whole ruling class of Europe (in essence) of lacking a “positive vision that animates” them. But what is his vision? Opposition to mass immigration, particularly from outside our “shared society”. That is a defensible, even popular position, and one I agree with to a degree. The number and type of people that are allowed or enabled to enter matters. Yet it is not positive as framed, but trained against outsiders. The “enemy within” wording is something I don’t like at all: it’s a broadbrush label with an horrific history.
Also, Vance claims a “mandate” that 49.9% does not grant to the Trump administration (no number would justify an imperial presidency, but talk to me when you exceed 55%, at least). And Vance allies himself with the most extreme populists in Romania and Germany. I don’t want to get into it now or have my comment quarantined by buzzwords, but I think “extreme far-right” or something like that is fully warranted in those two instances. What is Vance for rather than against? Equating Thunberg’s scolding with Elon Musk’s extra-legal hatchet, sledgehammer, and chainsaw job is also a pretty unfunny stretch to me, though it got a few of the only laughs Vance managed to get.
The whole thing struck me as an out-of-place, scolding lecture, and a very calculated performance for his primary audience of one: Donald Trump. Still, while the import and tone of the speech mostly don’t appeal to me, I don’t disagree with every part of it.
We can debate—and hopefully also discuss—these themes in one way or another over time. Please listen to David Brooks give a 15-minute speech at the meeting of the conservative ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) about a month ago. He blames “educated elites” but also offers a more positive and hopeful vision, to my ear anyway. Let me know what you think.
I don’t have vitriol toward you either. We disagree about a lot, but while I think you have some hardline stances, I sense little to no mean-spiritedness in you. I think I’m kindhearted overall (51-plus percent) but maybe more inclined to anger and outrage than you are. Workin’ on it. Enjoy the agua, amigo.
Cheers. I’m a few fruity cocktails deep. I think JD is extremely optimistic. His main point is you can’t do anything at the highest level if you’re going to box people into arbitrary categories of being deplorable and then suppress everything they say as invalid.
The Democrat problem (which you don’t have) is that they’ve spent the last 10 years boxing half the country into a deplorable category. This isn’t a wholly stupid approach if “Democracy” just means plurality…as long as you’re confident in the “inherent goodness” of your coalition.
I do not believe it’s possible to accurately bracket wide swaths of people into ideological categories. I think you agree with that. But to control narratives, you need people affirming certain concepts as absolute. My personal opinion watching your responses since Jan 20th is that you sense a lack of checks and balances in Trump’s white house. And maybe you’re right about that. All I’ve been trying to express is thats exactly how Conservatives have felt the last 15 years when all the “fact checkers” from the “trusted news iniative” cherrypick information and appears hate half the population.
I will finish Brooks speech. I skimmed a bunch of them. That was at my homeboy Peterson’s conference if I’m not mistaken.
Yes that’s a big part of my concern—not enough restraints. Especially from within Trump’s administration, in contrast to last time around. I don’t sense much of what I’d call optimism from Vance but more of an antagonistic politics. Not that the Democrats as a group are convincingly for anything good at the moment.
I used to admire Peterson. Listened to many hours of his lectures and debates and bought two of his books. Now I find him way too onesided and angry. I still respect him, but at more of a cautious distance than in 2018. I also read JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and had considerable esteem for much of it. I think he’s drifted into a dark orbit too—and I’m not talking about Trump alone—but I hope I’m very mistaken about where his heart and head seem to be now.
I know I keep saying so without much pivot but I am trying to avoid giving in to antagonism and vilification over sociopolitical disagreement. It doesn’t make much sense to come into UnHerd with my rhetorical and emotional engines on so often, bickering with specific commenters and a readership that heavily supports, for example, Trump and Farage. I plan to hold my peace or keep my complaints to myself more often. Of course I had already planned that when below another article today I made fifteen or so comments about Musk, precious little of them positive. Sometimes I get carried away and that might not ever change completely.
It’s different with you and a few other subscribers. We share a mutual respect and talk to, not just at one another a fair percentage of the time. Enjoy the rest of your rest and recreation.
I think if anyone watches Peterson they will see somebody trying to approximate truth. That’s a noble thing to do. I’m not sure it’s possible to do that and be ideologically centered all the time.
The ideological center is not a fixed concept. You’ve commented on “Positionality” before. The whole concept of Positionality or Standpoint Epistemology in the US basically conceives an unfair White Supremacist Patriarchal Hierarchy and then seeks to “dismantle it” and implement restorative justice. The goal is to “center” ideologues that stand oppositionally to the default status quo. Over time this will create a more equitable, diverse society. Btw- Not a “conspiracy theory” its just what the Critical Theory claims.
Peterson is the present academic that most dutifully explained to the public why artificial, utopian hierarchies are doomed to fail. And he was probably 95% right. I don’t believe he is inherently political.
If nobody on the Left is joining him to oppose what he thinks are society’s biggest problems than how could he appeal to the Left? What might he do to get back in the good graces of the open minded Democrat. Honest question?
I’m not wedded to centrism in the way you might think. I just reject almost all of the ideology and policy of both the far-left and far right—whether Marx or Nietzsche (and I do consider them to be comparable representatives of extremity on the far-left and far-right, respectively).
Nor am I partisan at my core. I’d like to vote for independents or third-party candidates. I almost went for Perot in 1992 when I was first eligible to vote for president, and would have backed McCain if he’d gotten past Bush in the 2000 primaries. Then again, neither of those two things happened, so I might be more of a Democrat than I wanna admit. Still think I might make about a thousand bumper stickers and hand ‘em out free: Viable Third Party Now!
Jordan Peterson could regain more of my trust and esteem by regaining the ability to laugh. And by listening to those he disagrees with with greater openness of heart and mind, instead of imputing wickedness to them so readily. He appears quite married to a political and cultural movement now. I wonder if just about no one in the moderate-to-left range will speak with him publicly these days, or if he won’t speak to them. I think he’s now a bit too drunk—or perhaps wired—on his own intellectual supply now, believing too much of what he thinks as if it were something like capital-t Truth itself. However, he is also brilliant and sincere—if way too serious too often for my taste—and I agree he is a sincere truth seeker. That’s a lot better than nothing.
I don’t think it’s some major revelation to point out that idealistic aspirations are quite reliably doomed to fail in the actual human and natural world. At the time, for a few years last decade, he issued a welcome wake up call to that effect. Now he’s too onboard with ideologues to the right for my taste. Still, a man of sincerity and substance, unlike several right-identified leaders and thinkers I will forbear to name—and yes, the list of lefty impostors is plenty long too.
I wonder if being left-handed, like my mom and her father, influences my center-left leanings. Nah, that seems too silly and contrived.
I don’t support Positionality or Intersectionality or Standpoint Epistemology as good ways to interpret reality writ large. I despise most Critical Theory. But I don’t think all those ideas are inextricably linked to their left-wing, anti-white manifestations. Examining one’s own bias in terms of things like culture, demographics, family, genetics, personality, and experience seems worthwhile, to a point. Yet even with a thousand intersecting metrics that include height, wealth. attractiveness, intelligence, charisma, age, etc., it’s much better to engage with people as individuals than as members of a group, or network of groups. Reducing people to their outward or circumstantial traits was one of the worst failings among many on what I’ll call the hyperintellectual, dumbf**k left.
Odd. Your reply is gone again. I thought it was a fascinating answer because Nietzsche’s place on the political compass might be one of our disconnects.
It keeps zooming in and out. I know he’s not uniformly of the right, but his ultra-individualism, encapsulated by the notion that millions of wasted lives and pointless centuries could be justified by the appearance of one exalted Superman, was admired and weaponized by you-know-who. Nietzsche was an eccentric radical, who went from touched in the head to outright insane, not someone correctly assigned to one point on the left-right spectrum. But I believe his celebration of the Will to Power and of a kind of detached superior-mindedness makes him, on balance, a thinker understandably admired by the cold hard right. He’s varied and elusive though. A “read with special caution” kind of author, in my opinion. To me, Marx and Freud are similar, in that regard.
I can totally see that having learned more over the past decade. It was initially shocking to me that Europeans considered Nietzsche “Right.” I just assumed he was Left because I only ever heard him referenced by eclectic people that despised the Church.
My original conception of “American Right” is derived from something like the Protestant work ethic merging with the Jeffersonian agrarian economy. So values of Private Property, Self-reliance, Nuclear Family and at least a modest respect for the Institution of Church. My original conception of American Left is something like Egalitarianism merging with Radical Individualism. So values of Collective Bargaining, Shared Prosperity, Work-Life balance and a distrust of the Church.
I understand there are contradictions and unfulfilled ideals within that conception but that is my starting point.
I totally get why you get irritated by the constant Right-wing references to Marxism. But I do think Marx is quite a bit easier to trace than Nietzsche because he was a system designer. His dialectical system was designed to evolve and adapt to different environments. Marxism to me (and I’m mostly stealing from Voegelin) is just a form of Manichean Gnosticism that brackets people into good/evil boxes and inspires revolution to allow the good to subvert “evil” traditions and seize the institutions.
Marx is more Prescriptive whereas Nietzsche is mainly descriptive. Although, I take your point about the Ubermensch. There is certainly a Prescriptive element there.
One thing to note is that Critical Theory was originally conceived through Nietzsche’s “God is Dead what now.” Then it applied Freudian Psychoanalysis with the inverted Marxist dialectic (with culture being the base and economics being the Superstructure.)
I think I understand where you’re coming from on this too. The favorite Nietzsche quote of the undergraduate or weekend radical seems to be “God is dead”, without any mention of the tone or larger context of that statement.
I agree that Marx is more on the hook for people who’ve adopted this views, misinterpreted or not. He was more programmatic and one-directional, though I believe he admitted more complexity near the end of his life (a bit late we might say).
Nietzsche gets co-opted by eugenics fans and blood-and-soil folk etc., with his words made to mean things he didn’t mean them to much of the time.
Of course this happens with just about anything influential and lasting, the Bible included. I can understand and largely agree with arguments against radical empathy—it can be performed; when it’s real you can get paralyzed with others’ pain—but I see some self-declared Christians disavowing compassion, at least in practice. Not doing unto others as they would have others do unto them. And not practicing mercy toward the poor, the orphan, and the stranger*. I know these are giant generalizations, but they come from my heart on this Sunday.
*I understand that such failures to practice what is preached or professed as Gospel belief are not new. But there is an upstart energy around a form of conservative Christianity that seems extra hard and mean, and far from the heart of Jesus of Narazeth by my dim and flickering lights.
I think that’s a smart and fair assessment. Nietzsche said the only true Christian was Christ. In many ways, this is true. Of course, he meant it in a more condescending way. But the reality is that nobody can live up Christ’s idealized standard of both radical judgment and radical love at the same time. The concepts are irreconcilable unless you see Christ as the Logos and the standard worth pursuing regardless of it’s impossibility.
I really think the judgment part of Christianity is the hardest part. Its hard to show love to people you’re disappointed in…and you are commanded to assert disappointment. But you also can’t just throw people away unless they stand in absolute rebellion. Nor do you excoriate non-believers as less valuable, important or worthy because anyone with self-awareness knows they live in a glass house of failure.
Nietzsche hated the idea of pacifist Christian “Slave Morality” and correctly saw secular social justice causes including Marxism as little more than an inversion of Christianity. He thought both Christianity and Marxism produced inefficient hierarchies that hindered progress by restraining the strong.
While his assessment is overly broad, there’s always been wide swaths of Christians that like Marxists, simply don’t pursue earthly prosperity. Then on the other hand, you get cunning movement leaders that preach the “Prosperity Gospel” which beckons back to the Puritans who thought they were divinely elected.
What I don’t think you’ll find in an “Authentic Christian movement” is Eugenic aims. We could get into how the Plantation owners in the South justified slavery with Gospel. But the more I read about Southern Plantation Era Elitism the less I believe that Christianity was anything more than a cover story for a small group to justify their wealth and status.
My understanding of “Authentic Christianity” is that you really do have a duty to the less fortunate and everyone is redeemable. But you also have a duty to pursue personal excellence. You don’t do so for wealth or personal acclaim, you do so to Glorify God. In that sense, Nietzsche is right that it is a “slave mentality” and true believers see no problem with that.
My role model of an “Authentic Christian” is my wife. She’s an infinitely better person than I am in every way. But she inspires me to be better a little bit at a time.
Now we’re very much on the same page, for the most part. Personal excellence of a non-selfish sort, not seeking or wealth or status, at least not ahead of living the Message according to our best given lights. Not to regard ourselves as New Chosen People like the Puritans, make grace about net worth, or appropriate God’s judgment like some hellfire Christian’s of various sects do.
My ex-Catholic, semi-hippie parents didn’t raise me with any religion, but by word and example they taught me decency, generosity, and a kindness that is not always the same as niceness. I haven’t always lived up to their imperfect, genuine model, but it sticks with me.
I do not like the way old Friedrich sneers at the sacrifice and nonviolence made flesh in the life of Jesus. Don’t like it one bit. It’s a type of mockery he didn’t invent (I think the Romans who persecuted early Christians, or even haters in ancient Galilee, may have “started it”), but promoted in an influential way.
It is hard for a householder or family man to follow the path with all his heart, mind, and body. Close to impossible really. Hard enough for anyone at any time. Yet while there will forever be only one Jesus of Nazareth, I don’t agree it’s impossible. He said: “You can do these things, and greater, if you would only believe”. Still, it is a hard and steep path that at its ultimate point can lead to a deadly-literal imitation of Christ: martyrdom.
I don’t think Jesus was Christian* at all. To me, he was an enlightened, world-reshaping man raised in a version of the Hebrew faith. Even if we call him the literal only Son of God, that stills makes him the messenger, not a follower of his new religion. His offered prayer begins “Our Father” not “Dear Me”. I don’t expect you or many other people to agree with this, to put it mildly, unorthodox take. I’ll conclude this part by saying I don’t take a firm stance either way about any supernatural or otherworldly claims made in the Bible. I think it is most about trying to live the message in this life. A message that places radical forgiveness and a call to repentance before any final judgment.
My Grandmother, who died on 2/14/2020, was a very sincere Christian. She remained Catholic but her faith and acceptance of others grew over the years. She was part of the outreach in the Jews for Jesus movement that started in the 1970s. Later, she became interested in meditation and centering prayer. She taught religion for decades at a girls high school, and gave communion in prisons and hospitals. I’m biased, but I consider her to be the best overall person I have ever known.
Sincere congratulations on finding such a good example in your wife.
*I agree he was alone in the sense of being the only one known to have followed the perfect and selfless path of Christ.
In a related way I don’t consider Marx a Marxist, nor Buddha—whom I’d rather call Gautama Siddhartha—a Buddhist. That said, Jesus holds an incomparable place in my heart and mind. I ought to show it more.
I have a militant Atheist buddy that showed me the impossibility of using pure reason to evangelize an intelligent person on metaphysics. I’m not biblically qualified to convince anybody of the Plausibility of a Literal Resurrection anyways. I understand that we have our differences on the Nature of God.
I do think that the secular narrative surrounding the Christian Faith has been distorted by a kind of Magisterium of Experts who use “Science” to explain the “Matrix of Power Relations in Society.” To Voegelin, Nietzsche like Marx fell into that category of Gnostic Prophets that felt they had a unique, unimpeachable insight about the nature of humanity and their brilliance gave them eternal authorization to shape and modify social hierarchies. Because Christianity has been prominent in the West for so long, traditional Christians are often lazily put under a microscope and treated as “Oppressors” most responsible for society’s problems.
Then you have more utilitarian thinkers like John Dewey that answered the sort of Postmodern question about the nature of truth with Pragmatism. Pragmatism is one of those concepts like “Common Sense” that only works if you don’t sanctify yourself as the arbiter of the concept.
One of the concepts that Peterson likes to talk about is applying the Pareto Principle to Hierarchies which is the 80/20 or 20/80 concept. I’m being reductive here but my understanding is that he’s basically saying for every group task, about 20% of people do 80% of the work and you can continually scale that fraction. So for instance, within that 20% of doers, that fraction is also made up of a 20/80 split and so on and so on.
I don’t think this principle is precise or unimpeachable but I do think it approximates reality. My biggest issue with people that try to “remediate group inequality” is not just that’s it’s divisive but that it’s so directionally wrong as to create an axiomatically false premise about how inequality arises.
I absolutely think there is merit to the CRT position that slavery had a lasting legacy. There’s no question in my mind that if you completely ignore the existence of group disparities as if they’re irrelevant than you would create a kind of “Dominant Hierarchy” that’s completely ignorant of the conditions created by the past.
But there’s a big difference between reducing societal ignorance and using “experts” to actively remold hierarchies through a not so subtle quota system. Your surgeons, pilots, cops and firefighters need to be the most qualified, period. Minority communities are hurt more by Equity Policy than anybody. There’s no valid scientific evidence that having a surgeon that looks like you will improve outcomes. Yet there are tens of thousands of scientific papers that state just that.
We have a serious issue with politically motivated social scientists infusing their “scientistic” theories into hard sciences and preventing the top people from rising to the top. I’m not trying to be like Nietzsche saying that. I think at some point it just became reality. Where I think you’re 100% right is that there is a risk of overcorrection with roots in Nietzsche’s philosophy.
The only reason I went into my Faith is to point out that I’m opposed to Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” and “Might Makes Right” concepts as well.
In brief reply: I’d say we have at least identified some common enemies, including far left ideologues and advocates of eugenics or fixed power hierarchies. A level of “left-stuff” agreement was already clear, at least to me, but I’m glad to hear you specify ways in which you allow that the right can go badly overboard, or at least in the wrong direction.
I’m not trying to argue against your faith or oppose it in any way. I was describing aspects of my belief in God, which rests outside of institutional Christianity. I attend church sometimes, but there are certain parts of most sermons that I’m not on board with. The parts that resonate most with me tend to concern love and action in this world.
I’m thinking about how to unpack the crucial difference between “you shall know a tree by its fruits” and “the ends justify the means”.
As I understand it:
The first one is from Matthew about identifying and negating False Prophets who are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The second is about justifying present behavior or actions by the long term payoff.
Do you have a different understanding or are you coming from a different angle?
No not really. Just thinking about how a narrow focus on outcomes can lead away from a focus on doing one’s best in the living moment. I’m skirting the edge of something that hasn’t formed in my mind yet—and maybe doesn’t need to.
I think Peterson is intellectually brilliant and well-intentioned, but his numbers become a little suspect or doubtful to me at his level of insistence. The data may not paint a very complete picture of group task work. I’m not saying the numbers and trends are meaningless, but the “then what?” if not “so what?” follows. Some of that may also be due to dominant personalities and social imbalance, for example.
The underlying premises of CRT are valid, to some degree. The too common conclusions, like an essentially unbroken chain of oppression from slavery to Jim Crow to the present, are not correct or proportional. And the Ibrahim X. Kendi branded claim that any racial disparity in outcomes equals racism is just absurd. But it ain’t funny that so many people bought into it—or pretended too.
Gotcha. Thinking out loud is how you learn!
Standpoint Epistemology is stupid. While there’s obvious truths to the argument that a Minority has unique insight by virtue of existing outside the norm, it doesn’t automatically carry subject matter expertise outside of specific circumstances.
When Peterson took heat for talking about “Postmodern Neomarxism” he was just claiming: 1) The original Postmodernists all claimed to be Marxists, at least at one point. However, its probably more fair to call them “Marxian.” 2) Neomarxists are just ideologues replacing Class Positionality with Identity Positionality. 3) Neomarxists use Postmodern analysis of power structures to identify Oppressor/Oppressed and then like Marxists but unlike Postmodernists, they attempt to “actualize” change.
Where it gets confusing is as you know, Postmodernism doesn’t claim any one ideology is correct. It claims they’re all relative to time and place. The Neomarxists confirm this but claim they’re not actually ideologues at all. They’re just “describing power dynamics.” However they aren’t actually just describing like the Postmodernists. They are mystifying the public with this confusing dichotomy and prescribing a rearrangement of the hierarchy.
CRT/Intersectionality effectiveness is based on its Hegelian ability to use impressive verbiage to confuse smart people. I think radical leftists lack common sense but you will never hear me call the Theorists “stupid” even if their concepts ultimately become stupid.
Ok. I’m in primary agreement with that. As I think you know, I believe “far-right extremists” (you may not like the label, but I don’t encounter the term “radical right-ists”, though they certainly exist) lack common sense, or at least good sense in approximately equal measure.
You probably know more of Hegel than I do: What is Hegelian about sophistry or obscurantist language?
Hegel was a master at long winded abstractions that could be interpreted many ways. Marx was actually a very coherent writer but his Hegelian logic made his work unbelievably prone to the same problems.
When I’m talking about the “Radical Left” its actually not meant to be derogatory. Radical is a term they’ve used to define themselves historically. I am talking primarily about proponents of Critical Theory that see everything through the Lens of Group Power Dynamics. I would use different terms for less academic types.
Can you give me some examples of who specifically you mean when you refer to Far-Right and kinda Steelman what they’re claiming? Just some relatively popular public ideologues.
The question is whether Elon Musk is crazy or crazy like a fox. Experts are divided.
Experts can’t even decide whether he is South African or not.
Foxes are cunning, not crazy
That would seem to be the point of the expression.
Once the Americans wake up this board will be full of complaints raging that somebody has dared to criticise somebody involved with Trump
We already did wake up. That’s why we voted for Trump.
Musk, or someone like him, might be seen as a blunt but necessary instrument to begin the process of countering the decades of progressive influence on our way of life. Would someone who cares for ‘nuance’ have any effect at all? A kind of battering-ram then, like the start of a medieval seige to begin to break down the entrenched defences of the opposition.
This is how Trump is using him. Once sufficient headway has been made, he can be flattered (perhaps) with having done the job but then sidelined.
Trump certainly using him as a ‘shield’ and a ‘shield’ that gives him financial leverage too. Just all part of the Billionaires corruption.
Just taking a bit longer for the Sunk Cost in these two to unravel. It will happen though.
Are you Champagne Socialist?
No he’s another Billy Budd.
No j watson can actually make an intelligent argument and write more than one sentence. CS is a troll, and a pathetic troll at that.
Maybe CS has an alter-ego.
The thought that musk is doing this to get even wealthy is idiotic on its face. he is attacking The soul of the tribe that has been his biggest customer for Teslas.
No, he is Beer Communist.
The Left never has a problem with “their” billionaires. Especially the ones funding every protest.
Am reflecting…. Generally from what I’ve witnessed, this level of vitriol towards Trump and Musk indicates either stupidity or fear that a snout is fearing removal from the trough.
Trump himself playing the battering-ram in geopolitics, which has proven extremely effective in getting the two sides in the proxy war talking to each other again. Scarcely believable that the Biden administration refused all high-level political and military contacts with Russia for three years. The risks of that policy towards a nuclear-armed rival cannot be overstated.
Lots to criticise Biden for.
Remember though Putin broke a negotiated ceasefire when he invaded the rest of Ukraine. Something many forget. Ukraine hasn’t though.
Oh I see! Some guy I’ve never heard of, who works for a think tank I’ve never heard of is cleverer and understands politics and business better than the world’s richest man. Got it.
I think the best guide to Musk is Musk himself. Why not take the man at his word? Listen to him on Rogan because he explains his reasoning behind things.
He does appear to be genuinely concerned about the future of humanity and existential risk, particularly from AI (he gives it a 20% chance of causing human extinction) and asteroid impact. He genuinely believes in colonising Mars.
Like many of the other tech bros though, he is also a transhumanist (liberal eugenicist?).
The jury’s out on whether he should be classed as an ‘effective altruist’ but he is certainly a longtermist and a consequentialist.
His consequentialism, however, can descend into crude instrumentalism.
‘Destroy the woke mind virus’ -> Buy Twitter and get a president elected who will legislate against it.
‘Defeat excessive regulation’ -> Buy Twitter and get a president elected who will legislate against it.
All justified by the overarching:
‘Save humanity’ -> Manipulate the economy, politics and society to achieve this goal.
Musk believes he is the man for the job.
But he has clocked what many (most?) others seems not to have. Which is that the US debt, if left to increase at current rate, will become in the not too distant future, an existential threat to the republic. And he seems to have persuaded Trump, if any persuasion was needed, that addressing the causes of the debt ought to be a priority.
At considerable personal cost to himself (as he has admitted, perhaps even his life if the death threats are to be taken seriously) and to his businesses.
If he is successful, and DOGE does its work, then history will judge him kindly.
That Joe Rogan interview is a must watch.
That shakily founded belief and 300-plus billion dollars will get you an unelected position at the heart of government.
Finally, someone recommending listening to Musk in long-form conversation.
The man has likely taken enough ketamine to lobotomise an entire herd of wild horses by this point. It feels almost cruel to laugh at him.
Strangely, I find his ketamine use to be the only humanising thing about him.
Always my drug of choice at V Festival
I am more of a “traditional psychedelics” man, but I am not averse to the odd bump. I have never worked out why people think of it as a “dance drug”. I can barely walk.
This rather reminds me of the famous quote of King George II when informed that General Wolfe*was mad.
The King responded with:” Mad, is he? Then I hope he will bite some of my other Generals”.
*Conqueror of Canada, 1759.
Very good.
A similar anecdote has President Lincoln, on being told General Grant was a drunk, commenting, “Find out what whiskey he drinks and send a barrel of it to my other generals.”
I gave up with this.
First of all, if what Musk is doing with/on X bothers you, get off it. Some of us live quite happily without engaging with it.
Secondly, I don’t doubt the assertion that some on the right are spreading false or dodgy information. But this doesn’t have anywhere near the level of impact on me that it should: we’re coming off 10 years of being told that men can turn into women because they say so, that Joe Biden was “as sharp as a tack” when he was obviously senile, that lockdowns were the only way of handling the pandemic…so really, the idea that claims of debanking might be wrong just bounce right off me. I’d sooner have false information right out there where it can be criticised rather than have the info I have available to me curated by shady actors with an agenda. Freedom is a much better sanitiser than censorship.
Thirdly – about those debanking claims. Unless the author has cast iron proof that the debanking claims are wrong (which I very much doubt because you’d have to have unprecedented access to multiple banks’ internal records and the people involved in the relevant decisions – who are bound by strict banking secrecy rules) then whinging about Marc Andreessen making those claims is a pointless waste of time. I’m not interested.
Elon Musk is a very special character and one who seems able to develop long range perspectives and scenarios using logic. That’s why he’s sitting atop a company that trades off of belief in the future. What Musk tends to forget is the way that humans are governed by emotions as well as logic and that the emotions and hysteria triggered by what he might see as entirely rational actions to reach a desirable future outcome could very well derail him.
Good comment though X is a fabulous news and entertainment source. My favourite. Musk hasn’t forgotten about emotions, he simply doesn’t experience or understand them in the same way as ‘normal’ people…
“I’d sooner have false information right out there where it can be criticised rather than have the info I have available to me curated by shady actors with an agenda”. Sounds reasonable, however we can’t ignore the fact that information sources such as X are doing exactly that. The algorithms choose what is “put out there for debate”. They minimize the critical posts and make the false information the norm.
That’s only a problem if X is your only news source. Which for most people it obviously isn’t. And if it is then it’s your problem not ours.
Rubbish
“What Musk tends to forget is the way that humans are governed by emotions as well as logic”. Likely to do with his Asperger’s syndrome, which the author conspicuously fails to mention.
Indeed. Much of what the author criticizes makes a lot more sense when considered in the context of the disorder, though as someone who has the disorder, I have to also say he’s going out on quite a narrow limb. He has to know he doesn’t have the skills to navigate social interactions the way his boss does, but he’s attempting to do so anyway. He’s going well beyond what most people with the disorder would even dare to attempt, but then most of us haven’t been nearly as successful as he has in other endeavors either.
He’s going well beyond what most people with the disorder would even dare to attempt….which suggests he is going to fail utterly and completely (and probably end up with an angry mob at his door).
That is a distinct possibility. One of the life lessons I have learned is how vulnerable my disorder makes me to excessive hubris. I compensate by attempting to consciously practice habits of humility. Elon, I suspect, does not.
He figured that it early on that humility wasn’t going to bring him the success in business that he wanted.
Probably quite handy, because his ability to fake “humility” is zero.
Well stated. I have the same disorder Musk claims to have and I have to believe he is venturing into dangerous waters that he’s ill suited to navigate. He’s probably trying to imitate Trump does, but he’s not Trump. He probably doesn’t have normal social skills to understand what Trump does and how to react the same way. Further, I’m not even sure how much of what Trump does is intentional on his part and how much is just him being a temperamental jack ass or tweeting whatever random thought runs through his head at three in the morning.
The disorder does give certain advantages in terms of logic and reasoning. Because we aren’t personally emotionally invested in social group dynamics to the same extent, we can indeed see social trends and political patterns that others would not, and Musk has certainly profited from such in the past, notably by building an EV company, just at the right time to take advantage of massive tax breaks and subsidies for EVs when the larger automakers were too busy trying to avoid bankruptcy.
That, though, was simply a matter of understanding political and social trends and positioning himself to take financial advantage of political goals. What he’s doing now in trying to shape the narrative personally is far more difficult. Moreover, it’s not clear what financial play he’s even making. He’s certainly not making Twitter more popular than it was. He’s alienating the liberals and climate concerned people who form Tesla’s customer base, risking a boycott that cuts into sales. Budweiser had to learn the hard way the importance of knowing who actually buys the product.
Does he have some plan to profit from populism that isn’t publicly known? That’s possible. Maybe he has some investment in fossil fuels, domestic rare earth mines, or something else that will directly profit from the deglobalization and instability he and his boss are promoting? Perhaps he knows his companies can’t compete with subsidized Chinese industries and he’s simply leaning into making sure the world gets divided into blocs that make direct competition a matter of government spending on military technology and basic research, much as happened during the first Cold War. There are a number of possibilities for how one might invest profitably in a deglobalizing world, and Elon has enough fingers in enough economic pies that I doubt even the media knows about all of them.
Whatever his goal might be, it’s not clear to me how his engaging in twitter antics the way the President does, but less effectively, helps him at all. I think Elon’s success may have led him to have too much self confidence and too much faith in his own skill and judgement. He would be wise to remember that while he may be immune to many of the social forces that lead to grievous errors in normal people, he is more vulnerable to others, hubris being the most relevant. When one does not feel social pressure, one is apt to trust one’s own judgement and ability to a greater degree, particularly when coupled with such success as Elon has had in the past.
I think what you say in the last paragraph is correct. Musk is basically Hitler saying “I successfully invaded France. What could go wrong if I invade Russia?”
Pride is ever the bane of great men, women, and leaders. it has ruined far greater names than Elon Musk. That much is certain.
“Musk tends to forget is the way that humans are governed by emotions as well as logic and that the emotions and hysteria triggered by what he might see as entirely rational actions to reach a desirable future outcome could very well derail him“. Let’s hope that you are right about the “derailed” thing.
I agree, but what is the goal, actually?
I have run cost-cutting programs in which success depending on diplomacy and precision. The goal was to refine a working system.
This is not like that. The goal is to blow up 75 years of bad choices. The goal is to restore a Constitution that has been disrespected even by our Courts. The goal is to destroy a faulty, doomed system.
If Musk, Trump, or anyone else thinks they can predict the outcome of all this, they are crazy. But that’s better than continuing down the road to oblivion.
How large was your project and what was the timeline?
Great comment Katherine. Advising folks to get off of X, as commendable as that is, will likely face massive opposition because the technology is just so damn seductive, and people just love gossip. This wouldn’t be so bad except that now “serious” journalists are spending inordinate amounts of time investigating who said what on X, (as if that were newsworthy in itself), rather than investigating what is being DONE. The article you gave up on is a case in point.
Musk may indeed be a special character, but I still don’t want him, or any other tech-bro, anywhere near the levers of power. (We used to know instinctively that having the very wealthy to cozy-close to the seat of government was not desirable, which is why, for example, so many state capitals in the U.S. are relatively small, commercially unimportant cities.) He may be useful as a hatchet-man, but his vision of the future isn’t one I share, and I’m frankly astonished that there isn’t more debate about it. His vision of the future — colonies on Mars and people ever more dependent on systems they don’t control — is the death of democracy as we’ve known it. But do we really have to regard the creation of a vast, block-chained, placid underclass of serfs topped by a tiny minority of ultra-wealthy sociopaths as an inevitability?
Yes, the article is a magnificent display of mid-wittery.
Unlike our “democratic” politicians? I seem to recall 4+ years of Russia! Russia! Russia! collusion nonsense from virtually every anti-Trump politician throughout the “free” West.
Musk’s “reliance”? Musk follows 1000+ Twitter/X accounts. I’d hardly say he’s “relying” on Catturd, who does (occasionally) have useful/funny posts.
The author somehow knows that Putin thought the the invasion of Ukraine would be easy? What actual evidence does he have of that?
What the author doesn’t seem to understand is that all previous attempts to rein in the US Federal government have floundered, and that a wrecking ball is the only thing at this point that just might stop the USD from going up in flames.
Reality is though that Musk Tesla business was driven by government mandates and subsidies for green agenda.
In uk at least, great majority of electric vehicles are purchased due to tax reasons.
I live in London and you can see that his car business is eaten at premium level by likes of Porsche, Audi and Mercedes EV and by Chinese etc at lower end.
There are fewer and fewer Teslas in West London.
It is admirable though that Musk decided to support Trump, when his business interests in EV clearly benefited from mad green policies.
Musk says some stupid shit, can be very cringe, and is a very weird dude. But I also believe he saves the free world from terminal globalised managed decline with his purchase of twitter and his backing of Trump, so he’ll always have a hall pass from me.
No matter what eh?
A very well thought out and wise assessment of Elon Musk. At least I think so!
I will always applaud Musk and Thiel while being dismayed that there is any Labour connection with the Trump administration, observing the recent interview with the socialist Labour peer.
There’s a reason why Bannon was sidelined. MAGA prioritises a fair market, cultural balance and domestic security first.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t campaign vehemently for a substantial universal basic income when these boys launch their mass robo-workforces.
Huh? MAGA wants a “fair market”, so it throws tariffs around like confetti? DOGE is throwing everyone out of work, but I’m sure that it will get around to proposing a “universal basic income” any day now (I mean, that couldn’t hurt the budget, could it?)
It’s perfectly possible to be highly intelligent and hold utterly barmy ideas and opinions. Elon Musk is a perfect example and an even better one is given in the opening pages of David Robson’s book The Intelligence Trap.
Why is he so successful if he has barmy ideas?
Hardly one of the great inventors, iron masters and engineers, that kick started the most momentous event in human history, the Industrial Revolution, attended either Oxford or Cambridge. Sheer brilliance was all that was required.
Mr Musk seems to be following in their footsteps, as you so rightly say.
Superb. Nail on the Head!!
And then to combine with another Captain of Industry (albeit much less successful) with similar character traits our Don J. Jeez you couldn’t make it up.
‘Amassing of wealth is an opportunity for good deeds, not hubris’ – Thucydides
He’d rather go after the “entitlements” of people who’ve mostly paid into the system for decades, while receiving federal welfare on a massive scale.
Boring hit piece with inaccuracies. For example the concern is that fraudulent social security numbers is a vehicle to getting money from other sources.
“This isn’t a matter of being biased or getting things wrong like CNN occasionally does.”
Hahaha, ‘occasionally ‘! I stop reading after this sentence. Obviously a hit piece.
The examples regarding voter roles and DHS money are false. Illegals are on viter roles and DHS wasted money on illegals that should have been available for disaster relief.
As is so typical of the envious European pundits, it is YOU who have lost the plot. Elon is not in politics. Like his boss, The Orange Man, he is sacrificing everything personally in order to serve a higher purpose: saving his country. Politics plays no role; only duty. Perhaps a good lesson to others.
Eeeeh Hanania is American. And your sycophancy is off the charts.
Saving his ego, more like.
*Musk wasn’t hired to practice politics. He was hired to go over the heads of the politicians and bureaucrats who have allied to steal the country from its citizens. Going to be a bit messy for some time, I’m afraid. Like D-Day.
Bit drastic Daniel:
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Allied forces suffered approximately 10,000 casualties, with around 4,414 confirmed dead, including 2,499 Americans and 1,915 other Allied nationalities.
That seems a very high ‘kill to wounded’ ratio?
Normally one would expect at least three to one.
In an amphibious landing being incapacitated in the water would likely be fatal, unlike on land.
Good point, thank you.
Hmm. Interesting point. I wonder what percentage of the deaths were due to drowning, either alone or as a consequence of wounds?
And c 35000 French citizens.
Surely not on DAY 1?
Fair enough. Think of it as hyperbole – exaggeration to emphasize a point..
Thanks all for the comments (which is where I turned to instead of reading the article).
Derek Rayner, former joint Managing Director at Marks and Spencer, joined Margaret Thatcher’s government within days of the 3 May 1979 general election, in order to spearhead the new Conservative Government’s drive against waste and inefficiency. Rayner’s role as head of the Efficiency Unit was to bring this about in the UK’s civil service.
Sound familiar?
While there was some success, Rayner’s major stumbling block was the high intellectual calibre of the senior civil servants, many Oxbridge graduates, whose ’empires’ he was tasked to emasculate. And these were the people who would compose and justify the what, when, why and how of government policy.
And the longer term outcome?
As of September 2024, the UK civil service had 515,085 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, representing a growth of 3.8% over the previous year, marking the largest civil service since March 2007.
As Musk and Trump are discovering, it easy to sack staff and close entire departments, but somewhat more difficult to produce the briefs needed by senior government staff as they head into major negotiations with all and sundry.
And a not unexpected response to Musk’s over-confidence, some would say arrogance:
Tesla Sites Firebombed, X Hit with Major Cyberattack as Musk Aims to Cut Wasteful Gov’t Spending
https://cbn.com/news/us/tesla-sites-firebombed-x-hit-major-cyberattack-musk-aims-cut-wasteful-govt-spending
I’m pretty certain I know what Arnaud AMALRIC, former Papal Legate, Inquisitor, and Abbot successively of Poblet, Grandselve, and Cîteaux*, would have to say about that.
*All Cistercian.
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
“Kill them, for the Lord knows those that are His”.
Bit drastic, if that’s what you meant.
“Needs must when the Devil drives”.
I don’t know if the Devil does drive, but if so, I am sure he drives a Tesla.
“Sound familiar?” Dunno. Was Rayner a creepy aspy weirdo who hated the human race?
I stick this in Grok “What is the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology” and got this back (I summarised a lot of it):
“The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI) is a think tank focused on examining how ideology and government policy shape societal outcomes, particularly in areas like scientific progress, technological innovation, and social trends. It positions itself as a research-driven outfit, funding studies and producing reports on topics such as institutional dysfunction, political polarization, and biases in academia, media, and science—often with an emphasis on how these affect conservative perspectives. CSPI argues that modern institutions, bogged down by bureaucracy and politicization, fail to foster genuine innovation or address pressing issues effectively.
Founded by Richard Hanania, a political science researcher with a controversial past, CSPI operates as a nonprofit and has gained attention in certain circles for its critiques of progressive trends, like what it calls the “Great Awokening,” as well as its skepticism of policies such as COVID-19 lockdowns. Hanania’s leadership and writings have drawn scrutiny, particularly for his earlier associations with alt-right platforms under a pseudonym, which he later disavowed.
Richard Hanania, …has a controversial past tied to his earlier writings. From around 2008 to the early 2010s, he wrote under the pseudonym “Richard Hoste” for various alt-right and white supremacist outlets, including sites like AlternativeRight.com, The Occidental Observer, and VDare. His pseudonymous work promoted explicitly racist and eugenicist views—think advocating for forced sterilization of people with IQs below 90, opposing “race-mixing,” and claiming Black people were inherently unfit to govern themselves.
Hanania’s defenders—like some conservative commentators—say he’s genuinely moved away from that past and deserves credit for owning up to it. They argue his current focus on anti-woke critiques and institutional reform isn’t inherently tied to his old extremism. But the revelations did cost him ties with places like the University of Texas’s Salem Center, and they’ve fueled ongoing debates about whether his past disqualifies his present influence in right-leaning intellectual circles. It’s a messy story—plenty of people see it as a redemption arc, while others smell a lingering agenda…”.
That agenda shining through in this article…
I’ve got to get out more!
So, it makes any suggestion that Hanania is “of the Left” seem slightly absurd then?
Why don’t you just write “I hate Elon Musk” and save yourself the time? Because reading this article is…. a waste of time.
I’ll tell you who is really losing the plot. Unherd.
This author is typical of the Left. Calling Musk “Dumb” is dumb. And ascribing mental failure to him by implying drug use is as intellectually vapid as the barmy ruminations of James Carville on Trump. It’s so boring and predictable.
Dehumanizing others and destroying their reputation is all the Left has to offer. Tear down, never build up.
Plus this writer doesn’t need to be on X, get off it if you don’t align with it. What, you’re compelled to be on it?
Good grief, not everyone who criticises Musk and thinks DOGE is a fool’s project is ‘of the left’. And if you think this author is ‘of the Left’, you clearly know nothing about him.
“Implying drug use”? I think you will find that Musk is entirely open about his ketamine use.
All political figures lie. The Left lies in different ways and exerts influence through not reporting information that contradicts its narrative. At least the Right is entertaining. A political system that can present Barak Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the leaders people need is doing so in order to feather its own nest. At least Trump and Musk aren’t doing that to any such degree. They really do want to benefit the ordinary citizen. Yet another pseudo-intellectual word salad.
Trump is the textbook narcissist There is only one person who he wants to benefit. I’ll leave you to guess who that is, but I’ll give you a hint – it’s not the “ordinary citizen”.
I left Facebook in 2009 and have never had a twatter account or any of the other myriad anti-social platforms. Happiness.
Way ahead of you! I was never on Facebook! Never saw how it could make my life better!
I don’t know what is going on with Unherd.
Is it purely contrarian.
Only interested in confounding stereotypes.
Getting tiresome
Your view is that it should be a right-wing echo chamber? Anyway, Elon Musk is surely someone that everyone can hate, irrespective of their politics.
Musk’s attempt to depict entitlements for American citizens as mere inducements to illegal immigrants will see him fall spectacularly from grace if he dares to follow through on the threat. It’s on a par with Ramaswamy’s claim that American workers are so lazy, mass immigration of people with the right skills is necessary. The latter had to be got off the stage asap for that. They both betray a contempt for the great unwashed, belying their men-of-the-people schtick. Musk can be rash and ill considered. He can’t afford to be either. He’s begun to believe in his own legend, which makes him foolish at times. He alienates people needlessly. For all that, there’s more than a little of the hatchet job about this piece. It argues, at bottom, for the same ole same ole mediocrity and compromise for the sake of compromise that has such a sclerotic effect on the body politic. The system needs an emetic and someone like Musk is the right person to administer it precisely because he’s not of the system he’s trying to clean out. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be intelligent and careful about it. And he should stop playing to the most stupid elements of the MAGA gallery (a very wide gallery about which generalisations are ill-advised) – he should stop rabble rousing on X, stop insulting the intelligence of Trump’s broad voter base. Also his great free speech crusade amounts to little when the algorithms and moderators on X punish those who criticise Israel or Trump.
Elon Musk’s electric carmaker Tesla has warned it and other US exporters could be harmed by countries retaliating to Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
In an unsigned letter addressed to the US trade representative, Tesla said while it “supports” fair trade it was concerned US exporters were “exposed to disproportionate impacts” if other countries retaliated to tariffs.
The letter was dated the same day that Trump hosted an event at the White House, where he promised to buy a Tesla in a show of support for Musk.
It is unclear who at Tesla wrote the letter as it is unsigned, or if Musk was aware of it.
Tesla’s share price has dropped 40% since the start of the year.
Is the author among the people participating in the scam known as USAID or has a new condition emerged – MDS, perhaps to rival TDS in its ability to turn otherwise semi-rational people into caricatures of humanity.
How ironic that this author would mention ‘foolish wars’ but skip over how the last administration and most of Europe wanted more of it while the new team wants the killing to end.
I think most people who actually live in Europe know what Russia is all about, and are entirely comfortable with Russians dying in Ukraine.
I don’t know who said it. I’ve heard it attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
I was told that was Mark Twain, but he seems a bit like Churchill in that all kinds of quotes that were not his get attributed to him.
Just a really bad pretentious hit piece by an author who seems out of touch. I am ecstatic that Musk is not a politician, that is what is needed to clean the sewer of what DC has become. It is not the hard-working GS’s, it the middle-level GS14’s and 15′ plus almost the entire cadre of the SES that need to go. Start over, and while I would have liked a more measured approach, he is the man to do it. A lot of keyboard courage from Mr. Hanania. Just exactly what have you accomplished sir?
I found this a very persuasive article. Amusing but not very informative to see the various ways in which the Musk Fanboys try to discount/attack his arguments.
Given that Musk has admitted he has Asperger’s syndrome, it’s risky to evaluate him in the same way we would a normal human being. As someone with Asperger’s, I can say quite frankly that many of the normal rules of human behavior do not apply. Expecting someone with Asperger’s to react like a normal person in all cases isn’t reasonable. I won’t launch into a whole litany of those differences, but let it suffice to say that much of the author’s criticism might be related to the differences between normal people and the high functioning autistics like Musk and myself.
The question one has to ask of Musk is how much of what he says can be believed? Does he actually have a disorder or is it an act? It’s actually highly unusual for someone with that disorder to be so successful in business, where relationship building is so critical these days. We tend to be awful at that, no matter our level of intelligence. It’s also highly unusual for someone with an autism spectrum disorder to be so visible in the public. There have been other successful people who were autistic, such as Temple Grandin, but they didn’t draw nearly so much attention so purposefully as Musk does.
On the other hand, normal people tend not to admit they have mental disorders. Musk did, but might not see a problem because he has no real sense of social perception. For myself, I understand intellectually that people with mental disorders are often stigmatized, but I don’t understand it and I can’t really feel it myself. I generally don’t even notice if people react to me differently unless I’m paying close attention, which I rarely do. Further, Musk displays the disregard for emotional context and social cues that are typical for the disorder. Further, he engages mostly through the medium of the Internet, to the extent that he arguably bought Twitter as a means to express himself and wield his power as the world’s richest man in a way that was possible for him. Musk’s leadership style is similar to what I might expect from myself if I were in his position. He leads by authoritarian means and has complete and utter confidence in his own judgement. He decides what counts as ‘evidence’ and establishes his personal beliefs just as a normal person does. The difference between people with this disorder and others is that differing opinions have no emotional impact. It doesn’t matter to him how many people or who disagrees with him. He may or may not have specific individuals whose opinion has an effect on him, but people on the Internet might as well be AI bots for all he cares.
If you follow my comments, you may notice that I don’t display such a pointed disregard for dissenting opinions. That, though, has less to do with the disorder and more to do with how I try to practice such virtues as I was taught, notably humility and compassion. Moreover, I have had far less life success than Musk, and thus have no rational grounds to have that level of self-confidence. Musk has billions of reasons to attest to his own intelligence and ability. Most who have the disorder are not so fortunate.
At whatever level of success, we tend to develop ways to compensate for our deficits, much as a blind man learns to use a cane or even crude echolocation. Some of those are in the form of habits, such as my practicing humility, self-examination, and good manners. Some take the form of mental rules about behavior in certain situations. Some are based on observational skills. Others are less positive. Notably, many of us, myself included, learn ways to use accumulated knowledge, observations, and an understanding of basic psychology to manipulate normal humans in a manner similar to psychopaths and sociopaths, though with considerably less skill. Then, of course, most of us take medications for our condition or some of the many common accompanying conditions such as anxiety, depression, and such. Those who can’t afford prescription drugs and/or lack access to proper heath care may self medicate through various illegal drugs. Someone like Musk, who has supreme self-confidence justified by real success, might simply take over his own medication using his own judgement.
Given the totality of the evidence, I think it’s likelier than not that Musk does have Asperger’s, but I can’t rule out the possibility it’s some kind of front, possibly for some other disorder or just as a play for sympathy. Further, two things can be true. Musk can have the disorder AND be deliberately misleading the public in any number of ways. As I said before, the methods people with Asperger’s and other forms of high functioning autism use to ‘fake normal’ can allow us to manipulate people with varying degrees of skill, and Musk is likely among the most intellectually gifted, so there’s no telling what he’s capable of.
Let’s keep in mind that Musk made a substantial part of his fortune from Tesla, a company that benefited vastly from EV subsidies much like the Chinese EV makers who are by some accounts building superior products. He’s been taking advantage of social and political trends since well before 2016. We know now he never had any loyalty to Democrats or climate change activists, who used to believe he was ‘one of them’. He simply noticed a business opportunity, took it, and took further opportunities to profit from his status as a celebrity known for EVs, a pet cause of liberals. He’s doing the same thing today. He just noticed which way the wind was blowing and decided it would be advantageous to switch sides, so he did. Because he sees populism winning over the long term, he turned coat to be on the right side of history. Only history will show whether that was the right choice or whether it helped him any
He may or may not have any moral compunction one way or the other. He may believe, as I do, that very little of what happens on the level of whole civilizations is within anyone’s influence or control and nothing he says or does makes that much difference in the grand scheme of things, but could make a big difference for him, his family, and his personal goals. What his actual personal views are I can’t say, but he seems to be a believer in technology, innovation, and human expansion in a general sense. I’m near certain that his real views have nothing to do with the nonsense he puts on Twitter/X. Honestly, that looks more like he’s an Asperger’s person trying to imitate Donald Trump. Why he feels he needs to do that is beyond me. I know why Trump, as a politician, would engage with social media and promote himself outside the traditional media. I just have no idea how much of it was intentional strategy on Trump’s part and how much was dumb luck. With Elon I strongly suspect he’s doing it very intentionally and has a clear purpose in mind, but I have no idea what that actually is.
I appreciate your analysis and self-reflection here. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the tech-world journalist Kara Swisher, but she thinks Musk—who she’s interviewed several times and had a friendly connection with—definitely yearns for attention and approval. And she opines that ketamine has indeed thrown him for an extra loop, at least for a while. In any case, perhaps the idea of spectrum has particular relevance here. It’s pretty clear that Musk is not devoid of all social needs, and does care what SOME people think.
Do you know if Ms Swisher has actually used ketamine herself? I have heard a lot of people opine on what effect Musk’s ketamine use would have on him, but it is obvious that most of those have never used ketamine themselves, and thus have no clue.
She admits she hasn’t. The interviewer she told that too, Ezra Klein, replied that he knew plenty of people who’ve taken it and not turned hard right or gone off the conspiratorial deep end. I’ve done psychedelics, but not “k” and not recently. You? Multiple people close to Musk IRL have observed that SOMETHING seems to have snapped in him since about 2022.
Yep, I have done a reasonable amount of ket (although I prefer “traditional psychedelics”), and I know a number of people for whom it is the “preferred drug”. The key with it is it is a “quick in, short run” kind of thing. 20 minutes is typical. I have never encountered anyone who it has effected in any kind of “long term” way.
Duly noted. As a teenager in the 1980s there were several people in my suburban town who had “fried their brains”, seemingly in a permanent way, by the “traditional” use of shrooms and acid. They could speak and do basic math, but they tended to slur, talk in a bizarre way, and have what I call eyes of Jupiter.
Well, that’s the other thing about ket. It is not possible to do so called “heroic doses” of it, as one can with other psychedelics. If one does too much ket, one just becomes unconscious. It is after all an anesthetic. As to “frying one’s brains” on ‘shrooms and acid, I have met a few people like the ones you speak of. They are not however, the ones that do the most ‘shrooms and acid (in a “size of dose” sense).
Well, even I am not devoid of ALL social needs. I have some needs, but a fraction of what would be the average. I recall taking the MTBI in high school as most of us did. I got a perfect score for introversion. I may just be a more extreme case than his. Autism is a spectrum after all, and many experts believe that everyone is on the scale, with autistics simply being on one extreme of the scale at a level that rises to a pathological level. It may help to think of us not as different by nature so much as by degree to an extreme extent. That’s what professional psychologists would probably tell you, though I tend to use absolute analogies about birds and fish. It’s good to be aware of one’s tendencies.
I often cite that movie, Castaway, where the man on the island starts seriously talking to a volleyball. It takes just a few months for social isolation to put him in a very irrational state where he’s talking to a volleyball. That scene is meant to be tragic and show how the emotional pain of isolation and show its devastating effect. I remember almost laughing because of how absurd it seemed to me (glad I managed not to in hindsight). I believe that given enough time isolated I would eventually display some odd behaviors, but it wouldn’t be that pronounced and it would happen very slowly and take much, much, longer, several years minimum, maybe decades.
What Elon is doing seems awkward and ill conceived. Trump is a master manipulator who was successful in a business that depends upon interpersonal skills and as a celebrity/entertainer which requires the same skills, plus an understanding of reading a room collectively. I can’t imagine a person that would be harder for me to imitate than Donald Trump. He has a set of skills that is alien to me. I think that’s why so much of what he does escapes me. Then again, I can’t rule out that he’s just the world’s luckiest idiot, a political Mr. Magoo. I couldn’t do what Trump does consistently or effectively with any amount of practice. The attempt would require a huge mental exertion that I couldn’t maintain. If Elon is in fact maintaining that level of effort through drug use, it explains quite a few things actually.
*I have several (polite) things to say in response to your intriguing comment here, but I’m in a slight rush so please check back in a day or so if you have time. **Follow-up:
I’m glad you clarified that you have some social needs or impulses. I thought so but I wanted to hear your own take. A perfect score seems pretty conclusive–then again no test can take the full measure of our created nature and individual psyches, which are not transparent even to ourselves.
Though I can be very social and comical, I’m a pretty solitary dude much of the time myself, by habit, and partly by choice. As an adult, I’ve made a few friends to add to a couple of ongoing childhood friendships, but they don’t live nearby and tend to be pretty solitary themselves–no coincidence I suspect. Unlike you I haven’t given up on connection with the opposite sex, but I’ve spent most of my life outside of a romantic relationship. Not utterly dateless, but single. Even in my fifties, I still hope to meet a good and patient woman…maybe at church or a meditation retreat instead of a bar this time!
Putting aside Trump for the time being, I have opinions and guesses about Elon but also find him quite baffling. He’s intellectually brilliant and there’s clearly some sincere good in him. Seeing him around the news and talk-show circuit since the aughts, he used to be quite a bit kinder and more balanced. I think he might be more susceptible to online garbage and digital approval than he would admit to himself. I also think Kara Swisher was on to something when she called him “the most powerful 15-year-old boy in the world”.
I loved the movie “Castaway”. I doubt I’d take long to display odd behavior, since I’m the kind of guy who tries not to crack jokes or sing at inappropriate times, and sometimes fails to restrain myself. Like most of us in my observation, I got a bit crazier during the pandemic, but believe I’m back to whatever constitutes normal for me now. Even by my own admission, I’m a pretty strange and moody guy. Suffering a few long clinical depressions–fortunately not for over 15 years now–did build an increased sense of compassion and gratitude in me, I’d say.
I enjoy our discussions and debates too, and appreciate your thoughtful and thought-provoking perspective. Have a great Sunday.
Yes, excellent posts from both yourself and Steve Jolly. I have learned lots from them. Being exposed to alternate viewpoints on a range of things is the reason I am here.
Very interesting post. The one comment I would make is that in the time Musk has been in the “public eye” (which is now a fair while), I have been struck by his complete inability to “fake normal”. He simply has no real idea of what “normal” looks like. I once (semi-jokingly) posted on this site to the effect that I had been pondering the conspiracy theory that the world was run by shapeshifting alien reptiles. I said I wondered what a shapeshifting alien reptile who had taken on crude human form, and tried to conduct itself as a human (despite having no frame of reference for that) would look like. I said I had concluded that the shapeshifting alien reptile would act a lot like Elon Musk does.
That’s actually a fair analogy. There’s a sight for Asperger’s people and their families called wrongplanet.net, so you’re not the first person who has likened us to aliens, reptilian or otherwise. It’s something many of us are aware of ourselves,In fact, most of us would recognize the analogy ourselves as some of us have used it personally.
As I write this, it occurs to me finally that most people would probably be offended by being likened to a shape shifting alien reptile. As you can see, I actually wasn’t. My first reaction was more of a “yeah, that’s about right. I am just like a shape shifting alien. That’s a really interesting way to look at it.”
It doesn’t occur to me until a few minutes later that normal people might have gotten offended by that. That’s often how it is with us. We do learn how normal people usually act and we can memorize what social signals mean and recognize them, but we have trouble reacting in real time. It often takes some period of time before we register that we’ve done something that would seem odd or that someone has sent us some non-verbal or indirect social cue that we missed. We miss a signal and then some minutes, hours, days, months, or years (not an exaggeration for me) later we suddenly recall that event and realize the thing we missed because we’re now just watching rather than participating. It’s generally easier for me to catch things when I’m not actually engaged, a fact I attribute to my learning much of my socialization from television, which comes with its own set of problems.
We have to be concentrating and paying close attention to ‘fake normal’. I can do it with a single person for a short term interaction. I don’t even bother to try anymore when there’s more than two people present unless they’re familiar to me. I also can’t keep my concentration enough to fake normal all the time if I have to be around someone a lot, so they eventually see me as ‘odd’ or ‘off’, usually in some way they can’t quite define. Again, the shape shifting alien reptile really is a good analogy.
Thanks. I chose the term “shapeshifting alien reptile” simply because of the conspiracy theory – I can’t remember who came up with it (David Icke, I think). I have no direct personal frame of reference for Asperger’s, but I suspect that it is a bit like trying to do something like driving a car having taken lots of LSD. You have to concentrate A LOT on something that would normally be totally reflex (“….depress the clutch, look to the right, look to the left, ease the clutch out slowly….what is that bus going to do…..check the rear view mirror…..how far till I turn, do I indicate now….”). Take it from me, sitting at a green light wondering whether it is the same shade of green as it was yesterday is probably not where you want to be. I should stress that I do this sort of thing only very rarely.
That’s not a bad analogy either. That gives one an idea of how we’re trying to mentally juggle ten things at once consciously because for whatever reason the unconscious parts that enable more fluid and natural social interactions doesn’t work. Where the analogy fails is that we have no frame of reference for what ‘normal’ actually feels like. So it’s more like a deaf person learning to play the piano. One can learn to read music, which keys correspond to which notes, and how to hit them in the correct combination and sequence. It’s technically possible but they have no concept of what ‘music’ sounds like or what sound even is. It’s like running a computer algorithm. It would seem like an odd choice for a deaf person to even pursue this hobby given their particular limitations. What Musk is doing seems equally odd. He’s either got some reason we haven’t seen or he’s just one of those folks who wants to do things to prove they can, no matter how difficult or impractical that is. There’s a skateboarding blind kid, so maybe it’s like that.
Well, when you name your department after DogeCoin, a comic meme-coin intended to parody BitCoin, it’s not surprising that the outcomes of your efforts turn out to be a parody of reform.
Great article Richard, but unfortunately we are a long way from Trump fans being honest with themselves about what is happening before their eyes. The number of outright mistruths in the comments suggests most are still deep in their information bubble.
“Fewer people working at the Food and Drug Administration, for example, doesn’t mean regulators getting off the backs of pharmaceutical companies trying to bring drugs to market.”
All those employees at the Food & Drug Administration haven’t done much to contain and reduce the massive drug problem in the USA! Getting rid of a chunk of those employees therefore won’t make much difference to the work of the DFA but will have a positive impact on the USA budget!
Musk is the saviour of free speech … we owe him big time!…
He is right about Zelensky and he is killing DEI and a multitude of other utterly preposterous woke projects the crazy left have saddled us with.
He’s doing a great job!
Good piece. Western Governments have grown far too large since 1945 and the DOGE concept is necessary and brilliant but it is being destroyed by Musk. Trump will soon realise that Musk and tariffs will mean his Presidency will effectively end in two years time and the Democrats will retake the WH in 2028. That would be a shame but maybe Trump doesn’t care.
This leads to perhaps a more important difference between business and political success, which comes down to the ability to negotiate with and placate one’s enemies.
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A lot of years we enjoyed the ability to negotiate demonstrated by Democrats. Lets enjoy Trump/Musk/Kennedy skills to negotiate
I offer no comment on the other two, but Musk has no ability to negotiate. He is a creepy autistic weirdo with zero people skills.
What about Biden?
Seemed like a nice guy. Got a bit “over the hill” at the end, I will admit.