Recently the mega-billionaire from South Africa, Elon Musk, has transformed himself into a crusader for Americans’ right of free speech. Musk is best known as the founder of the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla after buying a stake in Tesla after its founding. But to be fair, Musk’s settlement of a lawsuit with the real founders of Tesla, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, contained a stipulation that Musk could claim to be a founder of Tesla.
A little while back Musk purchased the occasionally profitable but wildly popular, in some circles, social media app Twitter. When Musk did so he became a hero of sorts for certain segments of the American Right. As the narrative goes, after buying Twitter, Musk struck a historic blow for free speech by abolishing the chains Twitter’s previous CEO, Jack Dorsey, had allowed to constrain the free speech of right-thinking Americans. Case in point, Musk unblocked the Twitter account of fellow billionaire and obsessive Tweeter, ex-president Donald Trump.
Of course, unblocking Trump made Musk persona non-grata for many on the American Left. I would think those who addictively focus on every single ill-advised Trump blathering would be ecstatic by Musk returning to Trump his favorite platform, but not so. The would-be friend of my enemy is my enemy.
What is confusing in Musk’s metamorphosis into a hero of the American Right is that just a few short years ago Musk was a hero of certain segments of the American Left. As that narrative went, Musk was the engineering and management wunderkind who was leading the crusade against Big Oil and the evils of the Internal Combustion Engine. By spearheading Tesla’s efforts to make every car in America an electric car, Musk was going to save the world from the devastations of climate change. To add to Musk’s left leaning bona fides, the Obama Administration, in the first six months of Barrack Obama’s first term, lent Tesla $465 million to save it from bankruptcy and to develop Tesla’s first mass produced electric cars and the batteries to power them.
Did Musk’s fanboys on the Left travel with him to become fanboys on the Right, or did Musk just gather a whole new legion of gullible fanboys with his flip? I suspect a little of both. And as Musk sells Tesla shares in droves to finance his purchase of Twitter, does it matter to his fanboys on the Right, the Left, or those in between that Tesla manufactures and sells about half its cars in Communist China? Ask Jack Ma if anyone does any business in China without Big Xi’s explicit approval and the free speech rights of those under Xi’s thumb.
And does it matter to Musk’s newly minted fanboys on the American Right that Musk’s solution to resolve Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have made another great nemesis of the American Left and a founding father of the modern American Right, Ronald Reagan, turn over in his grave? President Reagan was famous for calling out the Soviet Union. While standing before the Berlin Wall which was the dividing line between the democratic West and NATO and the Communist Warsaw Pact, Reagan demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” But here’s what Musk tweeted as the former Soviet Republic Ukraine began to turn the tide of the war against Russia in this fall.
Ukraine-Russia Peace:
– Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.
– Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).
– Water supply to Crimea assured.
– Ukraine remains neutral.
So according to Musk, not only should we allow Putin a victory by letting Russia keep occupied Crimea, but the Ukrainians should be forced to supply Crimea with water and be precluded from making any treaty that would help protect the Ukrainian people from further Russian aggression, something every other free and sovereign people in the world is allowed to do. And nary a mention of restitution to the Ukrainians for Russia’s wholesale destruction of sovereign Ukraine. Just brilliant, Elon! Certainly, let’s help Putin rebuild the Soviet Union!
The former Soviet KGB agent Putin in Moscow and China’s Communist Dictator Xi Jinping, for whom Musk would never, ever exercise his free speech rights to criticize for the reasons mentioned above, would love Musk’s “peace” plan. And next let’s allow the People’s Republic of China to keep Taiwan after Xi invades because the democratic and sovereign island nation of Taiwan was always a part of Communist China, even though it never was.
Elon Musk never was and never will be a loyal friend of either the American Left or the American Right. Musk has never demonstrated that he holds in high regard the principles and aspirations contained in our Constitution, such as freedom of speech or any other basic fundamental right. Musk has demonstrated that his only loyalty is to himself, his own enrichment and self-aggrandizement, and his own vision of himself as the biggest brain amongst all of the big brains.
