Elon

     It wasn't long ago that I was talking to some friends about, and thinking to myself about, the wild attacks against Elon Musk, genius loci of (among other things) Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, Starlink, and the social-media company X (formerly known as Twitter). Sadly, I know many people, friends and family, that think Musk is a horrid human being. Now, much of the anger is because Musk, at least for the time being, is a fan of Trump. These friends and family members would turn on their Messiah in a heartbeat if he actually returned and said, “Hey, everyone! Me and The Donald...we're tight!” Out in the real world-at-large the attack was led by one Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. Writing in The Guardian, Reich insisted that “Elon Musk is out of control.” Why? Because Musk said, and has allowed others to say, things on X that run counter to the prevailing politically correct narrative. Reich offered a number of ideas designed to “rein him in,” most of which involved imposing onerous regulations on his activities or canceling contracts he had with the government. If all else failed, there was always incarceration. 

    Remember before Hurricane Helene devastated bits of North Carolina and Musk stepped in to offer free internet service to those without power through his Starlink network? His entrepreneurial initiative infuriated his critics. Especially the bureaucrats clustered around the less than noteworthy Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Defenders of the Leviathan that is our government, from the White House on down criticized Musk for—well, for demonstrating in the starkest possible manner the effectiveness of private initiative compared with blustering government inertness. Talking heads from the press fell over each other to hop on board the “Get Musk” train and have been verbally killing him ever since. Hilariously, the perpetually agitated jackass...uh, I mean, political commentator Keith Olbermann (who has been mentioned in this space before) even suggested that Musk be deported. The one great thing about Olbermann is that he's consistent; consistently stupid. Musk is a citizen. But to his credit, stupidity and being an asshole never stopped Keith. “It’s time to cancel all the contracts and reassess his immigration status, and hopefully deport him the hell out of the country,” Olbermann said in a video. I know it's childish of me to repeat this...but Musk is a citizen, Keith. Moving on.

    Since, like his ideological confrères (yep, 3 years of French!) Olbermann occupies an irony-free zone in which he made no mention of the fact that his diatribe against Musk’s expressing opinions with which he disagreed (“disinformation”) was posted on X, which Musk owns. I ask you, dear reader...can you imagine if the roles had been reversed? Do you actually think Olbermann would countenance an attack against him on a platform he owned? Really?? I have a better chance of winning the Nobel Prize. In this context, it is worth pausing to ponder the tort of spreading “disinformation.” For people like Olbermann, so-called disinformation need not be false, only inconvenient. And why is reporting on FEMA’s frightening failures “disinformation” while surreptitiously editing Kamala Harris’s response to a question on 60 Minutes is just business as usual? But I digress.

    The Left has abominated Musk ever since he acquired Twitter and returned the platform to its roots as a space in which robust disagreement, so long as it was legal, could proceed unfettered. Under its previous leadership, Twitter had suppressed the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 election; it suppressed or outright removed many individuals and institutions who dared to challenge the dominant narrative about any sensitive issue, from COVID policy to the presidency of Donald Trump. Perhaps most notoriously, Twitter actually banned Trump himself, then the sitting president of the United States. Trump’s a jackass, but you CANNOT ban someone from an open forum like Twitter just because that person is a crappy human being, and not expect repercussions from the Free Speech crowd.

    And it may go without saying that Musk’s recent enthusiasm for, and endorsement of Donald Trump was the final insult, the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost of The Narrative. Think about this for a second; with SpaceX, Musk has transformed the American space industry. His company now launches most of our satellites, and it was recently one of his rockets that was sent to rescue two NASA astronauts stranded in outer space. He has cut the cost of space launches by a factor of TEN, and his recent airborne capture of a Super Heavy booster awed the world with its science-fiction-like engineering prowess. Nevertheless, something called the California Coastal Commission recently denied a proposed increase in the number of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from thirty-six to fifty despite the request’s coming from the U.S. Space Force. Why? Because some dope named Gretchen Newsom (no relation to the governor of California, whose only claim to fame is his hair), one of the commission’s bureaucrats, doesn’t like Musk’s social-media posts. “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA,” she said before the committee voted down the request. Are you kidding me? And people wonder why companies and intelligent people are leaving California in droves.

    The full-bore assault against Elon Musk is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If the richest man in the world can be harassed, sued, and regulated into inoperability, what about the rest of us? At stake is not just the openness of social media. Rather, at stake is the free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. It used to be that leftists would publicly stand up and shout at the top of their lungs for the First Amendment, no matter their censorious behavior behind closed doors. Nowadays, the First Amendment, like other basic provisions of the Constitution, is up for grabs. Former Secretary of State John Kerry (another dope who just won't go away) gave voice to this troubling feature of the zeitgeist recently when he spoke at a World Economic Forum panel. The trouble with the First Amendment, he said, is that it is a “major block” in the battle against “disinformation” about such things as climate change. If the Democrats win, he went on, then at long last they can “change”—i.e., gut—the troublesome provision. Think about that. The First Amendment; “a troublesome provision.”

    This is the way the world ends dear reader, not with a bang but with a subtle chipping away at our most cherished, and our most important, Constitutional right.

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com