(NewsNation) — Elon Musk has, in the public’s eye, became an awful, horrible threat to humanity that must be stopped at all costs.
It’s weird, right? Think about it from Elon’s perspective.
First, he started PayPal. Who can get upset about that? It allowed us to buy stuff on eBay. The New York Times loved him back then.
Next came Tesla, and then the New York Times really loved him. He was hailed as the visionary ready to save the planet with electric cars that drove themselves. Not liking Tesla Elon is like not liking puppies.
Then came SpaceX. He did what NASA couldn’t and returned Americans to space on American rockets. He was the South African bringing America back to space.
Then he decided to buy Twitter, and now Musk must be stopped, and all costs. He will ruin humanity.
Think about that for a second. How does Elon go from hero to hated? It kind of reminds me of Donald Trump. Remember when the Clintons went to Trump’s third wedding? Oh, those were the days, when he was The Donald.
The left and right loved this over-the-top self-promoter. Sure, he said outrageous things, but he rated well on TV, wrote “The Art of the Deal,” got invited to all the right parties and threw amazing parties.
Who didn’t love Trump back then? Nobody cared that he lied about his net worth and left two wives for the next one. He was The Donald. Emphasis: He threw great parties.
Then he ran for president and suddenly all the people who loved Trump hated him. They called him a threat to democracy that must be stopped, that he ruined all our institutions.
Trump and Elon committed the same crime. They challenged the exclusive playgrounds of the permanent political class. Twitter is the exclusive playground of the permanent political class.
Same with running for president — both men threatened to expose that the emperor has no clothes.
Trump ignored the rules that journalists and politicians used to keep everybody in line. You couldn’t call people names. You couldn’t be mean to John McCain. You couldn’t build a wall. You couldn’t talk about grabbing women.
All the things the political ruling class said wouldn’t work, Trump did. Then he won. He destroyed their control of the political system.
This isn’t a partisan issue — Republican political elite hate Trump maybe even more than Democrats do. He threatens the Republican elite the most.
It’s the same thing with Musk. He ignores the rules journalists and politicians use to control the narratives they like. They love free speech for everything … but the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The president of the United States, they said, must be banned. You can’t say COVID-19 came from a lab because that would agree with the guy who needs to be banned.
Musk says Twitter should be what Twitter says it is — the town square, and not just the town square for the ideas certain journalists approve of.
Musk told workers either get in line or get out.
From the New York Times: “Resignations Roil Twitter as Elon Musk Tries Persuading Some Workers to Stay. Mr. Musk, Twitter’s new owner, had given employees a Thursday deadline to decide whether to leave or stay ‘to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0.’”
Allegedly hundreds quit. Maybe even a thousand refused the ultimatum. Now there are fears Twitter might shut down because so many engineers left the company.
Commentators on cable and network were speaking as if this constitutes a national emergency. But we could have replaced the meltdown over any one of a hundred things Trump talked about.
Think about that. The horror of Twitter shutting down. Reporters, wannabe pundits, Substack writers, activists, baristas, and trolls will have nothing to do this weekend. That might be called progress — perhaps they will get real jobs or produce something of value rather than just snipe at each other.
That reality is terrifying to America’s permanent political class, and maybe, just maybe, anything that terrifies the permanent political class is a good thing.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not of NewsNation.