Elon Musk blocked trade unions from organizing at Tesla. His workers have no collective bargaining or protections. His narcissism and unpredictability are tanking the stock options that are doled-out as a bonus over working in a union shop.
Stock options are not a substitute for being treated fairly and humanely. Owners who oppose unionization do so because they want to exploit their workers which was a common practice in this country, especially in the auto industry until workers unionized.
Trade unions are designed not only to ensure people get fair pay, health benefits and cannot be fired without cause or abused and exposed to unsafe and dangerous practices.
Basically to ensure human beings cannot be exploited for the profit margins and greed of wealthy factory owners.
Think of this in the context of Elon Musk’s email to Twitter employees late last week demanding his remaining workers (half of the workforce had already been fired, at the start of the holiday season, no less) submit to ‘extreme hardcore’ office hours and productivity schedules.
Musk is literally abusing his employees at Twitter and that sort of abuse has ripple effects in our society. How many kids won’t see their mom or dad as much now since Elon took over what was once a quite normal workplace.
Workers with balanced lives are more efficient and productive and none of these folks signed up to be abused by a narcissistic Elon Musk.
In many ways he is attacking the very model of the American workplace and the lifestyle a steady office career has come to symbolize for decades while hiding behind tech bro machismo which has already been proven toxic.
Of course many of the remaining Twitter employees chose to leave the company as his ‘extreme hardcore’ deadline approached on Thursday afternoon rather than submit to his insane deadlines and demands.
Throwing Twitter into a tailspin that may spell the end of the social media platform as we know it. It’s already a much different place than it was even a month ago and it certainly has not changed for the better.
That in fact may have been the whole point in Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and certainly that of his financial backers, chiefly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who stands to gain the most by helping to return Donald Trump to office.
They are deeply intertwined, not only with Trump’s golf courses and various properties but with his son-in-law Jared Kushner who now has a two billion dollar investment from KSA in spite of the fact the young dilettante has no institutional investment experience.
MBS himself personally overrode the objections of the executors of KSA’s sovereign wealth fund to bestow their largess on the young princeling.
Elon Musk is a chaos agent who stands to benefit enormously from inserting himself in geopolitical gamesmanship and tipping the scales towards an autocracy in the United States.
He is an enemy of democracy, whether that is completely intentional or just a product of his obviously narcissistic and damaged personality is yet to be determined.
He seems to be a man driven not only by his own bizarre compulsions but by a desperate need for attention.
Much like Trump himself, Musk’s credentials are misrepresented and he reflexively takes credit for the work of others and claims it as his own and a sign of his genius.
As Donald himself did with his many boasts of business acumen even though the reality always ended in bankruptcy and his buildings were nothing more than licensing deals in the last several decades of his real estate career.
Musk is a self-created myth with an army of worshipers that share the same desire to be just like the object of their fawning fealty with no real world path to achieve the same goals.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk were both born on third base and both men have an endless need to crow about being the greatest to con an army of ignorant, mostly white males into believing their hype.
Musk’s actions are very dangerous and very destructive, make no mistake about it.
Think of his meddling in Ukraine on behalf of Putin and starting a Twitter poll to ‘vote’ on handing over portions of sovereign territory to Russian.
After nearly a year of an invasion that has been condemned on the world stage and the brutal targeting of civilians by Russian troops.
The callousness and casualness that Elon deemed himself worthy of meddling in a war in which Russia is not only the illegal aggressor but a purveyor of war crimes and atrocities of a magnitude that most of us have not witnessed in our lifetimes and perhaps the worst in Europe since World War Two.
It is not hard to pick the good guys in that conflict and Musk chose to side with the war criminals. Which also happens to be the position of the GOP who wants to defund America’s support of Ukraine.
It also should be mentioned that Trump himself was impeached for shaking down President Zelensky and allowing Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine to proceed unfettered during his administration.
It was also the reason for the ‘perfect phone call’ where Trump turned a new President’s plea for aid from a mighty ally into what sounded like a back room deal at the Bada Bing.
Trump was Tony Soprano and he didn’t get away with it, thanks in part to our own Ambassador Marie Yanakovich who he then fired with a curt and threatening “take her out” mumbled at a dinner table in his Washington DC hotel while his small and stubby fingers forced the extra large prawns that were flown-in special to be served only to him ensuring no other guest would have equal size shrimp in the ‘shrimp cocktails’ into his greasy thin-lipped mouth.
“I would like you to do us a favor” were the exact words of the former POTUS with many decades of mob ties and business relationships.
President Zelensky has since become a hero on the world stage a fact that no doubt irks the failed-President Trump to no end.
Elon seems enamored of despots much the same way Donald Trump has always been, weak men are always attracted to the toxic iconography of so called ‘strongmen’.
Late Saturday night Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account after yet another poll where Elon’s and MAGA’s bots flooded the results with yes ‘votes’ for Trump’s reinstatement.
‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei’ was his snarky tweet announcing the results but Trump’s return is in no way the will of the people.
It’s the work of one man who has only his own interests at heart.
Trump’s Twitter page now appears once again, eerily frozen in time displaying the hours and days around the January 6th rally in which he incited his followers to violence which culminated in the attack on the US Capitol to overturn the election results.
One of the darkest moments in American history and Musk is treating it like a joke.
SpaceX has been the beneficiary of many hundreds of millions of dollars from the Congress he seems to hold in contempt.
Trump’s reinstatement also comes a day after AG Garland appointed a special prosecutor to look at Trump’s potential crimes around the insurrection and his stealing of classified documents which were only recovered after an FBI raid on Mar a Lago.
This all comes after two Trump impeachments and being the subject of another special prosecutor’s investigation that had he not still been POTUS at the time and in possession of a fully subservient AG BIll Barr at DOJ he surely would have faced indictment after Robert Mueller’s report was released.
It’s also worth noting that even Barr himself believes Trump will not be so lucky this time and faces an impending indictment.
This doesn’t even take into account Trump’s mishandling of the COVID19 pandemic and spreading of anti mask rhetoric which ultimately lead to the deaths of almost half a million Americans while he was in office with many more to follow.
All of which is to say allowing Trump back on Twitter is the move of someone who does not have the best interests of the USA at heart.
It’s staggering to think of the detrimental effect that one man has had on the United States. Musk sees all that and behaves like a fan boy. Fanning the flames of fascism so he can continue to be a billionaire freak and live his own life above the law and not paying his fair share of taxes.
He wants to continue to abuse employees and be seen as a hero by his army of worshipers.
Musk is like a mini-Trump with these attributes, down to the bad hair and many children with many partners, though Musk far exceeds Trump’s kid count and his belief he will be the next Genghis Khan by sharing his DNA with humanity and populating the world with his offspring.
Look it up, it’s freaky and a recent Musk revelation that was shared online by a former employee.
Unlike Trump, Elon is an actual billionaire and once the richest man in the world.
A title he may still technically hold but not for long as Tesla’s stock is certain to fall further as he plunges Twitter’s valuation down the toilet if not destroying the company altogether.
Twitter was probably the world’s best communication platform.
Especially for news, much of it progressive and by effectively shutting down the social media network at the exact moment Putin retreats from Ukraine is also highly suspicious.
Russia is leaving behind mountains of evidence of war crimes that could easily be disseminated on Twitter making the world aware of his atrocities and sadly it will now be not so easy to share.
Given how many independent journalists and large accounts are leaving or being shadow banned it can only be seen as a benefit to Putin.
The chaos also comes the exact week Trump announces his 2024 presidential run, though he will hopefully be indicted long before we head to the polls again.
It can still be seen as a benefit to his campaign, especially after his lackluster announcement earlier in the week that even his two eldest children decided to skip.
It is also a boon for the GOP and right wing accounts that traffic in racism and anti-LGBTQ hate speech and pro gun rhetoric which has once again resulted in another horrific mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado.
We live in dangerous times and the few have great influence over the many, we need to use our voices and our power to push back against the forces of darkness.
There is a method behind their madness and many of these chaos agents work in concert with each other even if the connections are not obvious at first we need to learn to look deeply at them and keep our eyes on the big picture.
The easiest way to do this is to see who stands to benefit the most from anti-democratic efforts.
Call it out when we see it, and use the power of the market place to push back on those who would work against the principles of freedom and equality.
At the moment one of those folks is Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is a Chaos Agent.
Keep the insightful wordsmith vibe going Noel always look forward to you view!✌️
Excellent article. Your commentary hits all of the salient if distressing points. I especially enjoyed this, ... "weak men are always attracted to the toxic iconography of so called ‘strongmen’." So very true.
I also would love to see Elon with his natural hairline. That hair 'system' looks as false as he seems to be. I suspect he is bi polar and is 'not in his right mind'. So similar to the Fascists of the past who were a motley crew of bizarre psychopaths and sociopaths. Fascists are filled with Fear. Usually fear of the future and what is going to happen to them. Weaklings.
I see you as a man with a strong voice, often insightful and very funny. Thank you.