I had planned on writing one more post today, but I'm a little too tired to bescribble anything of any length and coherence. I lost track of time last night while doing some research for a couple "maybe" posts, happened to look up at some vague moment and saw the sun was already up, nixed any notion of sleep — and went about researching something else for the morning's post.
But I have energy enough to cheat by pilfering an item commented on by the fiery Kara Swisher, a NY Times contributor who writes about tech, the internet, disinformation, censorship — yes yes but the superlative thing about her is that she hates Elon Musk. (Consequently she can't be hated.)
Which brings us to my handoff task. Musk had posted an item posted by someone else — himself, he monosyllabically commented on it to himself, Swisher re-reposted it, The Bulwark' Jonathan Last featured it, that's where I saw it, and now I'm exploiting it.
Swisher's Twitter intro to Musk's X post about a Musk post — are you following this? — read, "FYI, this is apparently him responding to an account that is allegedly also his, which is like watching Norman Bates talk to his mother except more drama queen vibe."
Post by @karaswisherView on Threads
At a glance you can see that Swisher was right. Musk is indeed a kind of funereal Norman Bates but with creepier, more solipsistic drama queenness, and full doses of Trump's narcissism and love of victimization and sympathy. Plus he seems to spend most of his time hanging from the rafters in his cob-webbed attic, tapping, tapping on his cell phone's keyboard.
Musk has become a self-parody. Like his BFF Donald, he has convinced himself that his bundles of synaptic superficiality are in truth the profoundest of instinctive and intellectual abilities. He too can intuit, for instance, the "deep state" — its presence, purpose and villainous designs on him.
He's further convinced, as you can see, above, that his extraordinary powers in crusading on the side of goodness and his towering influence on the fawning commoners would be so menacing to the radical-left president that on Day One she would, merely to safeguard her evil regime, commit to banishing his universally revered X and see that he's removed from the sight of the impressionable masses.
Whoa there, PM. You promised yourself you'd cheat your way to a final entry for the day — even if, by necessity, through some cheap expediency. So back to more lazy pilfering from Kara Swisher, Hater of Musk. She intro-ed his pomposity atop his post; now take a look, or another look, at her comment below. What struck me was the perfectly serious, even educational way she reacted to Elon's sheer asininity, his immense self-importance. Of course the government can't ban X.
I mentioned earlier that Jonathan Last of The Bulwark featured the "Yup" post. In his morning column he rather wittily noted, "Because it was a day ending in -y, Elon Musk said something crazy." But Last then offered the selfsame seriousness regarding Elon's paranoid fear of arrest, just one of his four "educational" points. Again, of course "a president cannot say, 'Arrest that man,'" as The Bulwark columnist wrote.
What's happening here? What's going on? Why in the name of all that is rational were two highly intelligent writers compelled to correct whackadoodle Elon in such sober veins of thought? — and about such elementary school topics. What could have possessed them to unironically answer a man who's reached Mars before his spaceship has?
The man is a loon, people!
So treat him like one.
Strange how the man is so like the namesake of the company he founded: brilliant but...
Posted by: ren | September 20, 2024 at 08:32 AM