Elon Musk is full of bullshit and has been for a very very long time. His entire “legend” is built largely on bullshit, and he is not the genius too many believe him to be.
Despite literally promising the moon (or at least Mars) he often doesn’t live up to those promises. He has basically scammed cities over his laughable tunnel scheme. The river of bullshit never stops flowing in Elonland.
However, I recently read an excellent piece by Mike Brock that raised a form of Musk bullshit I never thought of: the idea that Elon is running multiple companies at the same time as he is running DOGE is total nonsense. And yet, the media buys it hook, line, and sinker. Brock writes:
Consider what we’re being asked to believe about Elon Musk. That he is simultaneously managing Tesla, a global automotive manufacturer facing fierce competition and complex production challenges. That he is overseeing SpaceX, a company conducting human spaceflight and handling critical national security contracts. That he is running X/Twitter through a tumultuous transformation affecting global discourse. That he is developing experimental brain implants at Neuralink under federal investigation. That he is competing in the most sophisticated artificial intelligence race in human history through xAI.
On top of all that, of course, he is running his little DOGE scheme to bring down the federal government.
The idea that he is doing all of this, if you take a second to consider, is bananas. He does of course have a senior management team at all of these companies but c’mon, it’s a real reach to believe that he is running all of them at once. None of these are simple companies (and this list didn’t even include Musk’s scam tunnel scheme company, the Boring Company) and would require any CEO’s full attention for at least 60 hours a week.
And yet, he still has time to spend 120 hours a week destroying our country. Brock again:
Let’s be clear about what’s happening while we debate the impossible fiction of Musk’s supposed role: A coup is in progress in the United States of America. This isn’t hyperbole or partisan rhetoric—it’s as demonstrable as the fact that there are twenty-four hours in a day or that two plus two equals four. Private citizens have seized control of Treasury payment systems. Security officials are being removed for following classification protocols. Congressionally established agencies are being illegally shuttered.
The obvious impossibility of Musk’s supposed management of multiple companies serves the same purpose as Trump’s flood of disinformation—it creates an epistemic fog that makes reality harder to grasp. While we argue about whether Musk is really running all these companies effectively, while we debate sophisticated legal theories about executive authority, while we parse complex arguments about government efficiency, the machinery of constitutional governance is being systematically dismantled.
None of this makes sense, but the media still barely bats an eye. But that’s not all – Musk Tweeted more than 200 times on Tuesday and Wednesday during a 24-hour period. It keeps getting more and more ridiculous. I know the guy is probably on all kinds of drugs including ketamine, but running tons of companies, taking down a democracy, AND live Tweeting it all?
But that’s not all, it gets even better. Despite running a rocket company, an electric car company, a hellsite for losers to post their stupid thoughts, a company that scams cities into thinking they are getting transportation tunnels, Elon’s version of AI, etc. AND trying to pull off a coup AND live Tweeting it all, Elon also claims to have enough time to be an elite gamer.
He even got busted by gamer-sleuths who noted that Elon didn’t seem to have knowledge of the game Path of Exile 2 that an experienced, elite gamer would have. Evenually, Musk was forced to admit that he was cheating.
All of this matters to the current moment because for years, mainstream media fell over theirselves to declare that Elon was the Great Genius of Our Time, often ignoring very erratic behavior, lies, and broken promises. He’s basically a tech version of Trump. Instead of pulling off real estate scams, Musk runs dog-and-pony shows that the breathless media reports as substansive contributions to technological advancement.
If you take a step back and think about what Musk claims he is doing over the last year for more than a second, he’d have to be some sort of paranormal superhero to pull all of this off. Unfortunately, most of our media never did that, so we are stuck with an unelected foreign national drug addict who is bent on destroying our democracy.
Great job, everyone.
The last word goes to Jamiroquai.