Villains

It began with the Left's top dog, Bernie Sanders. Without even a moment's hesitation, the trained hamsters in the media picked up the theme, and then the entertainers piled on. Bernie complained about billionaires and lied about the taxes they pay, but that's just Bernie being the Marxist he actually is. Then it got much more personal and much, much more vicious as the target of their rage took over a playing field that they and they alone dominated, censored, and used as a uncontested indication of their power.

What/Who am I referring to? We'll discuss that in a moment, but first a digression.

The Left loves to define villains, real and imagined—the politics of the personal is their M.O. A villain is anyone who threatens their hold over a pervasive communications network that allows them to spread their many narratives far and wide. It's through their narratives that they can effectively sway public opinion and direct attention away from their many failed policies. Their many allies within the deep state then implement policies that are not supported by real-world economics, are not backed by hard science, and are not intended to improve public welfare, but are quite effective in growing government and consolidating the power of leftist politicians and the government agencies they control.

And because a villain represents a threat, he or she must be neutralized via demonization. If that's ineffective, then the next steps become far nastier—covert and even overt censorship, government investigations, sanctions, and even indictments are not out of the question. That's the game plan, and it has established a new set of rules that have poisoned politics in both political parties.

But back to the original question—who or what am I referring to in the opening paragraph of this post?

Was Donald Trump the target of Sanders, et al? In general that's a given, but it's not Trump I'm alluding to. Sure, Trump has been Villain #1 since his election in 2016. I kinda get that, even though I think the tsunami of hatred that has washed over Trump is a bit deranged.

I was referring to someone who has become a newly minted villain of the Left—a man who has accomplished more over the last 15 years than any other American—private or public sector. That man is Elon Musk.

The reason Musk has become a villain? He believes in free, unfettered speech.  He has acquired the Left's censorship playground, Twitter (now called X), transforming it into a place where all opinions, even toxic ones, can be heard. But far more important, some of those opinions challenge the Left's narratives, and that is deemed unacceptable. 

So ... the new rules were applied—demonization by politicians like Bernie Sanders, derision by clowns in late night entertainment, condemnation by the Left's talking heads, bogus government investigations by the Biden administration and opprobrium by the Left's trained hamsters in the propaganda media. All focused on a man who has accomplished more than all of them and all of their organizations—combined. 

Elon Musk is far from perfect. Walter Isaacson's outstanding book on the man proves that. In fact, Musk a difficult person with an unusual psychological profile who does not suffer fools gladly. But he has done an order of magnitude more to improve the environment, provide tens of thousands well-paid jobs, bring focused manufacturing back to the USA, single-handedly transformed the automotive industry, put America back into space in a cost effective way, provide satellite communications to those who live in rural locations, been on the bleeding edge of A.I. research (along with taking a responsible, very public position on the dangers of A.I.) and yes, encouraging a return to the free speech philosophy that made our country what it is.

As an example, a little history and Musk-related commentary on his efforts in manufacturing from Walter Isaacson:

“Beginning with the theology of globalization in the 1980s, and relentlessly driven by cost-cutting CEOs and their activist investors, American companies shut down domestic factories and offshored manufacturing. The trend accelerated in the early 2000s, when Tesla was getting started. Between 2000 and 2010, the U.S. lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs. By sending their factories abroad, American companies saved labor costs, but they lost the daily feel for ways to improve their products. 

Musk bucked this trend, largely because he wanted to have tight control of the manufacturing process. He believed that designing the factory to build a car—“ the machine that builds the machine”—was as important as designing the car itself. Tesla’s design-manufacturing feedback loop gave it a competitive advantage, allowing it to innovate on a daily basis ... 

Isaacson goes on to discuss the difference between Musk and Apple's Steve Jobs:

What set them apart is that Musk, unlike Jobs, applied that obsession not just to the design of a product but also to the underlying science, engineering, and manufacturing. “Steve just had to get the conception and software right, but the manufacturing was outsourced,” [Amazon's founder, Larry] Ellison says. “Elon took on the manufacturing, the materials, the huge factories.” Jobs loved to walk through Apple’s design studio on a daily basis, but he never visited his factories in China. Musk, in contrast, spent more time walking assembly lines than he did walking around the design studio. “The brain strain of designing the car is tiny compared to the brain strain of designing the factory,” he says.”

I sometimes think that leftist ideology reflexively hates those who accomplish great things, who actually turn their words and ideas into real accomplishments, who reject meaningless gestures and instead build things that better people and society in a measurable way, and, of course, who have opinions that directly conflict with leftist ideology and through accomplishment, demonstrate the vacuity of many of the Left's narratives.

That's why Musk is a "villain." We need more villains like him.

UPDATE-1:

Sitting among the elite leftists who hate, hate, hate Elon Musk is Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a shameless demagogue who once claimed she was a native American (think: "Fauxkahontis") to put herself at the front of the hiring line at Harvard. 

Warren is rarely right about any subject, and she maintains that tradition when she recently demanded that the U.S. government "investigate" Musk and his satellite communications company, Starlink, because Musk refused to enable satellite communications that would have allowed Ukraine to conduct a major sneak attack on Russian naval vessels sure to escalate the already deadly conflict.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment:

The old cliché about no good deed going unpunished applies. Starlink, a privately owned network, has provided $100 million in free service to Ukraine since the war began, letting the country defend itself and re-establish communications destroyed by hundreds of Russian missiles. [emphasis mine]

What’s more, Mr. Musk says he would have complied if President Biden ordered him to turn on his privately owned network for Ukraine: “While I’m not President Biden’s biggest fan, if I had received a presidential directive to turn it on, I would have done so. Because I do regard the president as the chief executive officer of the country. Whether I want that person to be president or not, I still respect the office.”

That is a lot more respect than Ms. Warren has shown for Mr. Musk. She owes him an apology. 

An apology from Warren? Don't hold your breath. 

UPDATE-2:

When you become a villain, the deep state does everything possible to slow you down, particularly if your accomplishments will make the general public ask whether your villain status is justified. SpaceX, another Elon Musk company, is developing a superheavy rocket named "Starship" that is the first step toward a journey to Mars. It's launch will be worldwide news and will, many believe, capture the imagination of the public.

So ... the deep state has decided to slow things down, using the powers of hyper-regulation to impede Musk's progress in an effort to punish him for not toeing the party line (and for criticizing Joe Biden on a number of occasions).

Robert Zimmerman reports:

... until the Biden administration, SpaceX was not required to get a detailed environmental reassessment after every Boca Chica test launch. Fish & Wildlife was not involved, as it shouldn’t be. SpaceX made its engineering investigation, the FAA reviewed it quickly, and the company launched again, at a pace of almost one test launch a month, with almost every launch resulting in a crash landing or an explosion [typical for early rocket models, regardless of the manufacturer].

Under the Biden administration the rules suddenly changed. Now, all launches are environmental concerns, even though we have empirical data for more than seventy years at Cape Canaveral that rocket launches not only do no harm to wildlife, they allow it to thrive because the spaceport creates large zones where nothing can be developed.

In other words, the Biden administration is playing a raw and cruel political game, designed to kill Starship/Superheavy. And it is succeeding, because it will be impossible to develop this rocket on time for its investors and NASA at a pace of only one test launch per year.

Yeah, the anonymous cabal that controls the Biden administration (a cognitively-disabled Biden himself is probably incapable of distinguishing between a rocket and a firecracker) has the best interests of our country and our future in mind ... don't they?