What Elon Musk Tells Us About Men

 How'd you like to be Elon Musk right now? I mean, the Scrooge McDuck swimming around in all your money must be fun, I guess, but what a year he's had.

Musk's reputation was built on batteries specifically and Tesla more generally. Somehow the idea was created that Musk was an engineering genius over there, building next generation lithium batteries. All this guy ever was was a dork with money who made more money. The dork part is important because he represents this generation's "tech bro uber tech bro". While not actual a tech guy that anyone can tell, he used his first position with Tesla - a company he did not start - to seize the imagination of those who see electrification and batteries as the future.

However, I have some real doubts about Tesla's profitability - which is claimed to be around $6bill. 

The idea that Musk can be the richest man in the world seems odd to me. There just aren't THAT many Teslas on the road and SpaceX isn't exactly raking in good headlines either. Finally, we have his absolutely disastrous takeover of Twitter.

I still poke around on Twitter a bit, but the whole "fun" of Twitter - like TikTok for that matter - are the people there creating interesting posts. There is no nothing special about Twitter itself - in fact its ability to produce trolls always made it pretty terrible even when it was good. Musk never seemed to understand that and proceeded to alienate much of the customer base.

Except for a certain cadre of young men.

When SpaceX announced an "unscheduled vehicle disassembly" most of us rolled our eyes and this description of a rocket blowing up. But man, those Musky Boys just couldn't accept that their chosen avatar of success saw failure. Sure, they can learn from the failure, but it was still a failure. 

I've argued before that motivated reasoning is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, and it's interesting to see people lock themselves into personalities then bend time and space to protect those personas from criticism or condemnation. Trump, Musk...it's the same dynamic.

I like Joe Biden. I don't love him. I think he's actually a pretty sound politician with a penchant for saying dumb stuff off the cuff. I'm not invested in Joe Biden or Dark Brandon or whatever. He's a politician I helped hire to run the country. My identity isn't tied to his. 

For so many young men, it sure seems like they desperately need someone to invest their own hopes and dreams into. Like the kids who want to be Darth Vader for Halloween, because Vader is powerful - never mind that he's the bad guy. He's powerful! Most kids - even most boys - outgrow this stage. 

Some don't. Fragile themselves, they attach themselves to the reputations of charlatans who make them feel big vicariously.

It's a damned shame.

Temporary Reprieve

 The Assembly of Religious Experts blocked Matthew Kacsmaryk's gonzo ruling that banned the distribution of mifepristone in most cases. Kacsmaryk's ruling was the clearest case of legislating from the bench I can think of. This zealot basically overruled two decades of FDA approval and medical practice because, well, he's a religious zealot and a thinks women should be vessels for men's sperm, I guess.

I'm not sure why they waited until Friday, but I wonder if Alito's dissent gives us a clue. He railed against the "shadow docket" (which is ironic given how the conservatives have used it in the past). I wonder if there isn't a majority who was willing to throw the whole thing out on standing. 

The standing argument is a good one. The people who brought this suit have no reasonable claim that they were harmed by the FDA's ruling 20 years ago. They should not have been allowed to even bring the suit in the first place and overturning Kacsmaryk's ruling on those grounds would've allowed them to dodge the "moral" implications of allowing the drug to remain on the market.

Perhaps Roberts was trying to get a majority to throw it out using the shadow docket but he needed an extra day to convince Comey Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Instead, we got the narrower ruling.

Needless to say Clarence Thomas ruled against preserving access to the drug and didn't even deign to explain why. If it wasn't for Donald Trump, I think Thomas has a strong argument to be among the worst people this country has coughed up.

The GOP Is A Failed State

 Josh Marshall has famously said that "the GOP is a failed state and Donald Trump is it's warlord."

However, it extends beyond a pithy punchline about the modern GOP. America has some aspects of state failure. The most obvious is the inability of the state to keep people from being killed. Mass shootings dominate the headlines for obvious reasons, but Americans simply die at higher rates than they should and many of the reasons - especially the lack of access to healthcare - are a direct result of GOP policies.

What is terrifying is that - in the ungodly event of a GOP takeover of the Executive Branch in 2025 - they are prepared to launch America further into state failure. The overwhelming hostility of the current "conservative" movement in America to the basic functions of government is more important that Donald Trump's uniquely odious and criminal person. A Republican victory - ANY Republican victory would create a void in the heart of civil government that could engender the separation of the country into different parts. There is simply no future for parts of the country that value basic governance with the death cult that constitutes the GOP.

Exactly Who You Expect It To Be

 Please imagine what the Tennessee GrOPer who just resigned over sexual harassment claims looks like.

Now realize that this is exactly what he looks like.

Yeah, yeah, book by it's cover and so on, but...c'mon. This guy is Smug Arrogant Bully from central casting.

Depressing, But We Should Be Used To It By Now

 Look, Clarence Thomas is corrupt. He's a generally awful human being. 

He is not going to resign over the first part because of the second part. The fact that Abe Fortas resigned over something more trivial does not inform Thomas' behavior.

The GOP - in their rearguard fight to preserve unpopular theocratic and plutocratic policies - will not ever voluntarily relinquish any power they have anywhere. So stop framing the story as if that's going to happen. 

I'm Going To Hell

 I can't help but find this objectively hilarious. I feel bad for the team of engineers trying to make SpaceX happen, but for the life of me, I can't understand why this isn't NASA's task. Since SpaceX is an example of why Elon Musk is a supergenius, though, I'm chuckled.

At What Point Do They Accept It?

 Ron DeSantis is toast. We are seeing the GOP establishment - the very force that was supposed to neuter Trump and move to a "Trump without the baggage" candidate - abandon DeSantis.

There have been media voices on the Right and Left fluffing this guy's profile because they seem to want to believe that the GOP is not actually a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Steaks. It is. Again, the invaluable Josh Marshall: "The GOP is a failed state and Trump is its warlord."

When someone like Glenn Youngkin looks at what happened to DeSantis, is he going to see this as an opportunity or a warning? I think the later. 

Trump will be the nominee. The election - if Democrats know what they are doing - will be a referendum on Dobbs and January 6th. If it is, Biden wins.

If you're Youngkin, you have to figure that Trump will be dead or in prison by 2028. Why self-immolate?

Josh Marshall Is Right, Part A Million

 Marshall's takes on the media landscape are usually among the best and that's true about the Fox-Dominion lawsuit.

This is likely the largest actual settlement in history. Dominion is making a ton of money off this. However, if you wanted the case to somehow "takedown" Fox or create some sort of emotional catharsis, you were never going to get that. In fact, you might get justice from the courts, but you are unlikely to get some grand, emotionally rewarding payoff.

Popcorn Time

 Rod DeSantis is not a good politician. He's a good politician for Florida. He is the answer to the question: "What if Trump, but even more repellant?" Watching him flame out before he's even declared that he's running is objectively hilarious. Watching the news media pretend that any Republican has a chance against Donald Trump - as long as Trump is more or less ambulatory and able to speak in complete sentences - is objectively discouraging. It's sad that an entire profession devoted to explaining the world to people, that has spent seven years following every belch and fart from that warped scion of middling wealth, can't figure out what's going on.

The Modern GOP

 So far - even absent Chaos Agent Donald Trump - this is what the modern GOP is offering up:

- A Speaker of the House so weak and ineffectual that he can't even stake out a position on the debt ceiling from whence to negotiate. This effectively brings the US to the edge of default, again, when the GOP controls part of Congress and a Democrat holds the White House. They aren't even arsonists so much as pyromaniacs with matches.

- The guy they thought was going to be their cure for Trump has decided to launch a fatwa against Disney World. Picking a beef with the world's largest entertainment company seems like a good idea for a barn (cross) burning back bencher, but for someone who styled himself as a the "reasonable alternative to Trump" it looks like he's a fool. 

For the umpteenth time, the problem with the GOP is not Donald Trump. The problem is that Donald Trump is exactly sort of cruel buffoon that the Republicans want. No ability to govern, just attack enemies, usually in the most ineffectual and counterproductive way possible.

The Laboratories of Mediocrity

 It has been noted in many fora that the GOP has no popular governing agenda beyond tax cuts. OK, that's been true for a while now.

What's so fascinating is that the GOP seems to want to embrace actively bad governing measures. They routinely shoot themselves and their constituents in the face, Cheney style, in order to prove their fealty to the insipid cruelty of the GOP agenda. Dobbs and the electoral fallout from it should have been a warning, but I suppose they look at how they often refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA and really didn't pay an electoral price for it. Even if the Medicaid expansion would subsequently pass in statewide referenda, at no point did voters notice that the GOP is making their lives measurably worse.

The states in the Progressive Era were labeled the "laboratories of democracy," but the GOP have made them exemplars of the sort of piss-poor governance that is the GOP brand these days.  In a sane world, they shouldn't get 30% of the vote.

Exactly

 As Paul Campos points out: a large part of our police violence problem is the fact that we have way too many guns. If we had highly restrictive gun laws regarding handguns and rapid fire long guns, the police would (over time) become less violent.

It's the fucking guns.

This Is Just Weird

 Job Chait makes the case that he hopes Ron DeSantis beats Donald Trump in the primary by analyzing three metrics.

First, he thinks DeSantis would be easier to beat than Trump. I think this is arguable, because I think Trump is so incredibly radioactive to independents and moderates that it's likely that Biden gets close to 60% of the popular vote. Seriously. It's a post-January 6th landscape. Also, Biden's biggest vulnerability is his age. Running against Trump negates that liability. Also, Democrats will move heaven and earth to defeat Trump again. They will only move heaven OR earth to defeat DeSantis.

Second, he thinks Trump MIGHT be more dangerous as president. Maybe. I think at this point either Trump or DeSantis could lead to disunion.

His final metric is whether it is better to beat DeSantis or Trump. He argues that if Trump loses it will be another January 6th. You know what? Bring it. Because this time, Biden will be Commander and Chief. Fucking. Bring. It.

His final point might be valid: If you beat Trump, that just goes to show that Trump is toxic - which I think is true at this point. If you beat DeSantis, you prove that Trumpist politics as a whole is toxic. DeSantis is just Dollar General Trump at this point, also, he's not really a very adept politician. We've seen the first "elite" Republican pull away from Puddin Boots, but Ron DeSantis is the Scott Walker of Rudy Giulianis.

Maybe Biden wipes the floor with DeSantis, too, because Dobbs is only going to continue to roil American politics. I'm not terribly concerned with Biden's meh approval numbers, because we are very polarized and most liberal and leftists hate actual liberal and leftist politicians until you have to choose between them and Trump or DeSantis.

But I do worry about the age issue and Trump looks like he's about to die, too, so...I'd rather neutralize that issue.

But! The ideal situation - which I don't see happening right now - is the Trump beats the crap out of DeSantis in the primaries and Biden wins easily in November.

Two birds. One stone.

Hoo Boy

 Josh Marshall points out how the press is really missing the main story with the Jack Teixeira story. They have tried to make sense of the "contradictions" of how a "patriotic" American who volunteered for the military could betray America's secrets. First of all, define "patriotic"? He owned an American Blue Lives Matter flag? This nugget from the WSJ begins to get the main point. Teixeira is part of a very online, very male, very angry cohort that hates "what America has become", which means tolerant and multicultural. Of course he loved Putin, that's a feature, not a bug.

Putin represents exactly what these power worshipping young miscreants want to be: "powerful", in charge, anti-woke whatever that means. Putin doesn't care about your pronouns, he's part and parcel of what I wrote about the other day: the sort of person who wants to cozy up to those who look powerful. There was actually a great example of this in 2020 when the GOP actually - and I am not making this up - shared a meme of Trump as Thanos in Endgame saying "I am inevitable." Did they not see what happened next? Plus...THANOS?  You think you're THANOS?!! That's what you want people to associate with you? (I mean, if you want to do an Endgame meme, do it properly.)

This is the psychology of the modern anti-democratic Right around the world. It's a shallow form of masculinity pimping and parading itself around as "tough" while whinging and wetting their pants over a rainbow on a Bud Light can.

Fundamentally, this is a movement without ideas beyond a will to power and a desire to hurt their "enemies." And it was always there in the shadows. Timothy McVeigh and others dragged it in front of us on occasions, but Trump put klieg lights on it and made it run 24/7 on Fox.

Until we disenthrall the Right from this toxic and truly anti-American fetish for power over people different from themselves, the Republican Party shouldn't be put in charge of a one car parade.

Oh, Look

 Turns out Clarence Thomas broke the law. Who could have possibly predicted...