Episode Details

[Update: Since writing this, Elon Musk has actually bought Twitter!]

The American dream says that the best and the brightest can rise as fast and as far as their talent and perseverance will allow. The Democrats say - that isn’t true; only white men have that advantage because this is a sexist, racist country built on and supported by patriarchal white supremacy. Regardless of that disconnect, Elon Musk made his fortune the American way and is now the richest man in the world.

Musk’s “great man” image is undercut somewhat, I think, by his willingness to use chimps to develop Neuralink. But with Tesla and SpaceX, he has built a fortune any person on the Left should be proud of. Now, they see him as the enemy. Musk has committed the mortal sin of being ideologically non-compliant. That translates into “he says whatever he wants to say.”

Twitter was, at first, the great status leveler. Anyone could grow a following. But with the invention of the “blue checks” and Twitter’s strange way of deciding who should get one, they ended up forcing a hierarchy that was just one of the things that ruined Twitter.

For Musk, though, it all started with the Babylon Bee. He was a fan of the Conservative-leaning humor site already since he’d no doubt noticed, as anyone would notice, that the Left’s strident policing of thought had led to a stifling of humor. The Babylon Bee had no rules. They mocked anyone for any reason, not shying away from taboo or off-limit targets. The list of what is verboten on the left or even blasphemous grows longer by the day. Musk noticed the Bee was not afraid to go there and for that, they earned his admiration. When they made a joke about Rachel Levine, however, that got them suspended from Twitter until they deleted that tweet. But they refused.

I personally didn’t think the joke was funny. I felt bad for Rachel Levine. It must be a difficult position to be in. But I also don’t think Twitter should be in the business of declaring a joke “hate speech” or “hateful conduct.” That comes a little too close to the kind of retribution for parody and humor fundamentalist religions have. You know, like death threats for a joke.

Musk had already been swarmed for his views on transgender ideology, specifically the use of pronouns. Already he realized that declaring your pronouns was being demanded of him and everyone else. There was simply no way to not comply without being punished. But clearly, he is not someone who feels it necessary to follow those kinds of rules. He’s a Gen-Xer, like me, and we came of age questioning authority. It isn’t that I won’t use pronouns anyone asks me to but I don’t feel like I need to declare my own just to protect myself from the thought police. Now, activists routinely refer to Musk as “transphobic.”

Even before trying to buy Twitter, Musk interviewed with the Babylon Bee and talked about the rise of censorship and the “woke mind virus”:

Musk: I think the onion has done some extremely funny stuff over time. It just seems to be in recent years and when infected by the “woke mind virus,” so that just makes everything less funny. It's worldwide viruses, a world without humor.

BB: Why do you think wokeness is so destructive?

Musk: It is a prevalent mind virus and arguably one of the biggest threats to human civilization, I mean, generally, I think we should be aiming for like a positive society and that it should be okay to be humorous. Wokeness basically wants to make comedy illegal. Which is not cool at all. Wokeness is divisive, exclusionary and hateful, it basically gives mean people a shield to be to be mean and cruel armored in false virtue.

BB: The left is almost this religion now, where t