Musk says he'll spend about $180 million to elect Trump.
They are the nation's two most powerful enemies of democracy (though Musk has some competition for second place) and, by extension, freedom of expression.
Everyone who buys a Tesla is supporting them.
Everyone who uses the deadbird site -- notably the journalists, who all know what they're doing -- is supporting them.
Don't pretend otherwise.
Apparently that much money rots all reason, taste, morality, and eventually, sanity. Judging by what those with money (mostly) wind up as.
good point. correlation is not causation. in fact, you're saying the cause and effect is the other way around. i can see that
@benroyce @Naich @shironeko @dangillmor
Not necessarily, your original point has some data to back it up. UC Irvine Associate Professor Paul Piff has done quite a bit of research on the link between wealth/success and a lack of empathy, and he's shown some evidence that wealth causes empathy to go down - notably in rigged games of monopoly.
@benroyce @shironeko @dangillmor This is my view. 1.5 centuries of psych research taught us that external circumstances shape our behavior far more than our personalities, morals, etc.
Money does rot people. The best thing we can do for billionaires is to prevent them from ever becoming billionaires. Side effect: all the good things for our world.
@hans @dangillmor You can thank the Citizens United decision for that.
On Jan. 21, 2010, in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Supreme Court ruled to strike down a prohibition on corporate independent expenditures, which has since enabled corporations and other outside groups to engage in unlimited amounts of campaign spending.
@DebErupts @hans @dangillmor IMHO what was wrong with CU was not the basic principle - corporations should be allowed to spend money on elections - but the lack of any differentiation between types of corporations.
CU should have allowed not-for-profit corporations the same rights as individuals, and should have barred for-profit corporations from spending anything at all.
We have to be able to form organizational groups and spend on politics, but that doesn't imply Musk & $180M.
@PaulDavisTheFirst That does not work. PACs *are* nonprofits and they are funded by billionaires.
And Musk is not spending the money as a corporation, he is spending it as an individual.
@markmevans if i had more than 485 chars, i'd have said "certain classes of non-profits".
and yes, in the case of Musk, CU really has nothing to do with it, due to individual spending.
the CU case came out of not-really-for-profit corporation wanting to publish a clearly-election related book. tto me it seems that the ability to do this is extremely desirable. but it should not be available to any class of corporation.
@dangillmor When you are pervertedly rich, you can buy yourself an American President.
That's the PEAK of capitalism, Folks! Congrats ... ;-)
@davidpnice @dangillmor I know.
It would be absolutely revolutionary if Americans found a THIRD huge party that works in favour of the people of America who build the base of the Country: Labour workers.
Conquer the system by not playing by their rules. Do something very nasty ... ;-)
@PaulDavisTheFirst @davidpnice @dangillmor What choise does an American have?
In Germany for instance the social-democratic party SPD was the party for labour workers with historic reason. Then we have/had the left called Die Linke who work also in favour of the common man. We have the CDU/CSU who claim to represent the Middle - which is untrue for decades. And we have a green party as well. There is a political spectrum to choose from.
It's not one way OR the other ...
@AndyGER @davidpnice @dangillmor while I agree that we have very little choice when it comes to *parties* in the USA, the Democrats (at least) do represent quite a range of political ideology (even though the Democrat you get to vote for may not).
My point was really that the idea of "a workers' party" doesn't make much sense in the USA, where a sense of "class consciousness" is rather weak and not very definitional.
@PaulDavisTheFirst @davidpnice @dangillmor The sense comes with choice. After people had the choice the parties had to build coalitions and learn how to work together in favour of democracy.
I could be wrong but this could offer a complete new way of how politics is done in the US ...
@PaulDavisTheFirst @davidpnice @dangillmor Every revolutionary idea seems to be impossible at first.
What's possible is, that America is drifting apart into a dictatorship. It's very possible and this is the sadest. What would follow is the fall of democracy in many, many parts of the world.
Somehow what is happening now is kind of the end of the way of the two-party system. It seems not to work in the favour of the people any longer.
Change is needed ...
@dangillmor these days the thing that concerns me the most about Twitter is that so many journalists live on Twitter.
This gives Musk the ability to shape what journalists perceive in a pretty targeted way.
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rich people, or oligarchs should know where it leads if they support soon-to-be-dictator. look at current russia, how much power oligarchs have over putin!? actually nothing.
it seem that elon musk think that trump can be controlled somehow. delusional assumption.
boycott x.com, tesla and other elon musk products.
Is that genuine??
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/its-time-trump-sail-into-sunset-says-musk-2022-07-12/
And yeah, Musk's "fortune" is paid for by the USA tax payers. I though that was well known.
Thanks for that.
I'm not a US citizen, so am not aware of many details/events, although I did know about Musk's funding. Really, I've just been watching the gradual global demise into fascism over these last ~10yrs. When I talked to people about it back then, they thought I was just a bit lost. I wish they'd been right.
@gsymon indeed and same here.
I'm waiting for the rest of humanity to realize where all this is coming from.
Not only does it sound on brand for the orange felon/rapist, it IS true:
@unlucio @dangillmor This is the same Trump who told us in 2016 he would represent the people instead of the rich, since he could fund his own campaign and didn't need their money?
Come on Trump. At least make Musk beg instead of just giving it to him.
Listen to him talking that shit as if NASA isn't now wholly dependent on SpaceX for manned space flight and without which we would lose our ability to be a spacefaring civilization. And which Trump needs for his little Space Force.
Musk could tell that miserable fat fuck "Drop to your knees and beg", and Trump would have done it...
All true. Doesn't change the fact that we're dependent on SpaceX now.
I agree with you that we really shouldn't be.
Strongly disagree.
There's no reason for an individual to incur what may be a non-trivial financial penalty or other lifestyle change for something that's effectively beyond their control.
I think the sticker actually delivers a more useful message.
Typically the overhead for changing a vehicle is likely to be thousands of dollars, taking depreciation, availability of replacements etc. into account.
And even if there's no cost, it's simply an unreasonable imposition on someone for what was a good decision they made several years ago.
Assuming you have a car, how would you feel if someone told you you had to change it to pass some sort of ideological purity test?
@mmalc @dangillmor I'd feel great about it because if it's a given they found rational reasoning for me to change something that trivial I'd go all in on that newfound method to reduce my negative impact on the planet and my local communities.
Changing vehicles can involve moving down the vehicle cost ladder thereby incurring no cost especially when we're taking about teslas which are expensive cars.
I call bollocks.
For most people a car is not trivial. They're a major investment.
I personally spent a long time choosing the car I currently have so that it's *comfortable* for me. Switching to a new vehicle would not be a simple matter.
And apart from that the person you sold the car to? You're now going to denigrate them for having a Tesla? How are you going to differentiate between them and the original owner?
The arrogance of your imposition is breathtaking.
@[email protected] @dangillmor I'm glad you're comfortable in your car, mmalc. A lot of people can't achieve that even with a car they can't afford and some even because of what elmo has done to our country and the planet.
I would differentiate them by the purchase price they paid.
A better bumper sticker would be "I got this car for free because it's worth less given what that dude did to make it and the people that could afford it tanked the price on purpose like a real American"
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