RegendansA bigger gripe, and perhaps an unfair one, is that the authors try too hard to make sense of late-phase mad Musk. They write seriously about Muskism as “cyborg conservatism”; about Musk’s fear that the “woke mind virus” will interfere with his dreams of making Homo sapiens a multiplanetary species; about Musk’s evocation on Joe Rogan’s podcast of a “super oppressive woke nanny AI that is omnipotent” and might “execute you if you misgender someone”.
👉It’s well known that the most personal reason for his switch from palatable if geekish discourse on tech to rancid interventions in global culture wars and hard-right politics is his failure to come to terms with his daughter Vivian coming out as trans in 2020. 👈 But even that is arguably a distraction from something simpler and more in-your-face (especially if you still use X) – namely the slow crack-up of a narcissistic bazillionaire of limited emotional bandwidth surrounded by sycophants, overfond of ketamine and increasingly convinced of his infallibility on every subject his addled mind turns to in the long night hours on his private jet, even as Tesla sales slump and the giant rocket he once hoped would take humans to Mars keeps blowing up.
https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/does-muskism-mean-anything
