I know a man who plans to burn an effigy of Elon Musk on his bonfire on 5 November. Musk will be on a cardboard rocket and it will be hilarious, apparently,to watch him being engulfed by flames, because he’s ridiculous, he and his weird ideas about Mars. The idea that Musk is laughable is one of the few topics on which the progressive left and the old hawkish left agree. Musk isn’t a serious person, they say, and because he’s not serious, he’s dangerous. He shouldn’t be allowed to own Twitter, let alone space rockets.
There was cautious, grudging approval when Musk donated terminals for his Starlink satellites to Ukraine, followed by great alarm when he speculated about the possibility of a peace deal with Vladimir Putin. Seize his satellites, nationalise Starlink, said the Atlantic’s David Frum.
He hasn’t changed any of the rules about Twitter content moderation or let any banned tweeter back
Is Elon Musk a less serious person than David Frum? It’s not clear to me that he is.
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