Elon Musk's Magic Trick

Despite buying and now attempting to manage the United States, Elon Musk’s real focus is in China. In 2018 Musk announced its plans to build a Gigafactory in Shanghai. Musk subsequently announced another major investment in China to manufacture large batteries. He’s also working to bring full self-driving technology to China and is trying to clear safety regulations necessary for full scale deployment into the market.

China is a huge potential market. The population of the United States is around 345 million. The population of China is 1.4 billion, roughly 4 times larger than the United States. And Musk hasn’t turned Tesla into a MAGA-only pariah-brand in China as he has in the United States. So based upon market demographics it is easy to understand why Musk no longer cares about burning down the U.S. market for Tesla.

The major story of last week was the result of an impressive magic trick orchestrated by Musk. As the United States government was on the precipice of a costly shutdown, the House was ready to pass a bill known as a “Continuing Resolution” -an agreement to keep the government funded and operating without forcing it to close, causing significant disruption in services during the holiday travel season.

“Musk the Magnificent” made the temporary budget agreement “disappear” with with 100’s of “tweets” or “sharts” or whatever he calls it on his toxic platform for disinformation and hate otherwise known as the former Twitter. While a magician or illusionist is not supposed to reveal how a trick was performed, according to NBC News he “sharted” over 100 times on “X” about “Kill Bill” -not the film, but the House Continuing Resolution budget agreement.

As the smoke and mirrors cleared the stage, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee unveiled the trick. The bill that Musk was objecting to restricted investments from the United States in areas that create risks to national security, such as in artificial intelligence and other advanced technology that has military applications. It would have constrained Musk’s ability to continue to make major investments into China. And some elected GOP members were so awestruck by the magic trick, they are screaming “more, more, MORE!” like 6 year olds at a birthday party.

While this is likely just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg of what we will witness over the next four years, this is also a reminder that there are people, actual citizens of the United States, serving prolonged prison sentences for relatively minor offenses like marijuana possession, unrelated to crimes against America such as undermining the security of the country for personal financial gain.

And this is another example for future attempts at any form of meaningful democracy -a democracy cannot co-exist with the extreme concentration of wealth into the hands of a few.