This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Man, oh man when I’m wrong, I’m wrong! I had predicted Elon Musk would end up a recluse living atop a Vegas penthouse within ten years. Watching Ice Station Zebra on a tape loop and urinating in bottles. Not quite a Bond quality villain but certainly Batman worthy. But who knew? Elon was playing footsie with his personal pal, Vladimir Putin.

The Soviet trained KGB agent who intrigued his way to the top of the heap versus Gomer Pyle. The lottery winner turned political genius. The curse of success is to feel you’re always right. Puffed up with bourgeois self-importance and wisdom just looking for new and fresher fields to share it all with us.

Elon is this century’s, Henry Ford. Henry once had his own newspaper “The Dearborn Independent.” Ford dealers were required to sell it. Henry just had so much wisdom to share and there just wasn’t enough room in all the other papers. Screeds so vile and anti-Semitic Adolf Hitler was a big fan and admirer. The Nazi warlord even sent Henry Ford a medal in admiration for his fine work. During the Great Depression Ford said the depression would all be worth it if it taught workers to be more responsible.

Ford managed to go from being one of the most admired Americans to one of the most despised, in just ten years. Things move faster today than in those quaint times. Ford was seen as a greedy money-grubbing Mr. Burns character’ cynical and awful. The symbol of ugly, ugly Capitalism. I think, therefore I am. I have money; therefore, I am important! Even if you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground. With money, you too can be important and can be a player in world affairs.

For folks like you and me, and probably most of your friends, but you know them better than I do. Would take that wealth and screw off a lot. See the world. See how much cocaine and champagne it took to have a fun night in Paris or Monaco or Los Angeles. I’m just a man of simple tastes, I guess. A sailboat, a full larder and a full pipe and I’m good. Sail the world enjoying the luxurious fortuitus life of leisure and yacht racing or polo ponies or Arabian stallions.

Or when you get tired of masturbating on heaps of your own money you could get involved in politics. You could just dip your toes in. After all, what is wealth for if not to buy advantage. Like Citizen Kane, when you get tired of framing public opinion the megalomania made Kane try to become public opinion and brought about his downfall.

Capitalism is an illness. The more you have the sicker you become. Folks like you and me, and my friends,  don’t have enough money to suffer any serious symptoms. But give us a billion dollars or two and watch the symptoms bloom. I’d bitch about the airport fees parking my jet. And the high cost of Supreme Court Justices. It’s just so goddamned hard to be an honest billionaire in this country! No, Elon could just sit at home and watch his fortune blot out the sky. But no, Elon wants to be important. He wants to sit in chair number one in the center of the TV picture for all the SpaceX launches. He’s important! He’s vital, he signs the checks.

Elon bought Twitter to be his Dearborn Independent. To reflect Elon’s values as Elon’s free press. Twitter never made any money and under Elon’s stewardship it’s making even less. But why should Elon care, it’s only money. For Elon, money is like oxygen; there is an endless supply.

Elon recently said that if Donald Trump didn’t win the election, he Elon, would be fucked. His terminology not mine and I took it as being hyperbolic. But maybe Elon knew the Wall Street Journal story was about to break. If Elon’s been calling Vladimir on the sly, I bet I know who gave him the number. I bet I know the interlocutor between them.

Elon is giving money away in a petition drive turned voting raffle scheme. Phones have lit up in the Justice Department. Now with Elon’s covert conversations with a serial killer, mass murderer and funder of world terrorism, more phones will light up. SpaceX better speed up building the Starship (Pretentious much?) Elon might need a getaway rocket. Mars or bust! He could live like a Bond villain is his own secret space station behind the moon.

It’s true! Elon is correct. If Donald Trump doesn’t win the election, he Elon, is fucked. Destined for the Bernie Madoff Suite at the Jeffrey Epstein Arms. There’s a Japanese proverb which says. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Suddenly, all those juicy government contracts are in jeopardy due to security concerns. But wait! Those contracts are related to the military and national security, and we can’t just cancel them.

What to do, what to do? How can we maintain our SpaceX contracts and assure ourselves there will be no security leaks to our adversaries? Isn’t it obvious? Somebody has got to go. Either obscurity or prison. With Elon persisting in his vote raffle scheme, despite warnings, the decision might have already been made and the die cast.

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape; you don’t spit in the wind. You don’t pull the mask off the old lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with the United States government. Stick your head up and watch what happens next. “Not me! I’m too important to get arrested! They wouldn’t dare!” Yes, they would.

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt