More Musk, Vox Interview, and an Even Shorter Response to Ganz

I never thought I would write an article for Sohrab Ahmari, as we disagree on a lot and I’ve regrettably insulted him a few times, but he reached out after my recent piece on Musk and asked if I would like to write something for UnHerd.

I decided to take the opportunity, and just published an article there on how Musk can be so accomplished in some areas of life while having such a stupid Twitter account, and apparently being so misinformed on political issues and contemporary events. I argue that the traits that make one successful in business do not necessarily translate well into the political realm.

I’ve become so disgusted with the man and his dominance of the public square that differences between me and Sohrab, or anyone else who is not constantly spreading fake news, seem insignificant in comparison. I have a stronger emotional reaction to a constant liar in the public square than a lifelong criminal. To someone committed to virtue or the life of the mind, I used to think it was difficult to imagine a creature lower than Catturd. Yet he was just born that way; a genius who decides to become Catturd is so horrifying I struggle to find the words adequate to express my disgust.

All one can do is try to capture certain aspects of the awful Musk phenomenon, as when I explore the nature of his contempt for truth or what has happened to his brain.

Musk looking with contemplative joy at his spiritual guide and intellectual inspiration

I would also like to direct everyone’s attention to an interview I just had with the Vox/NPR podcast Today, Explained (Apple podcast, Spotify) in which I talk about my role in helping the Trump administration end DEI. It began with the interviewer reading back to me some of the worst quotes from my racist days. I think a lot of people would’ve considered such questions hostile, but I took a more constructive attitude.

It’s not what the interview would have started with if it was up to me, but my perspective is that if they’re not making things up, then I should be able to answer honestly for what I’ve said before. They ask me about a later tweet I sent out in 2023, and I explained that I was actually being philo-Semitic instead of racist, which was fun. Once we got past all that, I thought the interview went well and allowed me to focus on the ideas in my book. We even discussed my disillusionment with Trump at the end, which I appreciated.

Again, I have to say that, after watching what Musk, Trump, and their fans have done to the discourse, my standards have changed. You can have whatever bias you want, just simply don’t go around making stuff up all the time. Any mainstream media outlet meets that standard, and MAGAs do not. Questions that portray me in a negative light are fine as long as they are based in truth, as I feel confident in my ability to respond. In contrast, when it comes to someone who lies as much as Elon Musk and shows that much contempt for truth, there is no possibility for dialogue or even a shared human connection on which to try to build understanding.

On a different note, John Ganz has responded to my piece responding to him on my article on Nazi salutes. He said he struggled over whether to answer, because he doesn’t want to treat me as his peer, but would keep it short. In response, I’m going to show how he’s not my peer by keeping my own response to his response to my response to his response to my article even shorter. Ganz did not really address the main points, including how he both mischaracterized my arguments in the original piece and made unwarranted assumptions about my views. That’s it. Hopefully I’ve gotten the last word in here, and he won’t come back with something even shorter, in which case I will have to grant that he is truly peerless.

Last but not least, I just interviewed AEI senior fellow Philip Wallach on his book Why Congress for the CSPI podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the CSPI Substack to get all the new content there, which is always free.

Here is the start of the UnHerd article.

I once believed that the rise of the Tech Right was going to make conservatism smarter, orienting the Right toward a future of innovation and free-market dynamism. The movement wields great influence on the second Trump administration, most notably in the form of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. The policy implications have been a mixed bag. But one thing we can say for certain is that having some of the most accomplished people in business come into the tent has somehow made the Right much dumber.

No one embodies this paradox better than the world’s richest man.

He who controls Twitter, now X, exercises a vast power over the culture, and the website is now the personal playground of Musk. As a prolific tweeter with some 219 million followers, Musk would have a powerful voice if he were just a regular user who could amplify certain accounts. As it is, he has also changed the tone and ideological tilt of the public square toward his preferred direction through measures like revenue sharing and the algorithmic derogation of links (meaning, if you share a link in an X post, far fewer people are likely to see it).

To say Musk is biased in his posts or that he shows a disregard for the truth doesn’t come close to capturing the constant stream of nonsense he blasts out to the world. This isn’t a matter of being biased or getting things wrong like CNN occasionally does. His feed is more in the neighbourhood of InfoWars, where Alex Jones will typically point to a document that actually exists to make wild extrapolations about what Democrats or “globalists” are up to. Musk is somehow more reckless: the things he regularly promotes lack even that kind of nexus to something based in reality.

Read the whole thing here.