President of The Asia Institute (Washington D.C., Seoul, Tokyo) / former professor at Kyung Hee University.
In this age of overwhelming threats, when danger and decay lurk around every corner, it is most fitting, most appropriate, that we now praise famous men. And the most famous of the famous, the most innovative genius who stands out in the star-studded high-tech landscape of innovators, is without a doubt Mr. Elon Musk.
It is not only Mr. Musk's entrepreneurial spirit in revolutionizing transportation with his electric car, the Tesla, nor just his dream of autonomous transportation that is safer than human drivers, nor just his visionary embrace of artificial intelligence as manifested in the numerous products developed by OpenAI, nor just his revolutionary approach to space as seen in SpaceX or to satellites as found in his ambitious Starlink system, nor for that matter is his genius limited to his commitment to free speech as articulated in his full-throated defense of X (the social media platform formally known as "Twitter").
No, Mr. Musk has grasped something essential about entrepreneurship, investment, technology, culture, and even geopolitics in a prescient, insightful, and perceptive manner.
But wait, wait a minute! I seem to have been led astray - I started talking like an American politician!
What was I thinking? Was I assuming that the way to power is through the slippery, inflated egos of billionaire predators, economic parasites who attribute the loot they take from innocent citizens to their brilliance after buying off government officials and privatizing government services? Such thieves are not legends in their own time, but legends in their own minds.
No, I think this dose of intoxicating elitist establishment opium is wearing off, and truly, I can see clearly now!
Yes, Mr. Musk is certainly a genius, but a genius of a very different kind.
He has a genius for greed, cruelty, hypocrisy, and a psychopathic inability to see the evil of his own actions.
Telsa? A scam to use taxpayer money in the form of subsidies to make a fortune, which was then multiplied in the casinos known as the stock and derivatives markets, to produce an overpriced luxury car available only to the few at the expense of the workers.
Paypal? A fraudulent means of sending money that was achieved by bribing government officials around the world and granting special rights to a special elite class.
OpenAI? The development of systems to dumb down the population and destroy jobs and civil society at the expense of citizens - the technological equivalent of telling people to dig their own graves.
Neuralink? A project for dangerous, unaccountable experimentation on the unsuspecting brains of innocent people, not to enhance individual intelligence, but to allow the multinational corporation to reach its filthy hands deep into your mind and feed garbage into your soul.
SpaceX and Starlink? Launching scores of dangerous satellites and other classified weapons systems at taxpayer expense using the most brutal forms of pay-to-play privatization.
And there have been many other innovative scams perpetrated by Mr. Musk. In fact, with all the money he was spreading around, he could do no wrong.
Oh, did I forget? No, no, it was Mr. Musk who forgot. He forgot to pay taxes as he made billions and billions of dollars with the help of government loans around the world, paid for with - well, your taxes, your hard-earned money. That is right, your money made him a billionaire many times over.
At the same time, we must recognize that Mr. Musk could not have gotten this far without the cooperation of a vast army of collaborators and accomplices, including many who should have known better, and many who did know better, but took the hook because of their greed and because of simple evil hidden in the folds of their hearts.
No, Mr. Musk is not a hero, and he is certainly not a working man's hero. Perhaps he is a hero to rapacious billionaires looking for innovative ways to squeeze the common man even more. Why Mr. Musk offers tremendous innovation in raking workers over the coals and then brainwashing them into thinking he is their defender.
I must admit that I almost threw up my lunch when I saw Robert F. Kennedy Jr. interview Elon Musk and praise him, gushing, "I just want to tell you how much I admire you for what you are doing and how grateful I am on behalf of my country. You came here from another country and became a key instrument in saving American democracy and free speech." Mr. Kennedy, a man I once looked up to for his courageous stand against vaccines, stooped to praise the self-proclaimed Musk just as Musk was in the process of destroying what was left of free speech in the psychological operation and marketing tool formally known as Twitter.
Kennedy's blatant hypocrisy then, as well as his later embrace of Israeli cruelty, not only ripped the mask off the Hyannis Port mystique, but also revealed how low the standards have fallen for politicians today.
It is clear that if you do not kiss the ring of King Musk, you are finished in the political realm, or almost any realm of public discourse.
Let me draw a line in the sand today, stark and clear, like an iron curtain, a DMZ, between me and the rest of these politicians who swarm like maggots when the billionaires throw out the scraps.
My first day in office will be Elon Musk's last day of freedom to wreak havoc in America. He will be arrested for his crimes; he will have all of his assets seized, including those he hides behind various offshore trusts and funds, and all of the documents held by his spider web of corporations, as well as all of the classified documents related to his covert work with the U.S., Israeli, and other military, intelligence, and government agencies, will be released to the world in unredacted form so that you, the people, will have a full picture of his remarkable criminality.
Surely we will need these funds to compensate those crippled by the technologies he has pushed (while brilliantly claiming to be concerned about AI), to compensate those he has robbed with his financial scams to enrich himself at the expense of the working man and woman.
Oh yes!
Cry out from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, "There is no man above the law in this land; no man who can simply print his own money at our expense to enrich himself because he has bought off all the gatekeepers or lulled them to sleep with his AI algorithms."
For indeed, "This land is your land, and this land is my land!"
Without a doubt, "This land was made for you and me.
And this land is not for parasitic billionaires and their spawn, nor for the zombie politicians who lick their palms. Good riddance and good night!
