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Comment by mwint | Hacker News Reader

Oversimplified cliff notes: Currently, mostly democrats hate him. In no specific order, some points of the ongoing feud:

- Musk leaving California and decrying its regulatory state

- Biden inviting everyone except Tesla to the White House and congratulating them on “leading the way” wrt. EVs

- Some Democrats picking a fight with him on Twitter (IIRC over the California stuff), and him saying he “ends fights”

Culminating in Musk voting Republican, supposedly for the first time, in a recent minor election. He’s also becoming more vocal about support for Republican figures like DeSantis, and that he thinks the left has gone “too far left.”

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Dude tried to pick Microsoft products over OSS for PayPal and went AWOL which is why they booted him. He’s not an engineer’s engineer.

Supporting military coup against Bolivian president (who was proven innocent of guilt afterwards) and then tweeting non chalantly that “he can coup whoever he wants” and to “deal with it”.

His own daughter is estranging from him because he is a nightmare parent.

He has lied for about 10 years about self driving cars. People have died because of Elon’s lies.

I know dozens of engineers in my circle that won’t buy Tesla or Space-X anything because of Elon. The only people who handwave his social ills are Texas republicans who fight for his scraps. They have a dim view of the world and so he fits in perfectly as a thought leader.

I don’t doubt that he’s a poor parent, he’s ridiculously focused on work. Know a good source on the Bolivia thing?

He tweeted in response. Elon is the source, but he blocked me because I said that I can’t wait for him to die so I can’t link you.

> Elon is the source, but he blocked me because I said that I can’t wait for him to die so I can’t link you.

Not a Musk fan…but that is a horrible thing to say to someone, especially someone not an active threat to your life.

Worse that what Musk said, obviously. Righteous indignation is a powerful drug.

https://mobile.twitter.com/RWTrollPatrol/status/151895728491...

That's the joke tweet, the important part of the claim is that prior to the tweet he "supported" the coup. How did he support it and what is the evidence for that?

> I know dozens of engineers in my circle that won’t buy Tesla or Space-X anything because of Elon.

In fairness, who among us is buying launches from SpaceX?

StarLink Internet

I am sorry I may have misunderstood your last part but are you saying that republicans are the ones that support musk? If so I would disagree and say the vast majority of musk fans were democrats until recently. They drove tesla's rise and that is really where a lot of musk power comes from...

No, they are saying republicans are the "only people who handwave his social ills", i.e., they ignore his shortcomings. And there is a difference between being a musk fan (the person) and liking his cars.

Yes. There has been a recent change in alignment, most on the left are now anti-elon while those on the right have embraced him. This is mainly because of his covid skepticism, open criticism of left-wing politicians, criticism of the Trump twitter ban and suggesting he would reverse it among many other similar statements and sentiments.

“Most (twitter) on the left are now anti-Elon”

It’s interesting to see how social media warps peoples perception of reality. Most people do not care about this, especially with a war, massive inflation, and an upcoming global famine.

> I know dozens of engineers in my circle that won’t buy Tesla or Space-X anything because of Elon.

Curious what an engineer would buy from SpaceX anyways other than a T-shirt, coffee mug, or other miscellaneous logo'ed merchandise.

Maybe a starlink subscription

Ah, how could I forget that's a SpaceX product.

Ford used to burn people alive in pintos. Attaching temporal political significance to a brand is being tricked into falling for capitalist memes. Use products that work for you.

He's been a master of manipulating the news cycle almost to a Trump level so most liberal Tesla-drivers don't really know much about him. People who follow reporting about a variety of topics have seen his name come up again and again for a while and knew he was corrupt, racist and likely supports right-wing fascism.

It isn't that simple, of course. A lot of Techy democrats still like him (but then so do just as many techy Democrats hate him). Many Republicans outside of business and tech fields have no idea who he is. I get the feeling that in the long run, his political affiliation is just not that important, like with most tech billionaires (perhaps BillG votes blue, but can anyone really say who Bezos votes for without doing a search on the web?).

Read the Fox News comments on Twitter’s board approval of the takeover. It’s not just tech and business Republicans. At this point, Republicans just like anyone willing to stand up to progressives instead of cowering.

Except, strangely, for Biden.

Biden doesn’t stand up to progressives on culture, which is the real flash point for Republicans. He would be more popular if he went on a Van Jones style rant: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CStMEd_CNpY

I saw that too, and liked it, but Biden doesn't routinely use the word "Latinx" (it was a whole news cycle when he did), and ran on increasing funding to the police. He won the primary on the Black vote; I tend to think he understands the center of the Democratic party better than most.

Why do you think the progressives have achieved such sway over cultural issues within the Democrat party? It seems like an unnecessary albatross for them to carry, instead of just jettisoning that to a woo-woo 3rd party. I suspect they would be unbeatable in elections if they got rid of that baggage.

What "sway"? They make noise on Twitter and then, except for the very bluest of districts, go on to lose elections. Biden's election is literally a repudiation of performative leftism; he ran on increasing police funding, and continues to call for it today --- and he did so in the immediate wake of the George Floyd murder.

I don't blame Republicans for QAnon. Where else are the QAnon dingbats going to go? The same holds for Democrats and progressive activist groups.

Support for anti-science bigots like DeSantis should be a dealbreaker for anyone, regardless of political affiliation. It speaks to Musk being a unserious person.

I see him as just selfish first and foremost. He acts for the benefit of himself (and his ego) first and foremost. If liberals are favorable towards that end, he will support them. If conservatives are, then he’ll support them. Even supposedly altruistic missions like “making humans a multi planetary species” is grounded in the objective of enhancing his ego.

> - Biden inviting everyone except Tesla to the White House and congratulating them on “leading the way” wrt. EVs

I'm no Musk fan (though I am a Tesla owner), but I always thought this was ridiculous.

If ANY company should be given credit for leading the way on EVs, it's Tesla. Other manufacturers started making EVs, but until recently, the buying process was awful. There were a lot of stories of people going to dealerships and trying to buy an EV and the salespeople would steer them towards an ICE. They don't want to sell you an EV because their maintenance department doesn't profit as much off of them.

Agreed, the constant Tesla snubbing by the Biden administration is embarrassing. For all Elon's problems there is no denying that Tesla is an American success story that changed the auto industry.

Tesla could just allow their employees to unionize and they'd have been invited

And be put on a competitive disadvantage? Gee I wondered why he and other foreign automakers have plants in right to work states

Blind worshipping is bad when searching “unionised carmakers “ is a 5 second activity

There are plenty of reasons for small-C conservatives to increasingly dislike him (they may be largely Democrats though).

He created the appearance that the Texas AG is someone he can sic on people. He's created the appearance that he can personally destroy individual federal regulators who offend him.

At the moment, he's demagoguing the so-called "Twitter bot issue" - relying on most people not understanding that with a little reading comprehension, Twitter can report their 5% figure and their overall users can be 95% bots without any logical conflict at all.

The fact that he's doing this, as opposed to completing the acquisition in a normal manner is extremely ominous.

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