I used to respect Elon for risking a lot of his own capital on new ventures. But now he's turned into a socially conservative internet troll.
He declares entire programs to be fraud and declares them cancelled, seemingly taking only minutes to unilaterally make that declaration.
If he respected the people and the democratic process he'd create transparency and (if he's right) have massive public support behind his efforts.
But he's offered ZERO transparency, only name calling.
There's a good article in the NYT saying it's a bit like when the US tried to remake the Iraq government after invading and sent in a handful of young people to rearrange everything who did't know what they were doing
"The Familiar Arrogance of Musk’s Young Apparatchiks" https://archive.ph/jnTG3
It seems much closer to what's happening than calling it a coup.
It was odd as a Brit seeing him going on about the grooming scandal in the UK. I mean it was a bad thing but he was getting a lot of his facts wrong and wanting to fire the wrong people etc. I'm not quite sure what's up with him.
I have two theories.
A) At his core he's a cultural supremacist. Perhaps it began in a benign way when he was a boy trying to believe his ancestors deserved their place in South Africa's economic hierarchy and he deserved to ride to school in a limousine. Over time he gained power as a rich nerd, yet he began to sense limits to that power and longed for the kind of power held by leaders of tribes. Cultural trends led to more tribalism in politics which captured Elon's imagination, and because of his early conditioning the political messages rooted in cultural supremacy felt like powerful truths that he felt called to help promote. In Trump he sees a tribal chieftain fighting what is ultimately a noble battle and unencumbered by ideas that weaken or water down the ancestral spirit he is fighting for.
B) It's all purely opportunistic. Tactics upon tactics all based on some analysis that it's the only way he will personally save humanity by getting humans to Mars in time.
Some of their reasoning seems to be - bad/woke stuff happens in the UK - who's the leftie to blame - ah Starmer's running the left party - tweet it's all Starmer's fault, he should go. But the government in charge from 2010 to 2024 when most of that happened was Cameron and the Tories. Starmer is actually quite middle of the road, small c conservative and the first person to prosecute and imprison the bad guys in the grooming thing. It's all a bit mindless / ill informed.
I hope rearranging the US government is a bit better thought out! At least the people involved seem to be American and so presumably have some basic knowledge of the American government.
Elon is in this purely to remove all regulations, which he views as a hinder to his businesses. He also wants a private takeover of core gov. functions, which then he (or allies) can provide.
Elon was never going to follow democratic processes, that's not how moneybag men think. Do you think he ran X.com, PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, or Twitter as democracies? Hell no. Musk fires or buys-out people who disagree with him. Same with the healthcare CEO Luigi assassinated. There is no process in the current version of America that would allow the people to counter the power of billionaires. The people have been routed.
The difference between the two is that Luigi targeted a thing that actively hurts people and, in any democratic world, would have been illegal. Elon is burning down the things that stop him from hurting people.
[0] Which isn't democratic; nor is the Republican Party republican. Canada and Australia's Liberal Parties aren't liberal, either. Hell, Japan has a two-fer: a Liberal Democratic Party that's neither liberal nor democratic.
The correct term, IMO, is regressive.
That has been failing for a while now. Congressional approval is in the 20% range, much lower than even Trump's. An odd fact never mentioned in the media. The U.S. is toast if it can't reverse Citizen's United.
You should actually look into this. Approval of congress as a whole is low, but most actual senators and house reps have high approval ratings and get re-elected.
Democracy is working just fine, it's congress who isn't. If you want to understand why, just ask Republicans what their platform and policy towards cooperation has been for decades.
Go watch CSPAN from the 80s and 90s. Republicans and Democrats used to build coalitions to get things done. You would have "pro" and "anti" sides that crossed state borders, political parties, ideologies, generations.
If there is a problem with the legislature it's pretty much directly attributable to Republican voters continuing to elect Republican congresspeople who take it as a rule to never ever ever compromise for anything.
Multiple times, Republican senators have voted down a bill that they provided support for explicitly because "doing something" to fix the relevant problem would make the Democrat admin look good and functional.
Mitch McConnel voted against a bill he sponsored to prevent it passing and making the democrats look good.