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Comment by schiffern | Hacker News Reader

> I am still asking myself what the fuck happened?

I think the Scott Adams piece the other day[0] described the system dynamics well:

"Once you’re sufficiently prominent, politics becomes a separating equilibrium; if you lean even slightly to one side, the other will pile on you so massively and traumatically that it will force you into their opponents’ open arms just for a shred of psychological security."

I think Biden giving credit to GM[1] and being used as a political football, prior to Musk entering politics in a big way himself, drove him away from the left and (by process of elimination) toward the right. Once you're down the rabbit hole, the rest is history.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46646475

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/gm-ceo-joe-biden-elon-musk-t...

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The big event just before he announced he was now voting Republican in May 2022 was newspapers reporting on him sexually harassing an employee 6 years earlier.

I was always confused and intrigued what was going on behind the scenes when Tesla was so obviously and publicly rejected by the Biden administration in that manner.

Musk was even then a polarising figure, but given Tesla was arguably more “American” than even the self-proclaimed traditional American car companies, it seemed a weird, self-defeating, perhaps emotional, position for the administration to take.

Tesla not being unionized was the main guess I heard about it at the time. The legacy auto industry has a history of outsized political influence leading to many dumb decisions on politician's part from an administrative success perspective.

I don't know either really, I'm just reporting remembered second-hand sources.

That 2021 event was very much not about EVs-in-general, but about supporting UAW as a union at a time when a lot of their jobs were about to be disrupted because Biden just signed an EO (14037) that pushed traditional automakers towards making more EVs (target being 40-50% by 2030, but it was non-binding).

So, why were Ford, GM and Stellantis there but Tesla wasn't? Because Tesla was already making EVs only, because none of its workforce is a part of UAW (due to Tesla being anti-union) and because this EO had no impact on Tesla's workforce what so ever. Elon being butthurt about it doesn't change the fact that it would've made zero sense to have Tesla there.

You don't have to take my word for it, Jen Psaki directly addressed this at a press briefing:

> Asked if Tesla being a nonunion company was the reason it wasn’t included Thursday, Psaki replied, “Well, these are the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/05/business/tesla-snub-white...

Thanks; actually, your background context is a lot more informative than the quote. It makes a lot more sense that they were excluded because it didn't make sense for them to be there because it was an event targeted at the union(s) because the administration had just made things difficult for them.

(The quote sounds simply like "we excluded Tesla because they are anti-union"...)

Except there is nothing in musks history that suggest this. His actual behavior was always consistent with who he is now. He just became more aggressive as people pointed it out.

He did not leaned a little right. He had the same political opinions, but less of narcissist rage over not being admired.

In the past (early Tesla - SpaceX - Boring Company - Hyperloop - crypto) he seemed apolitical and only to really care about setting up the building blocks for a new, different society on Mars. Maybe a pipe dream, maybe megalomaniac, but just very cool and very futuristic. He didn't seem very political aside from a libertarian bent.

Somewhere along the road he devolved into a petty and weird character, and then went off the deep end into full spectrum alt-right weirdness.

He is the same type of talented hype man as Jobs was, with the same sort of reality distortion field. Otherwise SpaceX reusable wouldn't have happened. And even Jensen Huang was supremely impressed how fast xAI built up data centers.

He obviously always held the normie billionaire libertarian "taxes bad, regulations bad, unions bad" right positions, enjoyed "politically incorrect" jokes and had some weird preconceptions like obsession with male heirs that might not be overtly political but line up with certain more fringe right views. Maybe he chose to hide some spicier views about the apartheid era.

But there's also definitely been a change. He publicly endorsed Democrat candidates on numerous occasions, including against normie business-friendly Republicans. Think his metamorphosis in actual unfiltered views is best shifted from the "I absolutely support trans but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare" to his current campaigns...

Are you implying that "moving right" necessitates lying about basic things constantly?

Also, didn't Musk publicly quit Trump's advisory councils over exiting the Paris Agreement back in 2017? Why does that rift not qualify for your "separating politics" hypothesis?

> Are you implying that "moving right" necessitates lying about basic things constantly?

Not OP ... but it would be consistent with observations. It is a party that admires lying and rewards it.

I think as the left has become more homogeneously college educated they are less likely to wholesale accept blatant lies and falsehoods. For someone like Musk this will naturally push them to the right because he incessantly lies/bullshits so often and has a visceral negative reaction when being called on it (the cave fiasco comes to mind).

If the right will welcome people like Musk with open arms (always a natural fit anyways, he's rich as hell) then why wouldn't he pull the mask off? Despite most Tesla customers being presumably left leaning, his heel turn doesn't seem to have had much negative impact on the things that matter to him so far, for example his net worth.

Generally, right-wing politics are about the exploitation of others and lying is typically a part of that.

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