“The War on Tesla Is Good for America
Begun, this new culture war has.
But if electric cars were cool, anyone might buy them, not just California hippies. And as someone who was developing what would eventually become an epic addiction to attention, Musk saw selling his own image as a way to sell Teslas. For a while, that worked quite well; people viewed him as brilliant, creative, futuristic, and yes, cool, and that’s what Teslas evoked. That image resonated even with liberals, who hadn’t yet been exposed to the more rancid parts of his personality that we’re all witnessing now; he just seemed like an innovator who wanted to solve climate change (a problem that today he no longer cares about).
But then Musk bought Twitter and turned it into a festering cauldron of far-right hate speech; delivered unto the world the Cybertruck, the world’s most loathsome and pathetic vehicle; and began his own personal and very public journey toward the extreme right, culminating in his effort to get Trump elected and then dismantle everything worthwhile the federal government does, while he goes around throwing up Nazi salutes. Liberals and even some centrist normies who own Teslas are feeling increasingly besieged and embarrassed; now, rather than communicating “I’m cool and forward-looking, and I care about climate change,” owning a Tesla says “I may be a right-wing asshole.””
disq.us |
