Yeah, he's like a cross between Henry Ford and Werner Von Braun...

and coincidentally he makes cars and rockets too!

What terrible thing has Musk done?

Supporting the openly fascist Donald Trump is a terrible thing.

You'll have to indict more than half of the country, then.

More than half? Source?

Trump may well win this election. But there’s no scenario under which he’s going to also win the popular vote while doing it, at least none that I’ve heard of. If you have credible information that says otherwise I would be interested in reading it.

Definitely less. Trump has never had the support of more than half he country. Even when he won.

Absolutely false. Trump got 74M votes in last election in 2020. US population was 330 millions. Today US population is ~340M. I seriously doubt that more than 170M people support a convicted felon for president. I bet that he will get less than 170M votes in less than a month. Do you want to take the other side of the bet to back up your provably wrong assertion?

Fascism is bad.

Even when millions are suckers for it and think others will be the ones to suffer.

Supported Trump.

The Democrats have a sad history of denigrating Musk, which is likely why he changed from being a Democrat to a Republican.

You don’t spend that kind of money and risk alienating your entire customer base (and future workforce!) just because of a slight.

Musk is getting something from Trump: most likely protection from some legal issue.

It was more than a slight. Biden pointedly ignored Tesla when conducting an EV summit and handing out subsidies. Then there was the FCC fiasco where the FCC snubbed Starlink.

What subsidies did Tesla not get?

> Then there was the FCC fiasco where the FCC snubbed Starlink.

You mean that time that the FCC removed Starlink from the broadband problem when they couldn't deliver the speeds that they had committed to, as defined very explicitly in the program?

Musk has never, no matter what he claims, ever a progressive democrat. He would be at best, someone who believed in the liberalization of certain drug policies. His economic beliefs have always been max pro business (aka, hands off, anti labor). He solidly fits under libertarian like the rest of the tech billionaires. Republicans, if it weren't partly driven by Christian fundamentalists, would be libertarian. The conservative GOP party of the 70's hasn't existed in decades.

I think that is only part of it. Musk gave an interview where he talked about how the woke medical establishment trans'd one of his kids. They falsely told him to do the transition or his child's death was a near certainty. European countries are now restricting this "treatment" for children. The US has been slow to follow. There is a lot of money and political pressure from the left to keep the medical intervention industry alive.

Are you aware of what you're doing: you're removing agency from that person who transitioned. They're abundantly public about how their transition was appreciated and needed. Do you ultimately care more about the feelings of your own dad over yours?

Someday in a land far away people would be mature enough to spot complexity instead of judging people as purely "right" or "wrong". I think the best way to explain Elon is... he is a complicated individual and has some really good parts and some really not so good parts. And you know what, that is just fine.

This manufactured, polarized "us vs them" thing on the internet is toxic corrosive goop. People are complex and that is fine.

no, he says retarded and cringe things on twitter, which is embarrassing for such a titan of industry.

Doesn’t everyone know that people are like this, but those that put on a show as if they aren’t like this are just putting on a show?

Using ableist language on Hacker News, however, is alright? I dislike Elon too, but this comment feels a little out of place and date, especially for the point it's trying to make

A few things that I (as someone who doesn't follow Twitter) have heard about from anecdotes and from the news about why people dislike him:

- He called some guy who worked for him a pedo for no reason, which he was sued over

- Took over Twitter and promoted right wing tweets to everybody, unbanned far right accounts and sued critics who said he did so

- Started promoting far right ideas, like when he retweeted "Interesting" to some tweet of a 4chan post saying that high-status, high-testosterone males are the only ones who can think freely and should be the only ones who can vote

- Took the side of the right-wing rioters who attacked mosques in the UK, saying civil war is inevitable

- Just seems to insult companies for little reason - advertisers who leave him, and Apple

There has been kind of a slow back and forth. Some people who liked him were miffed about the pedo thing, but they didn't hate him. But he has just kept doing things that some people hate.

> Took the side of the right-wing rioters who attacked mosques in the UK, saying civil war is inevitable

Leave out the part where the riots were started because someone with an immigrant background killed a bunch of kids at a Taylor Swift concert and police were withholding the identity. Along with your other 'anecdotes', can you make your political position any more transparent?

I see I accidentally came off implying that I'm disaffected and take no sides - most of the time, right wing politics seems abhorrent to me. Those are the main things I remember because left-wing spaces tend to hate him, and I dislike him because of those things, but no more than CEOs of companies like Nestle, which has engaged in things like slavery and child trafficking.

> because someone with an immigrant background killed a bunch of kids at a Taylor Swift concert and police were withholding the identity.

It might be somewhat justified if they burnt the house down of the murderer, or those who assisted him. They didn't - they burnt down houses, shops, and mosques, because they wrongly assumed the guy was Muslim and decided that was just cause to target any Muslim. His identity was hidden because he was a minor at the time of the attack.