> he moved to the right

If by "moved to the right" you mean "he fell off the far end and if he were a politician his politics would be considered radical extremism", sure.

Yeah, only to the chronically online left.

It's not only chronically online folks who have a strong distaste for Elon. For one thing, everyone knows what an epic and highly visible failure DOGE was. That's widely acknowledged and not even controversial as far as I'm aware.

>>widely acknowledged and not even controversial as far as I'm aware.

In the New York Times, maybe. Everyone seems pretty pleased that USAID isn't wasting taxpayer money.

1. Evolution of Musk promises cuts to federal expenses:

- October 2024 - $2 trillion per year

- March 2025 - $1 trillion per year

- April 2025 - $150 billion per year

Independent sources put the savings around $10 billion per year (1/200th!).

2. Very important example of conflict of interest AND harm to the government: independent sources expect IRS workforce cuts to <<reduce>> federal revenue by <<$198 billion over a decade>>.

3. To your direct point

- most of USAID’s money was spent through American organisations, not sent abroad directly (>80% of companies holding USAID contracts were American)

- in practice USAID ran important early-warning systems: famine warnings and perhaps even more importantly disease surveillance (ever heard of... pandemics?)

Cut the nose to spite the face.

Did Musk/DOGE cut military spending? Healthcare spending? He went after politically convenient, and even worse, personally convenient targets.

Like that joke about looking for the wallet not where you lost it in the dark, but where the light is better...

You'd think the average well educated HN commenter wouldn't fall for such easy to sport propaganda.

Ah yes, the $30b (FY2024) a year that funded things like the World Bank, UN World Food Programme, Catholic Relief Services, Family Health International, and Gavi the Vaccine Alliance.

Do you know what soft power is?

It's so funny seeing American left derided as some radical ideology.

I dunno man, giving kids sex changes and having open borders seems pretty far left.

I’m quite sure his overt white supremacy and fascism is considered far-right extremism by everyone who is also not on the far-right. Ironic since he’s quite possibly the biggest welfare recipient of all time.

>>overt white supremacy and fascism

Lol.

Yeah, it’s super funny that the richest person in the world believes in replacement theory and spreads white supremacy propaganda everyday. Do you realize how normal people view this?

> chronically online

We are witnessing the death of irony: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=gadders

LOL at this being downvoted :-)

I see you posting this same opinion again and again, week after week. People keep explaining their issues with Musk which go far beyond "he votes differently!", yet you keep insisting there's literally no good reason to dislike him.

Have you ever considered that you might just be part of the terminally online right?

I think we're past that point and these kinds of comments should just be flagged.

Always leaping to censorship, predictable.

Yes, low-effort spam should be censored, because it makes insightful discussions much harder.

This site isn't your personal far-right soap box. If you want to keep posting the same low-effort takes again and again without meaningfully engaging with counter-arguments, platforms like Substack are a much better address.

Who are you talking to?

What are you asking?

Just curious why you directed that essay at me, you can just say you're pro-censorship.

I'll out-debate you and OP, which I'm doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50451333

Life is too short, though, for wading through swamps.

I feel like this is a false narrative I hear a lot. “Everyone” didn’t love Teslas, it was a niche product and the Musk exposed himself as one of the worst people on earth, and the market shrank even more. It’s a strawman to claim Teslas were loved by “everyone” (implicitly or explicitly often stated as people with a left wing bent).

As I remember things, a lot of people turned on Musk (or were already against him) in 2018 when he called the diver who rescued children trapped in a cave in Thailand (and "stole" a moment of glory from Musk and his mini-sub) a "pedophile".

Long before he announced he intended to vote Republican in 2022.

Yeah, I think that’s when people went from having no opinion on Musk to actually disliking him and it’s been all downhill from there.

Nobody said "everyone" meant everyone ever. In all statements like that, there is an implied "everyone with feelings on Tesla"

Musk fanboys are hardly “everyone”.

I said nothing about Elon specifically.

Let's not forget stunts like the cave rescue sub that was incredibly unfit for purpose and him calling one of the actual heroes of that moment "pedo guy"

He's always been a piece of shit, it's just that the last several years he's been a far more obvious piece of shit.

He fired his PR team at Tesla[0] who were doing a sterling job of polishing a turd. Since then he has been more obviously a dope-addled con manchild.

[0] https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department...