Trump 2: The Trumpening

[Hannibal Scorch]

@Mowgli I know you didn't mean it to come out the way you did, but Autism is not a barrier to be front and centre of anything, nor is it a defence for doing racist or other horrific actions (Gaiman, Musk that's definitely directed at you!). Also Aspergers (an outdated term which is no longer used) is what he says he has and is less prohibitive than autism.

All that aside to say, just look at his family. This is from an interview Elon's dad (you know, the one who married his step daughter and had babies with) had.

"Errol said he's proud to watch his son "accepting who he is". He said: "I think for the first time Elon was accepting who he is. Until recently, he's been a sort of character on a stage.

"When you come from South Africa, Lefties think you're a Nazi. To succeed, you need to be accepted by them so my sons, [Elon and younger brother Kimbal, a hugely successful restaurateur], started to become these flaming liberals – turning away from South Africa and their roots, which included me. Finally, Elon was embracing his heritage and his destiny."

In a separate interview, Errol explained how right-wing poltics were at the core of his family's history. Elon's maternal grandparents relocated from Canada to South Africa in the early 1900s as they knew the Afrikaner government was a stronghold of support for Nazism outside of Germany."

 

Yes, they were members of the Nazi party.

[hallicks]

1 hour ago, Mowgli said:

obviously so clever,

I mean, he obviously isn’t clever. He’s rich. It’s not the same thing. 

[SuperBacon]

4 minutes ago, hallicks said:

I mean, he obviously isn’t clever. He’s rich. It’s not the same thing. 

I dunno. I despise the prick but you cannot get to that level of wealth without being clever, it's impossible. 

Now if we're talking about "academically" clever, that's a whole different conversation. 

[Carbomb]

You also can't get to that level of wealth without inheriting a fortune built from Apartheid emerald mines and a ton of cynical guile that enables you to latch on to businesses and IPs built/created by other people, then claim credit for it.

Edited January 21, 2025 by Carbomb
Franco Baresi

[The King Of Swing]

Musk is a genius at gaming the system and taking credit for other people's work. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

13 minutes ago, hallicks said:

I mean, he obviously isn’t clever. He’s rich. It’s not the same thing. 

This is wild.

I'm not a fan of his, but he's clearly intelligent. He might lack emotional intelligence, or any real understand of history, politics or sociology, but in his early start-ups he was personally responsible for some of the coding. It's not like he's just an investor, he's always been fairly hands-on with product development and engineering.

There's no point people always pretending their opponents are also thick as opposed to just being wrong.

He comes from a very rich family, so he's obviously very privileged but you don't have his career without talent too (whether that talent is business management, product experience, people management or whatever. He's clearly got something).

 

Edited January 21, 2025 by d-d-d-dAz

[SuperBacon]

5 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

You also can't get to that level of wealth without inheriting a fortune built from Apartheid emerald mines and a ton of cynical guile that enables you to latch on to businesses and IPs built/created by other people, then claim credit for it.

Of course bit that's a separate point to being clever isn't it?

[Carbomb]

5 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

This is wild.

I'm not a fan of his, but he's clearly intelligent. He might lack emotional intelligence, or any real understand of history, politics or sociology, but in his early start-ups he was personally responsible for some of the coding. It's not like he's just an investor, he's always been fairly hands-on with product development and engineering.

There's no point people always pretending their opponents are also thick as opposed to just being wrong.

 

Yes and no. I wouldn't deny he's intelligent. It's the "genius" tag that needs debunking. He's intelligent enough to take full advantage of his inherited fortune, and of the cynicism he has from evidently thinking he's above the law and social mores. I'd have to do more reading to give a definitive statement, but I remember reading from a few sources that the only business of his that's actually doing well is SpaceX, and that's broadly because Gwynne Shotwell is running it (IIRC she's openly stated that she's found ways to distract him from getting involved, but I need to track down that quote).

1 minute ago, SuperBacon said:

Of course bit that's a separate point to being clever isn't it?

Yes, but just want to make the point that it's not just his cleverness that factors into the power he's exerting.

Edited January 21, 2025 by Carbomb
Alexi Lalas

[SuperBacon]

1 minute ago, Carbomb said:

, but just want to make sure that people understand it's not just his cleverness that factors into the power he's exerting.

Fairly sure there are people that do believe that Elon Musk is a self made billionaire, but I reckon no one on this board thinks that (hopefully!)

[Carbomb]

1 minute ago, SuperBacon said:

Fairly sure there are people that do believe that Elon Musk is a self made billionaire, but I reckon no one on this board thinks that (hopefully!)

I mean, I accept this place is broadly irrelevant - the only power we have is to destroy the British wrestling industry.

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, JNLister said:

Long story short, Trump can't run for President again without changing the Constitution, which is probably never going to happen again. There are ways he could get back in by running as vice-president and the President resigning, though that would involve the Supreme Court making a very creative interpretation of an ambiguous part of the Constitution, which you can't entirely rule out. Alternatively, he could get into the Congress or Senate and become its leader, or get appointed to the Cabinet, and then have everyone above him in the line of succession quit.

Basically it's possible to get him a third term but you can't do it sneakily. He'd need the entire Republican establishment on side and then go into an election outright saying "here's the plan, the presidential candidate is quitting on day one, we're outright doing this to get Trump back in."

It's also worth noting that he'll be 82 at the end of this term, the same age Joe Biden is now. God knows what his health is like, as it's impossible to know what's mental deterioration and what's just Donald Trump being Donald Trump, and the prick's probably going to live to 103, but I think any effort to manoeuvre him into a post-presidential position of power has to take his age into account. I wouldn't put any of it past him, or the people for whom he'll be a useful figurehead for even at that age, but, again, my real hope is that it all falls apart due to petty in-fighting because he is a pathetic man-child surrounded by pathetic man-children, all of them petty and vindictive enough that they can't possibly work together on a single goal for more than five minutes without someone getting sacked, quitting, or throwing a tantrum.

The right-wing don't care about intellectual honesty or purity, so long as they get what they want, but there is quite a wide spectrum of "what they want" - we've already seen this with some of the far-right turning on Elon Musk because he's not 100% anti-immigration across the board, and the same will happen in some quarters of the Republican Party over Trump trying to make changes to birthright citizen ship. Because as much as nationalism and racism are very comfortable bedfellows, there's insurmountable ideological differences once you get down in the weeds - and Elon Musk is a racist and a white supremacist, but he's not an "America First" nationalist. Push come to shove, I think, politically, Trump is a nationalist before he's a white supremacist. Neither are good, but in terms of a shared political project, those differences start to mean something.

58 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

All that aside to say, just look at his family. This is from an interview Elon's dad (you know, the one who married his step daughter and had babies with) had.

"Errol said he's proud to watch his son "accepting who he is". He said: "I think for the first time Elon was accepting who he is. Until recently, he's been a sort of character on a stage.

"When you come from South Africa, Lefties think you're a Nazi. To succeed, you need to be accepted by them so my sons, [Elon and younger brother Kimbal, a hugely successful restaurateur], started to become these flaming liberals – turning away from South Africa and their roots, which included me. Finally, Elon was embracing his heritage and his destiny."

Never met a nice South African, etc. etc.

[d-d-d-dAz]

13 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Yes and no. I wouldn't deny he's intelligent. It's the "genius" tag that needs debunking. He's intelligent enough to take full advantage of his inherited fortune, and of the cynicism he has from evidently thinking he's above the law and social mores. I'd have to do more reading to give a definitive statement, but I remember reading from a few sources that the only business of his that's actually doing well is SpaceX, and that's broadly because Gwynne Shotwell is running it (IIRC she's openly stated that she's found ways to distract him from getting involved, but I need to track down that quote).

Yes, but just want to make the point that it's not just his cleverness that factors into the power he's exerting.

I agree on the genius point. That's a hyperbolic term, that's overused in pretty much every area of life.

But I was responding to the idea he wasn't clever. That's too far.

'Doing well' is also a very misleading term in business. For example, his first start-up Zip2 which he funded and was involved with product development was sold for 312 million dollars. That's doing well, even if the business no longer exists.

He's clever. That's what makes him more dangerous, and why i hope the left (or hopefully civilised society more generally) takes him and people like him more seriously. They shouldn't be dismissed as rich and thick. They're smart, successful and have the ability to strategically plan and deliver very bad things. I'd much rather he was just rich and dumb, I'd be far less anxious about the world then.

Edited January 21, 2025 by d-d-d-dAz

[theringmaster]

I read the biography on Musk that came out last year (or was it year before?) and he's clearly a very clever man. He was a child prodigy on computers, making and selling games when he was like 13, he made his first million by the time he was in his mid twenties from his start up. He is a visionary. Politics is very different to technology and business though, just because he makes those world spins around doesn't mean he can do the same in Politics. 

[Scratch]

The small business I worked 25 years for was built on a software application that someone I consider to be very intelligent, built. That business sold for millions a couple of years ago.

The code he wrote worked, but it was poor, full of bugs, wasn’t scalable beyond a few users and needed more than double the resource to keep it running than it did to build.

I guess what I’m saying is, writing computer code requires a certain level of intelligence, but there are millions of people who can do it to some degree. Understanding the anatomy of a computer and architecting software that’s efficient, reusable and truly scalable would be a truer mark of intelligence.

That’s a long way of saying that Musk’s intelligence can’t be gauged on him having once written some code. I’ve worked with university professors who lecture on software who have written diabolical code.

For me, it’s all about opportunity. It’s like looking at Messi and Ronaldo and assuming they got there just because they were the best footballers. They’re actually the best footballers who happened to get an opportunity to prove it.

There are millions of people who are more intelligent than Elon Musk, and most of them wouldn’t be classed as a genius. If some of them had half the opportunities that Musk was afforded, the most wealthy of this world would be less likely to seek power and instead use their “genius” for the greater good.

Also, the point earlier about it being unfair putting Musk up there, he’s hardly a wallflower. I’d say it’s as easy to assume he insisted on making his presence known than it is to assume Trump asked him.

[LaGoosh]

I think of Musk as "cunning" rather than intelligent. He's also sad, needy and pathetic. I think he's going to end up more as a grovelling supplicant than an oligarch. I don't think Trump is going to bend or do anything he doesn't want to for him. 

As for Trump...I feel like a lot of the shit he comes out with he just says to shock, rattle or get support from his base. I don't think he has the intention or the will to do the vast majority of it.