Trump is going to try and cut popular programs like social security and throw the unlikable Vivek and Musk under the bus for it
Elon is going to try and run the country through Trump while using his immense wealth and power to keep Trump doing what he wants.
Someone is getting played at the end of the day. It’s just who can most effectively maneuver their position. It’d be kind of interesting if they weren’t fucking with all of us in the process.
If life’s a game, it’s chess and we’re the pawns. Except that pawns in chess have a higher chance of promotion.
When it comes to politics, money always wins
the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low. Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.
JFC. First of all, I hate the sports analogies when it comes to corporate bullshit-speak. The only thing that is worse is saying “we are like a family”. Secondly, at least in sports, even if the owners make far, far more, at least top talent is compensated to some degree.
The problem the moneyed class has is, and it really, really annoys them, is that they have to compensate top talent that actually do something, not just the executives. And man, the idea of disrupting their corporate caste system annoys them no end.
THIS is why they do all kinds of things to try to break engineers’ spirit and trying to keep them from getting too uppity. They collude, and have “gentlemen agreements” to not poach talent from one another. They set salary ranges. The collude with government on programs like H1B. They collude with government to offshore jobs to the lowest cost of living/most desperate countries they can…
God fucking forbid that “top talent” get FUCKING PAID like an executive. That would start puncturing the illusion that the wizards in mahogany row are the real creators of wealth.
To bad a good bit of tech engineers see themselves as rugged individuals, who are an eventual executives and are essential to the companies they work for. So they do nothing to help other workers because the they that would be “hurting themselves”.
Yeah, unfortunately, at least since the 80s, a lot of goofy narratives about how Steve Jobs or Bill Gates were “just like you” (meaning the random Galt’s Gulch engineer) and with a little pluck and a lot of coding, they made billions. Rinse and repeat this with lots and lots of new characters heading up new companies…
Um, neither of them made that money as engineers…they might have started out doing some related work, but they quickly turned to exploiting other engineers to make the real money.
the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.
Yep, you touched on this. Lots of super talented engineers who are also super motivated to work: Provided the pay is commensurate, which it never is.
Maybe if the right wing hadn’t spent the last forty years denigrating education and experts then Americans wouldn’t worship sports and media stars.
Maybe if the right wing hadn’t spent the last forty years denigrating education and experts
Even more ironically, they have morphed the term “elitist” to mean: people that have degrees (and don’t try to cover it up in some stupid ploy to appear folksy, like the qon thought leaders do when they have an Ivy League background), know stuff, have expertise in something, speak well/properly, etc.
Instead of the more appropriate meaning for elitist, and that is someone that is filthy rich. Like donvict and Elmo.
If the right is now bitching that people worship sports and media stars, after pissing on education and expertise for decades, and then going ALL-IN on donvict, who was made known to most Americans by…checks notes… being given a game show to make him a star…SMH.
My favorite part is Ramsshwarma is yammering about how we wouldn’t need to import engineers if we celebrated smart people and not jocks. HE WORKS FOR AN IDIOT JOCK WIDLEY CELEBRATED FOR HIS IGNORANCE AND OVERCONFIDENCE…
It would be delightfully ironic if Musk’s right-wing audience he gained from going absolutely batshit insane turned on him as well, further driving away people from his vanity-feeding platform, leaving him destitute and craving for attention he has to lick off the floor.
Can you imagine? A world where we get to talk about Twitter as a thing of the past?
What a dream…
I don’t know how people got so duped into thinking musk is a genius, he’s just a spoiled rich kid that got that way by family money and riding the coat takes of others. Even Peter Thiel refers to him as a fraud that believes his own bullshit.
Did you just describe Musk or Trump?
Yes.
Even Peter Thiel
Wow, that’s really something coming from Thiel. Thiel is a real head case and I hope he stays mostly quiet. If he starts trying to mimic Musk as far as getting more and more into the spotlight and seizing more power, we are in for a wild(er) ride.
He doesn’t have to be an Einstein-level genius to be an effective oligarch. Turning twitter into what it is was a smart move for him.
Take him seriously as a threat.
Well that’s just it. He is absolutely smart enough to be dangerous. But the mythology behind him is insane and it irritates me. He’s just a guy who’s willing to treat people like they’re worthless for profit that had a bunch of legs up in his life. That shit is so dangerous.
There are many, many more spoiled rich kids not nearly as successful as Musk. Musk certainly is exceptionally good at managing businesses. Let’s see how good he is at (directly) influencing a government.
Musk certainly is exceptionally good at managing businesses
He is?
Well, it’s either that or he’s failed upwards in a historically unprecedented way. At minimum, he’s put people in charge of SpaceX and Tesla that are both effective at managing those businesses and managing him to keep him from screwing up.
Twitter doesn’t have a way to effectively manage him, so it’s coasting on the H1B talent that can’t leave for other jobs.
Damn, you mean to tell me the lifelong con-man and his team of other con-men and tech oligarchs didn’t actually have their audience’s best interests in mind, and were just parroting off whatever the right-wing wanted to hear to harvest their votes?
Well I never saw that coming /s
There’s a sucker born every minute.
Replace VA with DU in
"Trump Vance "
I don’t know about you, but Trump speaks to my specific interests. Sure he’s a guy who claims to speak for every faction’s specific interests in order to ride the wave of contradictions created by having every right wing faction fight for scraps as we can’t help doing since its 99.9999% of our ideology. And he rides this wave of conflict and contradiction to greater power, and leaves all but a tight group of cronies who have managed to desperately hold onto their power for another day, but they too will be replaced as Trump uses these dopes as proxies to take the blame when the consequences of their regressive policies become too politically hot for Trump personally, so it’s clear that he’s just using even his most ardent supporters, scoundrels every one (except for me) as sacrificial lambs at the altar of his catastrophically humongous ego.
But that’s just what happens to those other stupid people whereas I’m very smart and lucky. So for me at least, Trump will make me wealthy and powerful for certain
god i want to photoshop musks head like 100x the size back there and it’d be half way to an homage of those ‘creepy Garfield’/cosmic horror Garfield memes. “i no longer require the ketamine Donald.” “im sorry Donald, i was so hungry.” etc etc
I’ve seen him somewhere before…
I don’t know this reference, but it looks like Power Rangers.
It’s the MCP from the original Tron movie. Tries to control everything but is eventually overthrown.
Oh, I should have gotten that. Thank you for explaining.
Sorry about Daniel.
His head looks oddly large in this photo
Trumps going to dump him within six months. If not sooner. Possibly three months at the rate Leons going. Musk seems to be trying a speedrun towards failure.
Historians will debate how many moochies he lasted.
Trump seems to be easily dominated by other strongmen. It’s possible Trump is afraid of Elon Musk and won’t have the confidence to stand up to him, nor the financial means.
Trump loooves being dominated
That implies that both Trump and Musk are strong.
Strong man has a specific meaning in politics, it doesn’t mean they are strong.
Sure, and that meaning means something to the people that use it unironically. At best you’re calling Musk a legitimate strongman for “dominating” the POTUS.
Elon Musk wouldn’t be a literal strongman, if only because he doesn’t officially run a country. Though he does behave similarly in running his companies. Strongman might be the wrong word. Narcissist might be better. I think with those types, Trump can find himself needing to defer to bigger narcissists than himself.
Ah MAGA. The group that’s perpetually (1)3-steps behind in reasoning.
Too charitable.
Who are those guys hanging with President Musk?
Business men doing… Business?
