How to Help Kill Millions of Poor People
Have you ever wanted to help kill millions of poor people, incite anti-immigrant violence, and destroy America’s image around the world? If so, now is your chance.
All you have to do is buy a Tesla, sign up for Starlink, or even just use Twitter. Or you could also jump on SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO that is happening tomorrow.
By adding to the fortune of the world’s richest man you would be aiding and abetting him as he spreads his racist, xenophobic vision for the world and his definition of “civilization.”
How is he killing millions? By taking advantage of the way our government under Trump makes policy decisions today. Musk heard a Joe Rogan podcast where Mike Benz, a rightwing influencer known for promulgating the idea that Taylor Swift is a secret NATO asset, made accusations about USAID that any sane person would have immediately laughed off.
Musk used the social media cesspool that he owns to promote Benz’s absurdities more than 160 times. President Trump, who is most influenced by what he sees on Fox News, reads on X, or the person he talked to last, began parroting Musk’s claim that the agency was staffed by radical lunatics. And then he gave Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency the power to destroy it and dismantle its programs.
With the cooperation of the most spineless secretary of state in history, who claims no one has died as a result, that dismantling was swiftly and chaotically carried out. It’s all documented in Nick Enrich’s new book “Into the Wood Chipper” which every American should read.
Before Congress, Marco Rubio has asserted that taking food, water, healthcare, and anti-AIDS medicine away from the world’s poorest people would never kill anyone. A study by the widely respected medical journal The Lancet, however, estimates that 14 million people could die by 2030 because USAID was abolished. This after the agency saved over 90 million lives in the last two decades. And the Lancet assessment is one of several that arrive at similar conclusions.
Instead of programs to save lives and promote economic development in the world’s poorest countries, American aid programs now consist of extortionary agreements. In them a country has to hand over access to its minerals and health data on its population in exchange for funds that it cannot effectively administer.
Musk has moved on after the destruction of USAID to other pet projects. He uses X to promote riots in reaction to incidents where an immigrant is involved in a violent attack on a white person as happened in Northern Ireland earlier this week. It’s just part of his effort to spread the Great Replacement conspiracy theory - the idea that Western civilization is under assault due to the demographic erasure of white people.
So, one can easily imagine the image of America that is growing around the world thanks to the Musk, Trump and Rubio. And when people no longer see America as a force for good, it will be the few diplomats left abroad who get the blame because they did not sell a product that no one is going to want to buy.
Musk and Trump are severely damaged, immoral, and risk-loving. While Trump is intellectually lazy and averse to learning from those with expertise, Musk has serially recognized and exploited technological and scientific innovators. Both survived and (in some way) thrived by understanding tricks that allowed them to avoid responsibility for major mistakes and by building mystique around their personality. Musk has no monopoly over the technologies that are key to his business plans and investments in all of his business suffer from extreme key person risk. At some point, that tower of cards will fall.