I just wrote a long post on this thread explaining how elon's recent behavior has turned me off from being a tesla supporter due to his support of the climate change denying party that tried to overthrow democracy. Now that post is gone. I haven't been on TMC in a while. Is that what this site is like now? Only makes me more sure of my position.
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Elon Musk
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Politics have always been forbidden at TMC and that rule has been part of the Terms since the site's inception.
Generally speaking, political posts are moved to Politics - Quarantine Thread and are available for copy/pasting back anything that is apolitical into the non-quarantined threads. There have been multiple warnings about politics discussions in this thread.
Apologize for the inconvenience, but we've seen repeatedly that political discussions turn ideological and toxic relatively rapidly and we are trying to foster a cooperative spirit at TMC, not a contentious one.
How can you maintain that policy when the head of tesla has just jumped headfirst into politics? For the climate change denial party no less? You're going to end up coming across as elon's propaganda arm. This is the ELON thread after all. To say we can't discuss the most recent news ABOUT ELON seems... cultish.
If you have feedback about the rules here, you should direct those to the admins. Moderators are volunteers who are here to enforce the rules of the site.
Yikes. And everyone's trying to stay on elon's good side to get invited to the next product reveal right? I shouldnt have come back here. Enjoy your bubble.
AquaY
Member
As ar as I’m concerned as long as the rules are applied equally to posts that have a political slant I’m fine with it.
as far as being a mod goes that’s a thankless job For no pay.
please be fair and I will try to stop my political replies
You can bash Elon all you want for decisions he's making. Just leave the politics out of it. If you look back through this thread, you'll see plenty of opinions that aren't supportive of the man, including those of my own.
Also, I always recommend going through the Politics link to validate that what is being moved there is political speech - not politically left or right, just political. We do our best and certainly aren't perfect but we're absolutely doing what we can to keep this place feeling like a "club" about Tesla vehicles and products.
I can’t remember what establishment media character assassin phase we’re at with Elon? First every paper from the NYT all the way down put out a hit piece within a week of him announcing the Twitter acquisition. Then they tried to call him a racist (which apparently didn’t work because the NYT article accidentally demonstrated he wasn’t). Now we’re in the vague sexual harassment accusation from years ago phase. Next the headline will be that he’s homophonic and when you actually read the article it will be because he liked a South Park episode that referred to something as “gay”. It is amazing how this pattern keeps repeating and people are starting to see it for what it is.
At the end of the day the guy is a great American who tells the truth as he sees it and I’ll always respect a person like that even if I don’t agree with them 100% of the time. I could care less who he votes for and I support anyone who refers to their own controversy as Elongate.
At the end of the day the guy is a great American who tells the truth as he sees it and I’ll always respect a person like that even if I don’t agree with them 100% of the time. I could care less who he votes for and I support anyone who refers to their own controversy as Elongate.
As a world-famous celebrity, you don't tweet politically charged and controversial opinions on one of the largest social media networks and not expect to be judged. It comes with the territory.
BS. He’s been tweeting for years. Judgement of opinions and attempted character assassination are not the same thing and most people are smart enough to see the difference.
Yes, he's been tweeting for years and have been sued for defamation on at least one occasion. He's called people names ('pedo guy') and compared a president to Hitler among other things. You act like he's Mother Teresa. Loaded rhetoric often leads to backlash of some kind. And it will only get worse the more he chooses to play with fire. I don't know if he's innocent or guilty, however, I'm not surprised by anything these days. Only time will tell.
Technically there are no democracies in the world that are run like the original Athenian democracy. But once you get larger than the size of a small town, direct democracy has proven unwieldy. With the internet direct democracy is more possible now, but to truly participate and make reasonable decisions, everyone would have to stay up to date on all the issues they are asked to vote on and very few people do that.
The US has some odd quirks that are not very democratic like the electoral college and two senators a state whether the state has 600,000 people or 39 million, but in general the US is a representative democracy like most of the functioning democracies in the world.
As @ohmman said, there are plenty of criticisms of Elon on this thread. The only ones that get quarantined are the overly political ones. I guess the moderators allow brushing up against politics as long as it isn't too political. (I hope my discussion about types of democracies above is acceptable.)
Elon is obviously not racist. He left South Africa in part because he couldn't stand Apartheid and his father's support of it. He was influenced by many Science Fiction authors of the 50s-70s who were mostly anti-racist. In SF unless they are trying to make a point about racism, most future cultures are depicted as peacefully integrated.
The problem with Elon is that in some ways he's emotionally 12. He reminds me of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory sometimes.
Elon is also very libertarian and in it's true form people are left to their own devices to fight their own battles. The concept has been abused by people who want to pick and choose from the theory and only apply it when they want to get away with something, but want to be draconian when someone is doing something they don't like.
I see this libertarian attitude in response to complaints about racism at the Fremont factory. He probably feels that the victims should stand up to the bullies and deal with it themselves or take the abuse and live with it.
I'm all for libertarianism when someone is doing something that isn't harming anyone else or putting anyone else at risk. It's nobody else's business. However we live in communities, many of them if you really look at it. And people are going to do things that hurt others. If someone is unable or unwilling to control their own behavior in those cases, than the community in some way needs to stop their behavior. In some cases that might be from peer pressure, but in others it might need to be some sort of enforcement.
Many libertarians seem to believe that if we just get rid of the rules, everyone will manage their own behavior and everything will be fine. But people don't work that way. Some people (a small percentage of the population, but enough to matter) like hurting others and even more people may not try to hurt others, but will end up doing so if somebody doesn't stop them.
Most humans are not mature enough to live in a society with other humans without some kind of structure of rules to keep their behavior acceptable. It's unfortunate, but that's how humans are and we need to live with the way things are, not just act like everyone is like what we want them to be.
Note I'm talking about the philosophy of libertarianism, not the political party.
I made similar points weeks ago which got quarantined because I discussed the overwhelming influence of a small segment of the political spectrum that is very fond of censorship through selective reporting, the weaponization of being offended, and viewpoint biased “content moderation” (which is what Elon is actually against).
The fact that he’s drawn so much ire from this group for wanting to make the “content moderation” policies of Twitter consistent, transparent, and in line with US law is telling. Nobody actually thinks Elon is "racist" by any useful definition of the word, but the implication that he might be is useful to some...
I wish Elon would stick to engineering (like I wish ESPN would stick to sports) but this is where we are right now. Everything has to be politics 24/7/365 because we're all plugged in to our devices 24/7/365.
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Barklikeadog
Active Member
Those quirks were intentional. Founders were determined to avoid a democracy because it inevitably leads to tyranny of the majority. The 51% could enslave the 49%. Thus, our two senators and nod towards rural areas. The word democracy does not appear in the constitution or decl of ind.
What d ives me nuts are educated people throwing the word around. WaPo had an article about dems attacking repubs assault on democracy and how it's not working. Well, maybe cause it doesn't exist. I see a teacher wit a sign: overturning RVW is attack on democracy! What? If you value this democracy concept, then you would want it overturned so you can possibly vote directly on the issue in your state. The word 'literally' has more meaning. Too many actual real dictators and fascists in the world are elected by popular vote. We tend to blame that one person and not the tyranny of the majority. I think about them anytime I see the argument about the electoral college or popular vote. Cannot let less populated states be forever at the mercy of larger ones. Minority power is a great check and balance.
Unfortunately, greed, religion, corruption and accepted bribery in the form of lobbying has been slowly dismantling the balance of power that made our form of government effective and somewhat fair. Those with the most money and influence are who's in charge these days. And they use wedge issues to appeal to the segment that will put them in power regardless of the inevitable consequences. Money and power before country.
Barklikeadog
Active Member
No argument here. And well said about the wedge issue situation, that always gets me. I like to bring up sandy hook and the immediate call for some action on gun control, even from conservatives. After the massacre, the Dems created 2 gun control bills that failed. The Repubs created two similar gun control bills that failed. The difference between them was minute. Both parties then ran to their bases to rev them up. It was more valuable to each party, not getting anything resolved. The same thing is going on with codifying RVW right now. Dems put forth a bill that was full of poison pills, intended to fail. Collins and Murkowski propose a bill to keep the status quo. Not voted on. It's all a stunt to get people motivated to vote in Nov. Immigration falls into the same category. Where are the McCains, Ted Kennedys, Lotts, Mitchells....
When you're worth a lot of money you get sued... it is just how the incentives work. I could live without the trolling but it is what it is, that is how Twitter and most other discourse on the internet operate at this point. In internet arguments everyone gets compared to Hitler or a Nazi (they have Godwins law for a reason). He's no Mother Teresa, but he's a generally good human who has done more for the adoption of renewable energy than any politician or activist has... rather than whining about it he actually made better technology supporting renewables that people would want to own.
Like I posted, I admire his accomplishments. However, I have a problem with his views which lead me to question his character. There is a certain amount of responsibility that comes with celebrity status. His opinions hold more weight with the world audience than yours or mine. He got sued because he called someone a 'pedo guy' over a public spat. He deleted a couple tweets which actually helped him in the case. Apparently, deleting them meant he wasn't serious according to his lawyer.
IMO, he was just being a bully and got away with it because of who he was. Does it mean he's a bad guy? Probably not, we all make mistakes, but he should have owned up to it rather than hide behind his lawyers. The damage was done. Deleting the tweets really didn't matter. It's a case worth reading about to get better context.
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I can't speculate on what is going on with him, but I'm tired of defending him. He's taken the last train to kookytown, and it's terribly disheartening. He has changed and it is not good for all the things that Tesla has accomplished.
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