Elon Musk recently posted a short message on his social media site X that should worry all Americans, especially his friend, President-elect Donald Trump.
This comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview that the United States “cannot force us to 'sit down and listen' at the negotiating table.” We are an independent country. ” musk commented in reply“His sense of humor is amazing 😂”
Musk's response contained two embarrassing mistakes. First, he wrote “his senses” instead of “his senses.” Second, instead of periods, they used laughing and crying emojis.
This is Mr. Musk, who has just been tasked with leading the so-called Ministry of Government Efficiency, along with another ambitious billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, and instead of reviewing his six-word-per-line tweets, he writes: You are posting a mistake. We meet in an undergraduate report.
How would a competent efficiencyist emperor behave?
Musk said that small mistakes do not detract from the clear meaning of his posts, that sloppiness is inherent in social media writing, and that people should stick to the message rather than focus on picayune details. You might say that it is. That's all true, but the question remains. After all, you have to think that Musk, a self-proclaimed genius who also happens to be the richest person in the world, knew exactly what he wrote and didn't care.
And there's a problem. A millionaire genius like Musk doesn't become a millionaire genius because he's a slob. That's the road to bankruptcy. Imagine Mr. Musk saying this to a potential business partner: Sorry, I meant $50 million. 'It's unimaginable.
Yet when it comes to insulting Ukraine's president, Musk can't take more than a few seconds to check his insults for accuracy. Why bother, he probably thought. All that matters is that you express your feelings.
When it comes to gratuitous insults, Mr. Musk is on a roll. I called Immediately after the collapse of the Socialist-led coalition government, Germany's chancellor was labeled a “naar”, or fool. But things got even worse when Mr. Musk called “Olaf” a fool, not Chancellor Scholz or Olaf Scholz, but the old-fashioned “Olaf”, as if diplomatic courtesy and German manners were not trivial. I called it like that. Does that make Elon a “globian” or an idiot?
These elbows are interesting and may tell us something about Musk's personality and whether his own rhetoric has been influenced by President Trump, but most importantly, Musk promotes government efficiency. That's what they say about his abilities.
Sloppiness and condescension may pass in the private sector, but semi-governmental agencies whose job it is to examine which bureaucracies need to be cut and which don't need to be cut. You can't do that in management. An undertaking of this magnitude requires a deep knowledge of the bureaucracy and legalities at issue that neither Mr. Musk nor Mr. Ramaswamy possesses, and it also requires a degree of humility and kindness, which both doesn't seem to have it. One gets the impression that they will act like the proverbial bull in the china shop, leaving behind nothing but carnage.
Musk and Ramaswamy's call for volunteers with high IQs and a willingness to work 80 hours a week without pay – “revolutionaries” in their words – is a sign of their suicidal approach. typically represents. They seem to think that being smart and energetic is enough to do the job of streamlining government bureaucracy. But smart people with radical tendencies are doomed to failure. Because you need to know and understand what is imposed on you.
Revolutionaries (which basically refers to all revolutionaries) with radical goals and insufficient knowledge are self-defeating and deadly. Only experts who know government and the law, whether they have high IQs or not, can fix the government. They can be professors, journalists, analysts, or even businessmen. That is, as long as they are knowledgeable, decent, independent professionals whose well-being does not depend on how and what they choose.
Here's how all of this relates to Musk's sloppiness and contempt. Revolutionaries are true believers who understand the meaning of their leaders, even if the message is garbled or incoherent. Mr. Musk certainly knows that he has a huge fan base that adores and follows him regardless of, or perhaps because of, his sloppiness and vulgarity. In short, Mr. Musk is Trump.
That seems like great news for both. But no town is big enough for two self-proclaimed geniuses. They fight and the agreement ends in a showdown at the OK Corral.
On the other hand, if anyone still cares, in a few years the Ministry of Government Efficiency will either turn out to be a massive revolutionary failure or, ironically, become yet another inefficient government bureaucracy. It will either become.
What emoji will Musk tweet then? Did you laugh, cry, or both?
Alexander J. Motil He is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. He is an expert on Ukraine, Russia, the Soviet Union, and nationalism, revolution, empire, and theory, and is the author of ten nonfiction books.imperial end“The Decline, Collapse, and Resurrection of Empires'' and “Why the Empire is rising again: Compare the collapse of an empire and the revival of an empire. ”
