Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/15/class-interests-trump-all.html
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Now THAT is disruptive innovation …
/s
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Consider me not surprised.
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That doesn’t surprise me either.
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Same here. I also wouldn’t be surprised if he also donates to the Dems. Wealthy donors who subscribe to realpolitik like to and can afford to spread their bets around.
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Christ, what a late stage capitalist asshole…
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Being a republican in 2018 is all about singular priorities, i.e., money.
I know several staunch, Trump-loving Republicans who are gay, socially-progressive, climate-change-fighting eco-loving hippie types. But they love money a lot more than all of that stuff, and they’re convinced Trump is “tough on trade” and “helping the markets”, and he’s most definitely giving big businesses a lot of love, so they love Trump.
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He’s also calling the guy who helped with the Thai cave rescue (and who disparaged the submarine) a pedophile.
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Unfortunately we know where that can lead to.
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I are not surprised.
Just disappoint.
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https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=Elon+musk&order=desc&page=1&sort=D
There are easily as many donations to democratics as their are donations to republicans by Musk according to opensecrets.org.
Recipients
Democratic Midterm Victory Fund ( D )
Feinstein, Dianne ( D )
National Republican Congressional Cmte ( R )
Majority Cmte PAC ( R )
McCarthy, Kevin ( R )
Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte ( D )
Murray, Patty ( D )
Rubio, Marco ( R )
Clinton, Hillary ( D )
I enjoy your books Cory, but you can be really ornery.
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Musk has made contributions to both GOP and Democratic candidates/PACs because that’s the price of admission to get politicians to pay attention to you. Not uncommon for big-name CEOs regardless of their political inclinations, and pretty zero-sum as far as actual impact goes when you write checks to both sides.
In the meantime, while people are fretting over the tens of thousands he’s sent to the GOP - and ignoring tens of thousands he’s sent to Democrats - he’s spent HUNDREDS OF TIMES MORE on contributions to environmental causes, such as the $6M he sent to the Sierra Club. Kinda ridiculous to question the man’s climate bona fides.
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I can understand why an otherwise liberal wealthy person would donate to an old-fashioned moneyCon candidate who promises low taxes and business-friendly regulatory environment, even though I might disagree with the decision.
But giving a blanket donation to a party* that enables an executive who sets up peacetime internment camps that separates children from parents and who normalises bigotry and science denialism is an act of foolishness for such a person. First, because he’s not following Gessen’s Rule 1 and second because money doesn’t protect one from the autocrat if you say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Conservative industrialists and bankers in Weimar Germany and oligarchs in Putin’s Russia have discovered this the hard way.
[* even as a hedge]
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Exactly, it’s either extremely closed-minded, he’s hedging his bets (by donating all over the place), or his “utopian anarchist / socialist / etc” pose is just that. It’s foolish no matter what, and I think anyone who values a few extra potential dollars in their account versus the future of their lifestyle, their relatives, their rights, and their environment is small minded in the extreme.
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The problem is not that he donated $40k to the Republicans. He has addressed this today or yesterday and it would be more fair-minded if you quoted his response: he has donated hundreds of times more money than this to causes generally considered left-wing. No, the problem is why he felt compelled to do this: because then he thinks the Republicans in Congress will have to listen to his concerns. America your democracy is sold to the rich, and that is the problem.
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