Lies, Liars, and Elon Musk
Dangerous Mind Management in our Era of Misinformation (Vol. 4; Issue 41)
An old clinical psychology saying goes like this:
Neurotics build castles in the sky, and psychotics live in them.
The commonality of misinformation characteristic of our era elicits a variety of psychosis in all of us. We cannot help being drowned in an ocean of lies. We are constantly asked to inhabit castles in the sky. Lamenting the same problem, Jimmy Kimmel quipped:
What a stupid time to be alive.
Consider just a few of the recent jaw-dropping erroneous “facts” promoted through the mass media. Georgia’s US House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, widely respected for her castle-dwelling, posted on X:
Yes, they [governments, democrats, who?] can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.
Who would believe such a thing? Responding to negative reactions to her post, Ms. Greene doubled down. She reiterated her government magical rain dance claim, attaching “weather modification patents" in validation. The patents she cited included a 1914 patent for a balloon “rain maker” (which expired in 1931), a 1917 patent proposing the burning of highly combustibles to protect soldiers “from poisonous gas in warfare,” and a 1968 patent for an “automatically adjustable airfoil spray system” for spreading herbicides.
According to the October 11, 2024 edition of The Guardian, several Trump allies added fuel to Greene’s posts. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, claimed in a video that:
Hurricane Helene was an ATTACK caused by Weather Manipulation.
What a relief to know he advised Trump on the security of our nation. Meanwhile, The Guardian journalists interviewed Katie Nickolaou, a Michigan-based meteorologist, who reported that she and her colleagues have received death threats because of such unimaginable contortions of truth.
Ms. Nickolaou described how she had “just been putting out fires of wrong information everywhere.” The messages she received included one describing category 6 hurricanes (which don’t exist), many insisting that governments create hurricanes (which they can’t), and one suggesting scientists should demolish their storm-tracking radar equipment (why would they do that?). She complains that the messages, including posts on X, have:
taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, especially with people saying those who created Milton should be killed.
Speaking of lies, consider what’s happened to Earth’s favorite billionaire, Elon Musk. His personal wealth, estimated at $260 billion, dramatically represents the income inequality problem plaguing the entire globe. Eighty-one billionaires own half the world’s wealth. He and Trump are two of them. How did sovereign nations allow this to happen? Encouraging entrepreneurship is great, but what happened to successful people paying their fair share?
Musk spreads lies on a level equaling that of Ms. Greene. His outsized influence results from his ownership of one of the world’s major media platforms, namely X (formerly Twitter). Musk, as much a hypocrite as a liar, recently decided to support Trump. Consider how Musk’s hatred-turned-adoration for Trump evolved:
Days before the 2016 election, Musk said that Trump is “not the right guy,” adding,
He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.
In confirmation, Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for Joe Biden in 2020. His distrust of Republicans persisted thereafter. In July 2022, Musk posted:
I don't hate the man, but it's time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.
During the Republican primaries, Musk endorsed Ron DeSantis, a Trump arch-enemy. As recently as March of this year, Musk tweeted:
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a very real disease.
Somehow, just over a month ago, and mimicking a sudden illness, Musk, the founder of Tesla and Space X, developed TDS. He endorsed his fellow malignant narcissist (Kernberg, 1984), Donald Trump . The Wall Street Journal expects Musk to contribute $45 million to re-elect Trump. The reasons for rapid infection remain mysterious. But, as noted, Musk has an immense, unparalleled, and unfair capacity to influence the election using X.
Musk allegedly purchased X to make the platform a paragon of free speech. But, clearly, he meant the paragon of his speech. Musk regularly peppers X with pro-Trump posts, memes, and videos. For those readers fearful of degradation of the First amendment, beware! Our governmental system invites the world’s richest man to control one of the largest media empires on the planet. Degradation? More like destruction.
Side point:
If personal lives matter, it is noteworthy that Trump is on his third marriage and has three children. Musk has also been married three times—but twice to the same woman. A more prolific inseminator than Trump, Musk has a total of TWELVE children. As a psychoanalyst, I am biased against people who neglect their children. How can this owner of massive businesses and a newly fashioned political operative attend sufficiently to any of them? Of course, he cannot. Ergo, Musk’s personal life further illuminates his narcissistic colors.
Back to the primary thesis on how alarming levels of misrepresentation impact our minds, I have proposed, in earlier newsletters, that global citizens enhance their critical thinking capacities. That suggestion requires further elevation. Students and citizens alike need exposure to curriculums preparing them to sift through ubiquitous lies, distortions, biases, untruths, and propaganda. They need to understand how America exists in the context of an ever-connected world. In brief, our educational system needs a complete revamping.
Imagine the impact of moving just 10 percent of the defense budget into the one for education. The 2024 US defense budget is $841 billion (a figure just slightly more than three times Musk’s personal worth*). The budget for the US Department of Education (which Trump wishes to abolish) is around $200 billion. A ten percent increase would add $84 billion, nearly doubling its current budget. Such a gain in revenue could improve schools, increase teachers’ salaries, enhance educational technologies, sponsor scholarships, and otherwise transform a faulty system into a shiny new one.
Worthy of many other newsletters, the international media environment needs a similarly drastic renovation. Too many wealthy individuals control global information. Musk is significant, but Bezos, Murdoch, Bloomberg, and other media moguls swim in the same small pond. But their movements create waves affecting oceans of humanity. Hitler’s propaganda expert, Paul Joseph Goebbels, wrote that “if you control the media, you control the people.” He couldn’t have imagined the power now wielded by these few individuals.
Whether financed by nonprofits, governments, or private sources, the world needs the type of independent journalism rarely available. In Britain, the BBC and The Economist hold to the highest journalistic ethical standards. American broadcast media has deteriorated into a shameful state: They sell distortions and unabashed newsy-entertainment; they provide anything but unbiased information. PBS NewsHour is a notable exception.
Instead of Kimmel’s belief we live in a stupid time, we live, instead, in a surreal one. It’s a funhouse hall of mirrors without the fun. Surrealism is the name for a cultural movement that arose in the aftermath of World War I. Artists and writers began allowing the unconscious mind to express itself. Some of them, like Salvador Dali, depicted images of illogical and dreamlike scenes like melting watches. Like Dali paintings, our minds—conscious and unconscious—are immersed in surreal misrepresentations. The illogical and dreamlike are our reality. We live in an era of fantastic castles in the sky, but the castles manufacture lies.
Any information obtained from mass media should be initially greeted with extreme doubt, and then subjected to conscientious analysis. Social media particularly. We humans need discernment more than ever. We need the capacity to scrutinize information to find truth. Exercising sound judgment based on the best assessment of “facts” cannot be overemphasized.
Finally, a careful, deliberate dissection of the American political landscape reveals an unequivocal and unprecedented danger: The risk of promoting Donald Trump—a convicted felon, fraudster, liar, psychopath, sexist, apathetic, immoral, norm-breaking, and unqualified person—to serve as chief executive of the most powerful nation on Earth.
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*How could this be allowed to happen? He could easily fund a militia of his own.
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References
Kernberg, O.F. (1984). Severe personality disorders: psychotherapeutic strategies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.