Look, I’m on Elon’s side, but…
By: Brian Kent
Tags: Tesla, Sustainability, Electric Car, Elon Musk, America

So what was Joe’s excuse for not knowing the above before Elon decided to do the podcast? Any comparison shopping at all before dropping $190,000 on a “sooo slow” Porsche, Joe? Rely on media flash or public commentary did ya?

No offense, man. A lot of people build their mind palaces with dogshit.

Just look at all the other people who could be buying a quicker, cleaner, smarter, safer, all-around superior (and often less expensive) car — but are instead buying yet another tired old Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, etc. etc. etc.

Because they don’t know any better? Because it’s more ‘luxurious’?

Uh huh. Marginally more luxurious while it stinks up the neighborhood and continues to kick a planet already starting to look like it’s down for the count. I wouldn’t step foot in one and neither would anyone else who knows any better. There’s a time and a place for things, isn’t there? Do you let your dog crap all over the place? Why do it with your car? Why now, especially?

So now Joe knows better. People might actually listen to Joe Rogan. That Elon Musk guy? Too controversial. Too hard to believe.

I know, right? Wild times we live in.

Elon took a chance. In fact, it was a chance I’m glad he took. (It made illustrating this puzzle a lot easier, for one.)

He weighed the negatives of a single puff on a joint against the positives of presenting himself as a relatable human being. As an approachable, affable, “bro” of a guy. In all likelihood because people too frequently treat him like he’s a machine. And he correctly reasoned that it’s more important to be accepted as human than to pretend you’re perfect. Does he need to dance within the hastily chalked boundaries of the insufferably uptight? I don’t think so. Does he need to be regarded as a human being? Yeah, I think he does. The latter is helpful, anyway. The former? Not so much.

Pragmatism, nothing more. With all the other things he’s doing, the guy can still find the right time, place, and way to pragmatically smoke a joint.

As if that’s especially difficult.

By all means though, keep right on trying to interpret that sort of thing as showing bad judgment rather than good. Keep acting like straw polls are tangible evidence of what’s right.

Keep right on pretending:

“There’s just never a reason for that! For doing drugs? You say it’s LEGAL? Are you kidding me? That shouldn’t be legal ANYWHERE. Why should it be legal?

I mean, I never tried it or anything, but it can’t provide any useful function. After all, look at me. It does nothing for me. I’m perfectly fine without it.

And if I can get along fine without it, so. can. you. I’m doing just fine, obviously. [The Xanax is tucked away in my non-obvious medicine cabinet.] Drugs are for druggies [and for special people who have health insurance.] My self-assurance is natural. I’m exactly the way I’m supposed to be [Fox News tells me so!] I’m not uptight, either. Who are you calling uptight, anyway?”

Uptight? No.

Insufferably uptight is what I said.

…

So what about those thumb-sucking, still-crawling-on-the-floor infants who had a conniption fit when Elon took that symbolic puff? Don’t they matter?

Not unless they significantly delay us from getting here they sure don’t:

The tipping point to sustainability will be reached soon after we reach the tipping point to electric vehicle adoption. In that order.

And no one is bringing us to either point faster than Elon is, period. Which is a fat lot of responsibility and a fat lot of pressure, and so if the guy wants to smoke a joint once in a while, if we know what’s good for us, WE LET HIM. {Note: we certainly do not know what’s good for us, but that’s another post.}

You Tesla shareholders with your nails gnawed to the bone worried because the stock might dip 10 or 15%? You make me laugh. As if we’re not ALL Tesla stakeholders. As if you don’t know the difference between a pull and a habit, and as if you have even the foggiest idea of the way he spends his spare time. As if he needs to account for every minute of it.

Liberal spare time that it is.

<stammering> “But it’s not his spare time. He’s on…he’s on…YouTube! And drugs. I saw him! That’s MY money he’s playing with!”

Then pull it out. While you’re at it, pull your head out of wherever you have it crammed. You think Tesla is going to fail because Elon Musk relaxes too much? You can actually see him making a habit out of that? Why not do a smidgen of research and stop being so irredeemably gullible?

The truth is, you only see what the FUD-pushing media allows you to see, and that ain’t a whole lot.

Work hard, play hard. Wasn’t that the rule?

The truth is, it’s a lot more likely that Tesla fails because he finally gets fed up with the arbitrarily constructed boundaries of the know-nothings than because he smokes a joint once in a while. It’s more likely to fail because the peanut gallery finally succeeds in wearing him out than because he learns how to relax for an hour or two a week. Ultimately, the thing most likely to cause the company to implode is for Elon to decide it just isn’t fun anymore.

And though it’s partly my fault — because I really didn’t write this for you — the plain truth is that most of you probably missed the key point even here. Even after I just got through explaining it:

Elon relishes the role of rockstar.

He relishes it and he’s not going to quit relishing it. More importantly, he shouldn’t even consider doing so. It’s one of the carrots that makes HIM hop. He might manage it a little better, sure, but that’s for HIM to decide, and no one with any kind of sense is going to begrudge him his fun.

He loves to watch the rabbits hop, and it *almost* doesn’t matter why they’re hopping. It’s amusing to him, and that’s a crucial part of the limbic system which initiates — though it does not exactly drive — the more rational thoughts HE is capable of kicking around. It’s about as smart to screw with that as it is to change the diet of the goose laying the golden eggs.

Read: not very fucking smart.

It’s something for him to look forward to; something which gives him a reason other than responsibility to get up in the morning. It puts a smile on his face. Kind of an “I wonder what this button will do” sort of thing.

“Hmm…how many rabbits will hop when they see a wolf?” Only 339,000, Elon.

The guy loves to wonder.

He enjoys wondering, and he balances it out just fine with a desire to know. Which, in essence, is curiosity. That’s what he’s preserved a seven year old’s sense of for the last forty years, and we ought to be glad about it — not excessively nervous that he’s going to take it too far.

After all, it’s not like he’s talking to the Russians about buying rockets or planning to nuke Mars or something…

Can you even doubt that some of his tweets are sent specifically with the objective of trying to determine how many retweets/likes he can get from something which is objectively pointless?

Pointless aside from the hopping, anyway.

Is it less than obvious that he values both the capacity to be serious and the ability to lighten up once in a while? Don’t you? More importantly, wouldn’t you if you were him? The guy is constantly under a microscope. And thousands of people are going to lose millions — even billions — when he succeeds.

Their priority has become stopping him from doing so.

Which means DECELERATING the world’s transition to sustainable energy. [Reminder: this is not good for you, for your kids, for anyone else’s kids, for anyone else who might want to live here once we get done, or for any other species aside from maybe the cockroaches or something.]

Why?

Because the loudest of the toddlers are the fossil fuel (and the Big Auto) pushers — and they’re not especially keen on having their rattles taken away. Some of them are just bad people, though most probably aren’t.

Either way, they hardly want you to get used to cars you can fill up with your roof built by companies which are not them. Is that really very complicated?

Your objective — that is, if you have any sense at all — should be to stop them from stopping him advance sustainability. Even if you’re not an Elon Musk fan. (That’s where we can stop conflating Elon with the company, BTW. Don’t like Elon? Fine. Don’t like Tesla? Take a good look around, buddy. Take a good, long, hard look around.)

Incidentally, you don’t have to like someone to respect them. To wish they’d be treated fairly. All you have to know is the difference between right and wrong.

If that’s too terribly complicated for you, let’s just start by being accurate.

Let’s just begin with getting our fucking facts straight, shall we? How about we refrain from blatantly cheating people regardless of who they are or whether we think they can afford it.

You know, like kids. Like marginalizing a future they OWN in an effort to make it easier on ourselves for just a wee bit longer. Not because it’s the right thing to do, of course. Just because we can.

Let’s stop short of jilting, cheating, defrauding, misleading, or conniving one another, eh? Let’s try this ugly and terribly boring thing called ‘honesty’ on for size, hmm? How about we see if it’s possible to avoid straight up lying about people regardless of whether or not it’s profitable for us to do so.

Regardless of whether we have concrete, recent proof they can’t fight back.

While we’re at it? Let’s remember that a few minutes can easily erase years of established trust.

60 Minutes is FAR more than enough.

Oh, yeah. Bet you thought I’d leave that one out, didn’t you CBS?

About as likely as forgetting that moronic Ray Liotta commercial you had playing on an infinite loop.

Not. A. CHANCE.

The guy trusts you enough to waive his obvious right to review (or at least have someone at Tesla review) the edited tape of the interview he was so generous as to grant you — you know, the one dumbass Pfizer paid you God knows what for the commercial rights to — and you seize that chance to deliberately paint him as a pompous jerk?

Even worse, you take an audience you’ve cultivated over the span of more than half a century — an audience at least mildly interested in getting to the truth of the matter — and you feed them full of misleading crap.

Way to buy some clicks by flushing your credibility down the toilet, schmucks. What, was the real story seriously not dramatic enough for you? Even after he wasted an hour of his time trying to explain it to you?

You know what? I’ll tell you what:

You can stick a fork in Old Glory if we can’t get something that simple right.

We’re more than cooked if an immigrant can come here, build an almost impossibly unlikely success story like that one, and then have one of the most well-respected news programs we once had traipse it before John and Jane Q. Citizen as if to say,

“There’s controversy here. We’re still not sure where he’s going with this whole ‘electric car’ thing. Wait there poised on the edge of your seats while tough guy Ray explains to you how THIS OTHER COMPANY can help you kick your habit of puffing noxious smoke into the air…we’ll get to truth in just a few minutes more.”

Sell outs, one and all. Highest bidder and stuff. Makes it more valuable right? No matter what sort of cheap shots you’re taking. Just like the National Parks. Like native lands. Because oil.