I've been following SpaceX closely from the very early days, eagerly awaiting Starlink from the moment it was announced, and using it happily for a year now. Amazing achievements all the way.
He was always roughly libertarian in politics, hating government whenever it got inconvenient over worker safety, environmental laws, etc. He has always been intellectually arrogant even when wrong, as with this post in the first weeks of the pandemic. He had seen a CDC cases graph that showed partial data for the most recent 2 weeks as reports slowly filtered in. It was labelled with that warning. But Musk glanced at it, saw what appeared to be a downtrend, and confidently proclaimed the end of the pandemic. Absolute rookie move that someone with a bit less overconfidence wouldn't have made.)
But this latest - prosecute Fauci - is on the extreme conspiracy theory right adjacent to QAnon. MTG gave him an enthusiastic endorsement on it.
I know he enjoys poking the libs, but this shows a world view misinformed by the worst of the conspiracy networks. On top of the big reveals of nothing with Taibbi and claims of illegal behavior and totally misunderstanding the 1st amendment?
It's always sad to watch an intelligent, capable person lose touch with reality. I've read that much of the appeal of conspiracy theories is that they reward the believer with a sense of being special - part of an inside group, superior to the majority that don't believe. If so, it almost boggles the mind that the world's richest man who is transforming the world on multiple fronts still falls prey. What a waste...and how much damage will he do?
