Elon Musk’s narcissism outshines his nuance

Expect nonsense and Musk makes some sense

Flickr/DonkeyHotey

Elon Musk is generally seen as a smart guy. But if you’re expecting him to act like it most of the time, you’ll be disappointed over and over again. The problem isn’t that he’s dumb; it’s that we keep assigning high-level thinking to behavior and ideas that are often just erratic, impulsive, and plain stupid. If he weren’t rich and powerful, we’d call it what it is: fraud. Because it’s Elon, people try to reverse-engineer meaning from the mess.

Sam Harris—the guy who won a bet against Elon Musk about whether we would see as many as 35,000 cases of COVID-19 in the United States—recently made one of the best points about Musk’s so-called repeated errors I’d ever heard. It clears up Musk’s inconsistency and his atrocious grasp on how the world works:

“[Musk] is always, if only by accident, promoting Nazi’s and far-right lunatics and conspiracists and liars. He’s not accidentally amplifying trans activists and far-left conspiracies… so to ascribe it to error seems pretty far-fetched.”

Elon Musk is a buffoon not because I disagree with his politics or think he isn’t a successful businessman; it’s because his approach to problem-solving—if we can call it that—is cynical, pessimistic, and obtuse. We assign him more understanding and coherence than he truly deserves, much less exhibits.

Many people think there must be some underlying intelligence to the mess he’s made in the federal government because of his wealth and stature. Sure, he runs successful businesses, has a massive fanbase, and talks about innovation, technological progress, and bold, somewhat utopian goals for his companies. But none of those things make him unique. 

What actually sets him apart is his conspiratorial thinking, dishonesty, and the ketamine-fueled weirdness—like throwing Nazi salutes at a presidential inauguration—all while wielding more money, fame, power, and influence than almost anyone else alive.

The demented puppetry of illegal immigration

It doesn’t take much effort to see Musk is clueless on numerous political issues. For starters, he genuinely thought that Joe Biden had dementia and that shadowy bureaucrats were secretly pulling the strings of the presidency. At the same time, he thought Democrats were importing illegal immigrants to secure permanent political dominance. Does that sound like the critical thinking of a modeling visionary to you? 

If I thought Musk was smarter than the average partisan hack, I’d expect him to engage seriously with his own arguments—to spot contradictions, to reflect. I’d expect him to listen to critics, seek insight, and show some consistency in his reasoning. And when he wasn’t consistent, I’d expect him to clarify or adjust his position. But that rarely happens.

Terrorists have sex too

One of Musk’s alleged findings from DOGE was that the U.S. sends $50 million in condoms to Hamas every year. 

Now, as someone with a mostly-functioning brain, I’d be highly skeptical of such a claim. I’d need a fact-check. And not the kind Musk does, where he checks Twitter to see if Catturd and Bill Ackman accept the claim without question. I mean the real kind—where you research on Google, consult experts, and ask for additional data.

After weeks of repeatedly tweeting the false claim, the Press Secretary and President repeated it multiple times. A couple of weeks later, while running the Cabinet meeting, he implicitly admitted that what he’d been saying was a misinterpretation. But he added that it didn’t change the fact that he’s still “not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere, frankly. I’m not sure that’s something Americans would be really excited about.”

I found multiple polls showing only a quarter of Americans support cutting foreign aid departments. Musk pointed out his mistake in terminology, but he never corrected his argument. He’s still justifying illegally cutting funding for misunderstood reasons. This isn’t the behavior of any genius, whether you agree with cutting the funding or not.

I’m a lowly peasant compared to Musk and even I understand why the wealthiest and most powerful nation in history might send funds or contraceptives to places with high birth rates, high STD rates, and little to no healthcare services for struggling families. Most Americans understand too.

But Musk doesn’t, or else he would’ve made a reasoned argument against it instead of just claiming ignorance. Or, worse: maybe he did think about it, reviewed the numbers, spoke to department heads, got clarification, realized he was wrong—but didn’t care. Only when directly confronted on camera did he make a half-hearted admission. I’m not one to assume nefariousness generally—I’m not like Musk. But at some point, you gotta start questioning whether this guy has the intelligence and integrity people claim.

Saving spent money by transferring accounts?

Another example of the many misunderstandings Musk has about how things work: DOGE is “saving taxpayer money.” How, exactly? By cutting congressionally approved funding for congressionally created departments, all while acting as a non-administrator for an unapproved department through presidential powers?

The problem with this is that those funds have already been earned, taxed, appropriated, approved, and sent to departments—from previous years’ budgets! That’s not saving—it’s transferring. You’d think a leading businessman of the 21st century would grasp that. But again, maybe he does and is just lying to your face. Or maybe he just doesn’t understand.

Frauding, wasting, and abusing the USA

Musk postures himself as majoritarian at times too. When the media asks him why he’s cutting funding, he says, “We’re doing the will of the people”. But is that true? Does he believe that? That would be embarrassing! Any opinion poll since the election will show Musk as one of the most unpopular figures in the authoritarian Admin. His work at DOGE is the most unpopular of their actions.

According to Musk, when confronted with criticism, and when constantly pressed on apparent deception to the public, one must use the shield mentality of “everyone makes mistakes”. You know, that ten-thousand-year-old creed: nobody’s perfect.

When he tells us he’s not perfect as an excuse for creating problems or not solving existing ones, it makes me think he’s just not interested in solving those mistakes. It makes me think he doesn’t really know what he’s doing and doesn’t care to improve his actions. But if we thought of him as just another crank in the Admin, some of his ideas and actions would make sense! 

Expect nothing, brace for anything

I’d be on board with an optimistic, wealthy innovator who does his homework and has moral ambitions to help a cognitively impaired president run the country. But if we assign Musk these attributes, we can’t ignore his increasingly hysterical ideas and elitist attitude. 

Musk can apparently build rockets, create video games, lead electric vehicle production, implant computers in brains, and take humanity to Mars but can’t do 2+2? Why treat him like a baby who can also drive a stick shift? Shouldn’t we treat him like someone who has sense—more sense than most people in the Admin?

Elon Musk strikes me as a typical poorly-informed MAGA fanatic with some special skills and a hell of a stock portfolio—nothing more, but possibly less. Some of my issues with him come from how he doesn’t come close to resembling anyone I’d consider brilliant, a genius, an enlightened thinker, much less the common decently moral man.

He’s a guy with money, influence, some big business wins, and a lot of bullshit on just about everything else.