Musk and His Minions

My dear friend Keith Kelleher is a vintage radical, who’s been on the front lines of just about every cause worth fighting for since I can remember.

So I wasn’t surprised to see he’d joined this weekend's march outside of Tesla’s Gold Coast showroom to raise his voice against Elon Musk, the gazillionaire lunatic who, among other things, is leading Trump’s charge to fire thousands of federal employees.

Keith posted about the protest on his Facebook, Instagram and X accounts. Featured a picture of him holding a sign that read–”Help Elon get to Mars–the sooner the better.”

And a video of protestors chanting: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Elon Musk has got to go”.

Within a couple of days, Keith's IG and Facebook response has been solid–100 or so views on each site. Plus a bunch of likes and appreciative comments.

But the X site? Man, it’s something else.

Last I checked it had more than 35,000 views and Keith was getting slammed with dozens of dumbass comments hating him and loving Musk.

You're not alone, Keith...

It proves the basic reality of X.  Musk uses it to inspire his followers and demoralize the opposition, whoever Musk decides that opposition may be.

A similar thing happened when 36th ward Alderman Gil Villegas posted support for Ukraine on X. His post drew 18,000 or so views with nasty comments coming from Alabama, Arkansas and other hot spots in the MAGA universe far removed from Chicago's 36th ward. As with Keith's post, it's not clear whether the responders are real humans or bots. One is brainwashed, the other programmed--so, really, what's the difference?

In contrast, the alderman's Facebook and IG posts drew mostly local responses thanking him for supporting Ukraine.

Something you should know. Alderman Villegas and Keith are from different planets in the Chicago political solar system–Gil’s a centrist. Keith, as I said, is a lefty. Perhaps the only thing they have in common is that Keith and Gil were guests on my podcast.

Obviously, such distinctions don’t matter to Musk. If you’re against him, or against Trump, he’s against you. And he’ll use X to punish you for daring to speak out against him.

Wait! This just in...

Senator Mark Kelly—Democrat from Arizona–dropped a post on X that reads: “Just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants the war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin.”

Musk responded: “You are a traitor.”

So the guy from apartheid South Africa calls the astronaut from Arizona a traitor and the X world rejoices? It's insane.

My advice to Keith, Gil, and Senator Kelly...

Get off of X. Unless you want to be a tool for Musk and his robots.