Elon Musk Can't Take the Heat

[dalton99a]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/elon-musk-cant-take-the-heat-wisconsin-supreme-court-empathy-doge/

Elon Musk Can’t Take the Heat
The numbers say anti-Tesla protests are working. So do Musk’s increasingly unhinged actions.
Tim Murphy

Elon Musk has a simple diagnosis of what’s ailing America: It’s being destroyed by empathy. In a long interview with Joe Rogan, in numerous tweets, and possibly even in his sleep, Musk has argued that “empathy” is a “suicidal” trait that is a driving force behind civilizational extinction. It is time, he believes, for “the West” to get tough and make hard choices—to bar its doors to immigrants of a certain type and endure “temporary hardship” so that government can be transformed and “the woke mind virus will die.”

As the de facto head of the Department of Governmental Efficiency, Musk has deployed this brand of tactical callousness to maximal effect. He has boasted about throwing the United States Agency for International Development into a “woodchipper” and stumbled around the stage at CPAC with a chainsaw. He has presided over the dismantling of the administrative state and the harassment and mass-termination of federal workers—all while flaunting his lack of concern for the lives he has upended. Fired government employees, he announced last Thursday, with the laughing/crying emoji that’s become his calling card, will now have to “get a real job.”

This kind of depravity is a prerequisite for Musk’s new line of work. Dancing on the graves of lifesaving programs for kids is not something you can easily do with a conscience. But there is one set of feelings Musk is uniquely attuned to: his own. On Friday, the same day foreign service officers around the world received notices from a DOGE flunky alerting them that they would soon be out of a job, Musk—sans sunglasses—sat down with Fox News’ Brett Baier to ask for a little sympathy.

“I mean, you have Tim Walz, who is a huge jerk, running on stage with the Tesla stock price, where the stock price has gone in half—and he is overjoyed,” he said. “What an evil thing to do. What a creep, what a jerk. Like, who derives joy from that?”

I want to state this as clearly as I can: Nearly choking up on national TV as you lament your falling stock price is weak shit. And it gets to the core of how Musk operates. In a particularly get-over-yourselves moment in January, Axios described Musk and Trump’s governing style as “masculine maximalism,” embodied by “tough-guy language, macho actions…and often unmoved by emotionalism, empathy or restraint.” But back on Earth, the Tesla boss can be better understood in schoolyard terms. He can dish it but he can’t take it. Far from a projection of strength, Musk’s boastful and threatening public comments show a thin-skinned man who behaves erratically in the face of adversity—a snowflake, to use the preferred nomenclature, who melts down when he begins to feel the heat.

...

[Clouds Passing]

1. Hey dope, it's the opposite. Empathy is what has kept humanity alive for all thousands of years.

All animals and plants have empathy as well. They are even older than humans.

Lack of empathy, destroys, total lack of empathy destroys all.

[spanone]

2. Elon has been trashing the very people who made his cars a success.

Remember trmp hated electric cars until musk gave him a quarter of a BILLION dollars.

Maga hated them too.

Now liberals do too.

Dumbfuck elon.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Narcissistic bullies never can...nt

[allegorical oracle]

9. Yep. Find that same trait in many drumpsters I know. They don't have any

problem with calling me out for being a "bleedin' heart librul" but when I've had a comeback, they tell me they're "done" with me. It's their way or the highway.

[LiberalArkie]

11. Narcism and empathy are polar opposites. He is finding out that no-one likes him. He probably only feels used by the

Not-C's at 1600 Penn Ave. A narcissist has to always believe he is loved and believed.

[Buddyzbuddy]

4. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Leon is the biggest

motivator for Americans to desire much higher taxes for the very wealthy. Billionaires are going to be pissed, at Leon.

[calimary]

7. And NOW is the time.

Hey, they can’t silence ALL of us.

They’ve already started trying. But they didn’t anticipate that all they’d really being doing is growing the resistance. They assumed we’d all just cave. And give up, early. They were WRONG.

The harder this bastard pushes, the more the push-back will continue - AND grow. And grow STRONGER.

And eventually WE will achieve critical mass. He better have a hiding place at the ready. Either at Mar-a-Lago OR maybe somewhere in Russia. I’m still betting on Crimea, where the water’s warmer.

[Buddyzbuddy]

14. So true.

[bluestarone]

5. No matter where this creature goes

He needs to be haunted every minute of the day!!

[UpInArms]

6. No empathy for the Nazi

He can go fuck himself with his chainsaw

[Bo Zarts]

8. Margaret Mead and the healed human femur of antiquity .. empathy.

"Mead explained, as the story goes, that wounded animals in the wild would be hunted and eaten before their broken bones could heal. Thus, a healed femur is a sign that a wounded person must have received help from others. Mead is said to have concluded, “Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts.”"

That's OK Elon, but rest assured that if you were on fire I wouldn't piss on you to put the fire out.

[ReRe]

12. Yes. Margaret Mead.

"Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts."
Everyone should "dig" her out of the stacks and hear her astonishing words about the human element.
All should read Margaret Mead if you haven't, and re-read if you have.
A wonderful mind!

[Buddyzbuddy]

13. She sounds like a great read, thank you for recommending her.

[ReRe]

15. I guarantee, you will not be disappointed.

Once you read her, you'll NEVER forget her.

[llmart]

10. I love the description "DOGE flunky".

Suits him to a tee.

[pat_k]

16. Schopenhauer's observations on the "radical difference of mental habit between the good character and the bad"

...are relevant here. Some excerpts from his "On the Basis of Morality" in the post below:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219688952#post1

[Qutzupalotl]

17. Sociopathy is the suicidal trait driving civilizational extinction.

As evidence…. *gestures at everything*