Elon Musk: The Illusion of Genius

I once sat in a room with Elon Musk.

An invitation-only salon for people who supposedly shape culture, policy and science. Eighty, maybe ninety folks. Musk was the focus of the room as he was the subject of an intimate Q+A.

I watched, listened, waited. And then thought: This is it? This is the genius we’re all supposed to be in awe of? I remember feeling underwhelmed. Unimpressed. And I moved on with my day.

Because mediocrity in this man and others like him is so normalized, so falsely praised, that it hardly feels worth noticing anymore. They get adorned with the language of genius and we’re trained not to question it and certainly not to rail against it.

I wish I had. Not that it would have made any difference in the room… other than get me escorted out. But I wish, I wouldn’t have just shrugged it off as the normal overinflation of this kind of person. I wish I would have, at least for myself, marked it as the moment of hollowness that it was. Instead, I just let it pass with a shrug. Chalked it up to him being boring and socially inept. And I moved on with my day. This was maybe about five or so years ago.

Cut to now. And he’s still a multi-billionaire. But not one working on life on the moon and electric cars. Now, he’s got Ketamine in one hand and a chainsaw in the other, dancing on our Constitution, footloose and wreckless. What did they call it the whole time? Innovation. Genius. What was that one reaction that had a special sting? Oh yeah, “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm.” Wild. The press and his protectors and payees called him everything, but what he actually is.

Most of us don’t get to (or want to) make a Nazi salute on stage and walk off with federal contracts. We don’t get (or want to) slash thousands of jobs, destroy lives, destabilize countries and collect billions.

But he did that and so much more. He got high and got more access and more powerful. And you know what else I bet he’ll get? He’ll get away with it all.

The news of the drug mania he was embroiled in throughout the campaign and the early days of the current presidency has all but faded in what — 48 hours? I didn’t feel a wave of outrage about it online or IRL from the public, from friends and family. It’s just seemed like a big… collective… shrug.

One of my favorite emcees Pusha T has a song called “Diet Coke,” where he samples a Fat Joe line: “Yesterday’s price… is not today’s price.”

The song is about drug dealing and what not. I added it to my Instagram with The NY Times story on Musk’s drug habits and started thinking about who pays the price for yesterday’s destruction by this fraud of a man? Who paid with their jobs? Their safety? Their data? Their kids’ insulin?

Elon Musk tinkered with policy like it was his latest toy. Showed up on stages with chainsaws, high as friggin’ kite… and they cheered him. They called it “performance” and handed him more power.

We live in a country where a person like this can gut entire departments, destabilize nations, post propaganda in the middle of the night and keep climbing… insulated by insane amounts of money and the illusion of genius.

Remember the car stunt in front of the White House?! Remember him bringing his kid into the Oval, climbing all over him while the “Commander-in-Chief” sat nearby and allowed it, totally zoned out. Are we so sedated by spectacle that we offer the absolution of apathy to someone in power who was/is so cruel? Do we shrug and move on with our day like I did back then?

Yesterday’s price was paid in lives and livelihoods. And now what? Seems like nothing.

Elon Musk is not a genius. He’s just another man who did what he wanted because nobody told him no. And while he was snorting, tweeting and spinning through the halls of power, everyone else will have to live with the wreckage he left. A wreckage that’ll last longer than most seem to realize.

If he finds his way into another one of those intimate Q+As again… I hope the room feels it differently this time. I hope the underwhelmed feeling becomes discomfort. And the discomfort hardens into refusal. And then dare I say, one day, a demand for accountability.

One day, when he enters a room, I hope it’s not with cameras flashing, but with consequences waiting. Not velvet chairs and soft questions, but the weight of what he’s done laid bare. I hope he’s meet, not by enablers, but by the muscle of memory. And that we all finally agree that wealth is not wisdom. And wreckage is not worth applause. And that, he is no genius. He’s not a visionary. He is a vandal.

And, I hope we won’t just move on.