Guest Post by Victor Davis Hanson
Before the midterm November elections, Sam Bankman-Fried was a left-wing billionaire heartthrob.
He properly grew up on the Stanford campus, where his parents were well-known left-wing activist law professors. He went to a tony prep school and on to MIT.
Bankman-Fried mocked society’s bourgeois capitalist conventions by dressing and looking like a slob in cut-offs and T-shirts.
Indeed, he bested the nose-ring, Charles Manson-esque appearance of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. He outdid the all-black, Steve Jobs copy-cat get-up of another fallen leftist icon, the now-convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy.
The Left canonized Bankman-Fried for the hundreds of millions of dollars he created out of thin air and channeled to left-wing congressional and state candidates, President Joe Biden, and a host of “progressive” causes under the cool slogan “effective altruism.”
For decades hence – or so Bankman-Fried promised – his cryptocurrency company FTX would churn out billions. Its politically correct gifting won exemptions from the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Democratic-controlled congressional oversight committees.
The loud-talking, left-wing slob promised billions of dollars more in gifts to come. He was knighted as the successor to the kindred financial market manipulator and progressive “philanthropist” George Soros.
SBF may have been a sloppy, immature fool, but he was no dummy.
He had learned early on that loud leftist talk, big promises of philanthropy, and huge cash infusions to the media and leftist candidates – all under the veneer of “effective altruism” – ensured de facto immunity for his Ponzi schemes from both bad press and government investigation.
Then, suddenly, the midterms were over. Powerful financial interests were screaming their millions had vanished at the hands of SBF.
The Republicans took the House. They promised embarrassing hearings, with Bankman-Fried the loose-talking star villain. And so – presto! – he was finally indicted by the Biden Department of Justice.
Bankman-Fried, in desperation one last time, had turned to his old props of raggedy dress, nerd talk, and contrived naivete.
His schtick no longer worked. Too many leftists were embarrassed that they got too much money from him. Too many exposed “regulators” had known what this wannabe Madoff character was up to before the midterms.
The now albatross Bankman-Fried was loud and everywhere, then suddenly not–and won’t be again.
In contrast, consider how the Left now despises Elon Musk as much as it once worshiped Sam Bankman-Fried.
Musk once mixed vaguely liberal politics with a David-versus-Goliath self-confidence, as he took on Big Auto and Big Space – and won.
But then he turned to Twitter and Big Tech. Or, rather, Musk realized Silicon Valley was no longer the irreverent embryo of boy geniuses he remembers from his youth, which outsmarted and preempted the global technology establishment.
Instead, it had become a dreary, constipated place of hard-core, uncompromising leftists in need of a shake-up.
Tech moguls used their billions, their monopolies, and their exemptions from oversight to warp the way Americans searched the Internet, communicated with each other, voted, and accessed the news – all in service to left-wing causes.
Musk’s mortal sin was not just buying the money-losing Twitter and reinventing it as a free-speech platform.
It was not even exposing the company’s rot of a lazy, overstaffed, woke, and pampered workforce and its giddiness in censoring free expression and wounding the public careers of any who challenged the status quo.
Musk’s crime was far worse.
First, was the sin of betrayal. A month ago, all those Teslas on the streets of Palo Alto, Austin, and Cambridge were virtue-signaling proof of green moral superiority. Then suddenly, these still wonderful cars are seen as fuel for the prince of darkness.
Musk, of all people, now the progressive apostate, would dare to end Twitter as a left-wing bulwark. And he promised to flip this time-tried Pravda to host anyone to say what he pleased.
Second, Musk doesn’t much care that the Left hates him. No doubt he regrets the billions he paid for the overpriced, money-losing company.
No doubt he frets that Tesla may lose sales once yuppies and greens trade in their Tesla amulets as if they were now some godforsaken gas-guzzling SUVs.
But otherwise, Musk has the resources, the youth, genius, and the energy to do to social media what he did to the space and automobile industries: revolutionize it, open it up to keener competition, and to reject stifling orthodoxy.
How sad that the Left despises a man who built real things against the odds and took risks to champion free speech. And how predictable it worshiped a leftist fraud who bilked a million investors and ruined the lives of thousands.
The hatred of the accomplished Musk and the worship of the hollow man Bankman-Fried are sad commentaries on how liberalism has descended into progressivism and ultimately into Stalinism.
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yawn…
(f)elon? 🤣 Playin’ a drumpf game.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/12/15/musk-sells-nearly-36-billion-in-tesla-stock-moves-further-away-from-richest-person-title/
Elon Musk is part of the NWO. I haven’t figured out yet how his takeover of Twitter is helping the agenda of the NWO Great Reset, but I am certain that it is part of their plan.
pie- It’s the old slight of hand, he gives the illusion of a savior. As if Twitter could be the savior of this country/free speech/rights, that is so dumb as to be mystifying.
pi
I posted a longer version of this from theconservativetreehouse on the “Twitter…leftist revolution” article….
So why did they permit it to be sold? Again, control.
Every non-Twitter, non-DHS controlled, information and discussion site is a watering down of the influence of Twitter. The inability to influence a platform like Truth Social would be particularly troublesome. So, launder the handling of the DHS platform to Elon Musk and create the illusion of a refresh.
Twitter 2.0 now rebrands with a renewed ability to influence. Not accidentally, a pro DeSantis shaping is part of the objective. In the eyes of the control state, Rumble and Truth Social represent the threat of Donald Trump. Meanwhile Twitter and YouTube represent the controlled alternative, Ron DeSantis.
B_MC- Put the crack pipe down if you believe Trump is not part of the beast system, Good Lord………..
He’s there to make Twitter acceptable to dissident sympathizers again after the current crew of trillionaire lackeys let the optics get out of control.
Elon might as well have been conceived in a test tube at Langley.
Musk is just an actor like all the rest. There is no space for SpaceX to go to. NO vi==iruses no space, no atom bombs, no 4 murdered students in Idaho etc. etc- everything fake.
Good cop-bad cop.
Antithetical? Heh. That’s a good one. Now, pull the other leg.
Pull my finger……
‘..consider how the Left now despises Elon Musk..’
..Like they pretended, and still do, to despise Donald Trump.
The tell is they doth protest too much.
Kabuki theatre all the way down.
Or turtles
One of my favoriate PM bloggers.
BYE BYE BITCOIN!
Just imagine an imaginary, well publicized and advertised, un-backed by anything, and very popular coin, going from $90,000, down to $16,000, in a matter of weeks. That coin is called ‘crypto,’ meaning ’fake,’ and its name is “Bitcoin.” I have written about this fraud a couple of times in the past two years, and what I said then, has come true. Millions have fallen for this ‘crypto’ or fake, and have lost their shirts.
And then there was Enron, the darling of the stock market. From $90 per share to .02.
Or perhaps Sears, which went from $157 to .92
Bernie Madoff, who took 37,000 ‘investors’ for $65 billion.
Remember Blockbuster? Its high was $5, and closed at .0026
J.C. Penney, was practically on everyone’s shopping list, and one CEO took it to virtually zero. It was recently bought entirely by one investor, who thinks he can make it work again. Good luck buying all the stock at a few cents each share.
Bitcoin, started in 2008, and it took 10,000 of them to buy a pizza. Was it by advertising, or a promotion of some kind, which brought Bitcoin from a teensy fraction of a cent, to $90,000 per coin? And at $90,000 or recently at $16,000, you didn’t get a coin at all, but a computer entry. The computer system got so expensive to operate, it threatened to overload the electrical grid, and locally, Bitcoin spent millions to install a huge solar farm, just to operate the computers in this area. I hear currently, that the ‘farm,’ is hooked up to the electrical grid. For $90,000, or now $16,000, you get a computer entry, which promises or guarantees you a fractional ownership of a non-metallic coin, which was originally priced at a small fraction of a penny.
A 30-year-old, stole $10 billion from Bitcoin ‘savers,’ and gave it all to Democrats running at mid=term elections, with which they captured the U.S. Senate. I just watched a true cowboy story in a 1957 movie on Turner Classic Movies, and the price of silver was $1.33. Gold, for 150 years, was $20.67 per ounce, and when I started doing precious metals in the fall of 1977, silver was still about a dollar and change. I used to love to play Monopoly as a kid, and I still would, if I could find someone to play with me. As a kid, Monopoly gave me a very basic knowledge of economics. Monopoly, is a wonderful kindergarten economics lesson. You learn that all properties are not the same price, and give corresponding returns on purchase prices. You learn that you can borrow on properties, sell them, and build on them. Did you know that the streets, railroads, and properties, came from Atlantic City New Jersey, when the game was first manufactured, and I guess patented? You also learn from Monopoly, that a throw of the dice, can easily make or break you! It is a great teacher. No such worry with gold and silver.
Monopoly, doesn’t teach you how to save, as there are no savings properties on its board. Players have to figure that out for themselves in life, not by playing Monopoly. I wonder if anyone ever re-worked a Monopoly Game with a Bitcoin property or railroad? Bitcoin buyers, have probably bought Enron, J.C. Penney, Sears, Kodak, Blockbuster, Enron, or Radio Shack. That would serve them right. With Monopoly, you get actual deeds to property, not promises made out of thin air. Gold and silver, are such marvelous ways to save, either for a rainy or sunny day. They’re marvelous, beautiful, tangible, physical things. Not promises, which stocks and dollars are, but physical, beautiful things, you can keep, admire, store, pass on, or sell easily, if you need a few bucks. The gold-silver ratio, is about 85 to 1, meaning that one ounce of gold, equals 85 ounces of silver, rather than the historic ratio of 16 to 1, which it was throughout history, and even in 2000. Why is the ratio that high? I have no idea, but compared to gold, it is a historic bargain, which can be used to barter, if all hell breaks loose. The popular one ounce ‘Buffalo’ silver coin, is made in our supplier’s own mint in Indiana, the SilverTowne Mint, and it has been working 24/7 for a couple of years. Ordering now, will get your physical delivery in mid-March, the demand is so high.
Why not build a new mint? Easy. Because it would cost a few million dollars, and take at least two, and maybe more years to build, and the ‘buffy,’ as we call them, are so close to the spot price, that a new mint would make little economic sense. The Silver Eagle, is made by union employees of the U.S. government mint at West point New York, and of course, government does nothing efficiently or economically, so it costs about $15 per ounce more. Silver Eagles, currently, take far less time for delivery, and a year from now, $15 may not make any difference. The Silver Eagle, does have $1.00 stamped on it, and it does come from the U.S. government. Would that make it a better bartering item? You decide, but save not in paper promises.
https://www.coloradogold.com/2022/11/21/bye-bye-bitcoin/