To think Elon has lost his mind?

[JennyBeanR]

I used to be a big supporter of his. I was absolutely obsessed with his work on SpaceX and neuralink. His Joe Rogan interviews are some of the most interesting conversations I've ever listened to. Since he bought twitter I feel like he's been radicalised. I honestly can't square the man he seemed to be while building this extraordinary career with who he had become.
I still agree with him on quite a few topics, but his outbursts on twitter this week to stoke the riots is just reprehensible. His comments seriously make me feel sick. I really hope he is held to account when the dust settles. Although I don't hold out much hope.

In the app so can't set up voting properly, but essentially
YABU - Elon Musk is of sound mind
YANBU- you're right, he's lost it

Also, every time there is a crime reported locally, e.g. on NextDoor, there is a rush of apologists, e.g. they were driven to it due to poverty, Tory cuts etc etc. Why are no excuses being made for the rioters? Is it in the public interest to drag a 12 year old to court to nicking a vape? Seriously! I would mind less if there was a consistent approach to policing but there isn't. My husband came back from Sainsburys yesterday saying that he witnessed not one but 2 thefts - someone strolling out with a few steaks under their arms, someone else nicking other stuff. The staff are told not to challenge them (last time they did in a nearby store a member of staff got stabbed). Complete breakdown of law and order, unless of course you're rioting.

@winterrabbit ”Why are no excuses being made for the rioters? Is it in the public interest to drag a 12 year old to court to nicking a vape?”

I’ve seen a few apologists. Re the 12 year old, are you thinking of something specific? You seem to be contradicting yourself though, in your next sentence about shoplifting?

Do you think rioting and looting is OK?

If not, prosecute then.

Shoplifting also wrong. Time for crackdown

Just read an article about a prolific phone snatcher who stole 24 phones in a single morning whilst going at 50mph through central London being sentenced to TWO years. No wonder crime is out of control. Rioters seem to be getting up to 5 years. Why the disparity?

While your phone snatcher is obviously a menace, rioting and civil unrest can spread and lead to the breakdown of society. Which I'm sure no-one wants. Except Putin and other despots around the world who would be happy to see the UK crumble. Which is why the misinformation spread by Russian trolls and bot farms is dangerous, and rioters are being led by the nose, believing any tripe that appears on their SM without question.

Don't Look Up's Paul Isherwell was based on Elon, and that was 3 years ago. So I don't think he ever really had the plot in the first place judging by that portrayal!

The rioters are certainly no joke @winterrabbit . No doubt many are poor and uneducated , exactly like the lads who robbed my young nephew - who is not exactly an oligarch himself. Some posters here are annoyed the police can't be everywhere. But also take umbrage when they show up to prevent hundreds of violent drunken yobbos from burning the place to the ground. A no win the the police force.

But it's not just phone theft. It's other violent crime such a knife crime, armed robberies etc, where the police are nowhere to be found. This is what had led to the accusations of 2 tier policing.

There's also the comparative treatment of rapists, murderers etc... There's Adil Rashid who raped a 13 year old because according to his lawyer he had been taught that "women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground." He also claimed that the girl had seduced him, and he felt just terrible about it (about having sex, not about raping a little girl; she'd tempted him so it was her fault). He got a suspended sentence as the judge thought he might not enjoy prison. There's also the machete murderer who Starmer just gifted early release after only serving 6 months - in order to free up space so non-violent offenders could serve several-year sentences for writing something mean on the internet. I'm not ready to leap onto the two-tier kier thing quite yet as he has only just taken over so most of the ridiculously lenient sentences were given under the last government. But watching keenly, and hoping he soon calms down a bit with the fascist thought-crime stuff. Can't quite dislodge that image of him kneeling to the BLM riots though.

(Both examples taken from Musk's twitter, and fact-checked. If you're being fed an endless stream of stories like this, I get why you'd move rightwards!)

You can not lengthen prison sentences without also building more prisons. At some point (like now) you run out of space. There were years of warnings from the groups within the justice system.

It is commonsense to acknowledge this.
The next thing will be complaints about building more prisons.

Civil war is a trope in the US. Trump's kick off after losing the last election was a call to the right wing to start a revolt that could lead to civil war. Didn't happen. The last civil war in the US was in 1861. Over more.

For all his smarts Elon Musk doesn't seem to understand the UK. We are not the US. The last civil war was in 1642! Over more.

The idea that there would be global civil war where the opposing sides would be conservative family values versus woke left ideology is insane. Unless the narrative was seized by the right who managed to make us feel under threat by left ideology when the real threat was from the right. That is why we no platform the far right despite free speech. It has happened before. We learn from history or are condemned to repeat it.

The already rich love war. It is so profitable. Not to mention power grabs. They do not have your interests at heart. You are a useful idiot to them and have no worth.

The rest of us plebs want to live peaceably within our community and for our offspring to thrive. Not to have their life chances fucked so they feel compelled to fight 'for freedom'.

Great post @PocketSand . War is an ancient, barbaric habit that conveniently mops up aggressive, tribal energies (largely male) instead of harnessing the mind and the heart and the intelligence and asking how we can all live better. I'm not the most optimistic of human beings but I believe we could eradicate it through education and the tireless use of language in efforts to understand each other.

Or as Churchill put it, more succinctly - Jaw, jaw, not war, war.
Except that apparently he didn't and that's a misquote by Harold Macmillan.

From the International Churchill Society website; ‘Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.’ 1954, Washington. (Finest Hour 122, 15.)
Winston Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, speaking of this quote, noted that Churchill actually said, ‘Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.’ Four years later, during a visit to Australia, Harold Macmillan said the words usually—and wrongly—attributed to Churchill: “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.”

Just don't give him any headspace. He's completely insignificant and irrelevant to us in the UK. Don't waste a second thinking about him.

That is why we no platform the far right despite free speech.

But that just fuels their narrative they are the "oppressed majority"..

Much better to laugh at them. Because (note Trump and his cabal now) they really hate that. In ways it's impossible to describe. Fascist humour is (appropriately) an oxymoron.

I mean who on earth could take this shower seriously ?

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/bluesky-signups-surge-uk-amid-musks-row-with-government-over-riots-2024-08-13

'The rest of us plebs want to live peaceably within our community and for our offspring to thrive. Not to have their life chances fucked so they feel compelled to fight 'for freedom'.'

Ain' t that the truth.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/uaw-lawsuit-trump-musk-interview-b2595708.html

Actually, I just my offspring to get a chance to reach 30 without getting stabbed to death and, believe it or not, that threat to that in London is not from the far right, it's from knife crime and nothing is being done about it so stop all this panic and drama and overreaction about the far right and focus on the real problems in society, FFS. Do ANY of you live in London and do ANY of you have a grasp on the real issues?

Actually, I think he does understand the UK and that there is a large segment of the population (the white working class) who is basically being ignored and, dare I say it, discriminated against.

He hasn't said that there will be a global civil war, but a civil war in the UK due to the massive lack of cohesion and refusal to listen to the concerns of a proportion of society.

He's always been a bit whacky, to say the least. I think he's a twat, and is only thinking of profit.

Yes.

Elon is trying to whip up division and destabilise the government here in the UK. His political leanings very obviously and publicly lie to the right. Your previous post bemoans knife crime being out of control, I agree and far more needs to be done. This new government has only been in power a very short time. However, Musk supports gun rights- can you even imagine - not just on the streets, but the number of kids killed each year in schools by this policy being supported. So don’t tell me that he and his Ilk are the solution to any of this. We need to come to together as a society to sort out our issues. Elons divisiveness and culture wars ain’t it.

Also if you think Musk, Farage, Trump, Tories give a mad fuck about the white working class you are massively mistaken. They are exploiting them for their own political agenda. The right wing and the likes of the Reform party target the white working class and try to frame their problems within a racial context. However in the same breath they also would implement tax policies which would see the working class suffer more and benefit the wealthiest and would do away with the NHS which would remove their access to healthcare. Years of right wing policies and Brexit have left this country in tatters and the working class have suffered. Immigration is used as the scapegoat and smokescreen.