My first interest in this started with Elon Musk going nuts during the pandemic, deciding to keep his factory open against the rules of California at the time. And what amazed me the most about that was that the Governor and the State, which had been closing down restaurants and all these other businesses for trying to flout the laws, sat there and allowed Elon to do as he pleased, and that was shocking to me. I was very critical of it at the time. And just the idea that Elon knew he could get away with it. And he did.
And on top of that, I think the biggest story I ever wrote was an editorial for the Sacramento Bee when during this time, Musk said he would donate 1200 ventilators to the state because there was the time when there was a big ventilator shortage. And well, I check in a while later and it turns out he didn’t do that at all. After the Governor had gone on his daily appearance and thanked Elon profusely for this he sent a few CPAP machines with Tesla stickers on them and called that service. And this caused a big uproar because Elon was insisting that he had done it, even though the state of California was like: We have no receipt of these things.
So it seemed like during the pandemic, a lot of these folks felt the crush of being in a collective situation where we all have to work together to not increase the death toll, and saw threats to their businesses because it was really unclear what was going to happen with the economy. And suddenly you’re just not on some libertarian island where you can do what you want. We’re all connected. And I think some of them, like Elon, broke the rules and so they could actually do that. No one’s going to stop them. And after that, during this time is when, I guess, Balaji’s writing his book. And so that really marked the beginning of Musk’s public shift to the right and the far-right.
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