The dweebs have taken the wheel

There's a specific nuance to the fact that Musk is primarily utilising very young dudes as his hammer wrecking shit in the federal government at the moment. I've seen guys like him a lot in tech and nerd circles — and particularly in video games. Guys who absolutely cannot interact with their own peers or community in any meaningful, normal way — either because they have abhorrent opinions, terrible social skills, or make others uncomfortable/unsafe — but in a very specific niche they have found a group of folks who don't know better who look up to them as idols.

I doubt in Musk's case it's any explicit or calculated behaviour, and I'm sure all of us have known some dude whose friends are always creepily way, way younger than he is. That dude probably wasn't also the richest person on the planet, which makes the scenario even sadder on its face.

But he's getting these young guys — some of them literally still teenagers — because they're not old enough to question any of this and probably think Elon is a super cool dude. And because Musk is an absolute loser, he's surrounded himself with young sycophants who don't know better.

And, yeah, I'm sure there's some alignment of viewpoint too but these guys are also young enough that I doubt they have genuine convictions as much as somebody they think is super cool is giving them this super cool, important responsibility. They just don't know better and can't remotely fathom the consequences of aiding and abetting this.

This isn't to make an excuse for any of it, either, but I recognise a lot of behaviour in this situation from past ones I've personally had to deal with where a creepy, vaguely predatory figure needed to be managed for the safety of others.

But Musk is a thin-skinned manbaby who is so deeply pathetic that despite having more wealth than many countries' GDP still lies about being good at video games and (almost) assuredly has faked several sockpuppet accounts to make himself look better. It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.