Tim Urban put his established “accessible intellectual blogger” credibility behind some truly convincing pro-Musk propaganda pieces on Wait But Why back in ~2015 or so, which at the time were inspiring and felt very believable for people searching for signs of an improving future. For me, Musk fell hard from that grace during the Thailand cave rescue when he attacked that British caver in the most absolutely childish way. I really resent that Urban hasn’t gone back to readdress those old blog posts, but maybe he’s just another paid shill.

Consolidation of power to a tiny coalition of privileged cronies with conditional impunity as long as they backed the leader. That’s not “conservative” or “liberal” or “right” or “left.” It’s just…autocratic. Have you read The Dictator’s Handbook by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith? It’s a very illuminating reference and eschews the entire argument of “left vs right” in favor of a ruling-coalition size relative to the ruled population model and it appears to be quite accurate in predicting and explaining the behavior of politicians and rulers, Hitler included.