An Open Letter to Elon Musk

The third phillippic

I had intended to stay away from politics until late April. And I will, for the most part. But today, I am so infuriated, so full of salted bile that I had to speak.

An Open Letter to Elon Musk

I have received word that I am no longer welcome on “X.” Frankly, this is a bit of a relief, since I had completely forgotten that I had an account there, and hadn't visited since before you renamed and poisoned that platform.

I do thank you for removing me, without effort on my part, from an association that might have reflected unkindly on my taste. The sort of company you have sought so publicly would cause good folk to feel shame at the association. But you feel no shame. For you have no honor, no virtue, and are already known to be what you are: the lowest and most despicable of men, by shameless Fortune raised to be emperor of the greedy, the very sultan of avarice. It was that slattern luck that raised you to great power and wealth, while still in possession of a rag of a soul so unclean, so tattered that a leper would shudder to cover their infected sores with it. To hear you, or your endlessly heeling parade of crooked-necked kneelers claim you have risen through either work or talent, unless it be a talent for deceit and stealing unearned honors, makes me laugh even as my gorge rises.

Why say I so? Because, try as I will, I can find no other man drawing breath in this weary and wicked world so worthy of scorn and contempt. Your personal morals are low and filthy, your accomplishments are purchased, you glories stolen, your treatment of those who have worked with and for you villainous, you use power to advance injustice, your name is used as an instrument of deceit, your arrogance toward, and disregard of the good of others, even those who have shown good to you is far beyond the reach of any clemency.

It is incredible that you, born under a golden caul that smothered any possible spark of moral sense, a child given every advantage by a regime, and a family that minted the blood of other men for coin, ground their bones and broke their spines for emeralds, should so presume. It is unspeakable that you, who have never done a day's work for anything less than a thousand times its worth, you who have your leechy sucker and rasping tongue on the very heart vein of my nation, bleeding it for the wealth of millions of my countrymen, should dare to call any other's labor “wasteful.” For you, who has never raised a hand to do my country any good without wringing the public purse for it, to dare to call anything “fraud” - it boggles the moral mind.

You have been given warrant, by a traitorous, malignant, idiotic bigot, to take bread from the mouths of the poor, to deny medicine to the sick, to tear down the fences and guideposts that protect the honest and the vulnerable, and you have done so with a demoniac glee, reveling in the suffering you have caused.

These acts spring from a foulness of spirit that would shame the damned. But it is another refinement of your base and wretched nature, another act of needless and unfounded cruelty that has ignited my blood. For you, without cause, proof or legal warrant to turn workers who have dedicated their lives to public service out of that service is foul enough. But to chase them out to unemployment with slander – calling them “frauds,” “waste” and “parasites;” oh, that hypocrisy were poison!

You are a bottomless well of arrogance, greed and unjustifiable self-regard. You are, in your every bone, in your every organ and every inch of hoary skin, a waste of humanity, a fraud upon any useful talent, and a most virulent parasite.

You are indeed something lower than a traitor. A traitor usurps to gain control of something. They seek to subvert so they may rule. Be their motives ever so vile and self-serving, they do not seek to destroy that which they subvert.

But you intend destruction. You revel in your illegitimate license to bite at the very heart that sustains so many, to mangle the limbs that shelter children, the aged, and the sick. And you glory in the suffering you inflict, believing that when every civic institution lies destroyed, none will be able to oppose the power of your wealth. When the rule of law is strangled and defiled, you and your hoarded wealth will be the only “law” that matters.

And you may very well succeed. But this you should know, though I doubt it will matter to you at all:

No matter how much you destroy, no matter how much wealth you hoard, no matter how many people you make miserable, or how many the unguessable thousands that your vandalism will leave exposed to disease and death, no matter how much power you amass, you are still a canker on this country's battered and wounded body – a malignant, parasitic disease. The fact that you so weaken your victim that you thrive does not change the nature of what you are. And if there is anything left of civilization when you and your filthy-souled cohort are finished, you will be remembered as a plague, as a scourge, as mindless, heedless and heartless a wrecker as has seldom been seen on the saddened face of this weary world.