Note that I don’t have a problem with anyone’s immigration status except Musk’s simply due to hypocrisy because he is railing against immigration when he himself is likely an illegal immigrant. I just think it’s funny that conservatives always say that immigrants are ruining the country but they have the wrong people identified as the problem.
I know the clip you speak about, it’s infuriating.
Something I really hate about it is how it shows the insidiously deceitful meritocratic understanding of the world that’s so prevalent; by virtue of being obscenely rich, Musk is characterised as “one of the good ones”. It’s funny because going from “possibly illegal workers” to billionaire shows that Musk and co. are plucky underdogs who succeeded despite the system being against them. /s if it wasn’t clear.
The reality is that Musk is a petulant man-child who has always had more money than sense. If you gave a room full of fools 10 million, many of them would make foolish investments and lose it all. Some of them would make foolish investments and profit. That doesn’t redeem them from being fools, it just means that some of them got lucky. Some people who are unpaid PR reps for billionaires will acknowledge the huge headstart that people like Musk got from inherited wealth, but argue that being able to earn more money on top of that is evidence of skill or savvy. It’s honestly so bizarre to me that some people use Musk as an example of “see, we do live in a meritocracy”, whereas for me, he’s evidence of the opposite