Elon Musk Posts "No Kings" Message as Protests Rage Against Trump
Late Sunday night, billionaire Elon Musk was seemingly kept awake by the specter of the "No Kings" mass protests across the United States over the weekend.
Millions of people took to the streets to counter a controversial — and apparently boring-as-hell — military parade, sponsored by UFC and put on by president Donald Trump, with the striking choice to hold it on his birthday.
Musk took to his own social media platform, posting a screenshot of the iconic horror video game "Bioshock," which showed a banner that reads "No Gods or Kings. Only Man."
"Anyone else think of this yesterday?" the mercurial CEO pondered.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1934461830010962417
The red banner in the screenshot is encountered by players upon entering what remains of a fictional underwater metropolis called Rapture. The parallels with the modern-day United States aren't exactly hard to grasp: Rapture was founded by an in-game industrialist named Andrew Ryan, who was seeking to escape the political and social constraints of a post-World War II world under the ocean. However, it didn't take long for the utopia to unravel into a horrific run on resources and a massive divide between the haves and the have-nots.
Given Trump and Musk's attempts to unravel the government, and surging wealth disparity in the country, the latter's invocation of the "Bioshock" universe certainly feels apropos of the events that took place this weekend. However, whether Musk sees himself as an Andrew Ryan-like character — or is simply taking yet another potshot at Trump, who said last week that he doesn't "feel like a king," last week when asked about the protests, in spite of sharing an AI-generated image of himself as a king — remains unclear at best.
Was it a moment of lucidity, with Musk realizing he's been trying his darndest to turn the United States into a dysfunctional oligarchy? Or does Musk somehow see himself — a billionaire hand-picking leadership for a democracy — as the hero of the story?
It certainly wouldn't be the first time Musk woefully misinterpreted works of fiction. Case in point, Musk once described Douglas Adams, author of the satirical novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," as his "favorite philosopher," despite representing everything the late novelist scathingly critiqued in his works, including South African apartheid and economic inequality.
"Why do these guys keep reading science fiction, which often is a searing social criticism — why are they reading it as a user's manual?" said Harvard historian Jill Lepore during a 2022 podcast appearance.
Musk's latest social media post was an oddly brooding missive that came roughly a week after the spectacular and spite-filled escalation of his personal feud with the president. The two became embroiled in a flame war full of threats, mockery, and personal attacks.
Things became so heated, Musk even later apologized for taking things "too far."
But given his latest post, Musk is still nursing some cryptic wounds. It's also affecting his bottom line: he's massively alienated both Democrats and Republicans following the blowout, and polls have consistently shown his falling popularity over the last year or so.
The brouhaha could also cost him lucrative government contracts, which have historically kept his businesses alive.
It's unclear what Musk's intention was behind invoking a video game about a dystopian, Ayn Rand-inspired biopunk metropolis. Is he warning about Trump turning the US into the Rapture? Or does he want to speedrun that transition?
More on Musk: Musk's Daring Gambit Has Managed to Do Something Remarkable: Alienate Democrats AND Republicans
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