Musk: He's Not One of Us

I have been hearing so much about "kitchen table issues." What troubles me is not that Americans are facing as an individual or as a family member a pertinent crisis that requires their undivided attention. Cancer or unemployment. Caregiving services for a senior parent. Even the rising price of eggs.

And will the milk or cheese be safe to consume? Left up to the current administration in Washington D. C., there will be no kitchen table! No money to buy one in which to place food! This is serious! And everyone must care! I don't eat eggs, but I do care. I see the parent deciding that the price of eggs is too much, and there are children at home. I care about the federal workers who have been immediately and unceremoniously dismissed at USAID, FAA, IRS, Veterans Affairs, EPA, USDA, Cancer researchers, and so many other departments.

These workers' "kitchen table issues" concern me. And should concern all Americans. But these "kitchen table issues" are no more personal than is the fact that like most humans you live for only so long and you die. We all will die. What will you do about that dash between the time you were born and the time you die?

"Kitchen table issues" aren't personal because they tend to link us to each other. If you are cut off from Medicaid you will know what it's like for the child in Ethiopia who won't receive measles shots, thanks to the current US administration that determined the plight of both of you! Ukrainian vets without the Veteran Hub, a helpline once funded by USAID for Ukrainian vets thinking of suicide, should recognize in you a partner in resistance.

Some of trump's voters, if honest, are gleeful that Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) is being dismantled by the one oligarch, who like Iago, is never far from their fearless leader's ear. He's not one of us, this Elon Musk!

This is a man, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to the Washington Post polls, has a 54% disapproval rating; yet, Musk confidently weaves a narrative catering to those citizens as fearful as he is of the boogie men: the "deep state," on the one hand, and the freedom of Black Americans, Haitian and Mexican immigrants on the other. Look how the one group is stealing from us and the other is invading, both making it impossible for white Americans, that is, white men, to get ahead!

Trump's 51% disapproval rating is the worst ever rating for a president, one who campaigned on this nightmarish image of a dark America. Maybe it just seemed that way for the last four years. Maybe a little "shock and awe" of reality makes some Americans wake up from the "nightmare" that employed tropes from the narratives created by Poe and Hawthorne rather than those written by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. We might not be here. But, then, here we are.

Eighty-three percent of Americans disapprove of Trump's pardoning of insurrectionists, a group of predominantly white Americans who truly made January 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington D. C. and around the country, a dark day in the US. But how was it that a little more than half the country voted for a convicted felon? Did he even have to work hard to sell his narrative of invasion by Mexican rapists and election thieves by placing cross hairs on a Black mother and her daughter?

When Trump turns to the world's riches man most Americans didn't bat an eye-- until the lay offs and the systematic closure of democratic institutions. Until it was clear that even Medicaid and SNAP were in the cross hairs and Musk and his band of teen and young hackers were eyeing Social Security.

Authoritarians with a desire to be dictators need for capitalists to destroy a democratic society. That's how democracies slip away and are replaced with subjects "marching" in step.

We shouldn't be surprised that the unelected and ecstatic Musk couldn't abide by the existence of Black people, Black and Latino/a immigrants. Musk, as historian Enzo Traverso has noted about the West in general, sees himself as a besieged man. That's Musk's "kitchen table issue." As a "besieged" man, he links his individual plight, even if imagined, with that of the West, which, in turn, sees itself as a" besieged fortress," to use Traverso's words, under attack by the ungrateful who threaten to replace white people.

"Kitchen table issues," then, matter are in the Oval Office. It's just depends on which ones fit their ideology of fascism where the people are docile followers but the wealthy are kings! Those holding these beliefs, sit with the man who, in the 1970s, couldn't identify with Blacks seeking rentals in his buildings. He couldn't identify with the humanity of the innocent Central Park Five. Just last year, while campaigning for president of the US, Trump announced that Haitians in Ohio, fellow travelers, were eating dogs and cats!

It's more than the price of eggs!

Musk, born in South Africa during apartheid, is trying to sell a fascist narrative to white Americans.

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The song "Pata, Pata," came out in 1967. "Grazing in the Grass," in 1968, Both had a groove that caught my attention and that of most teens in the US. You didn't have to be Black. At 14 and 15 years of age, I had no idea that the two singers were Black South Africans living in exile; however, I did know that South Africa was an apartheid state.

If you considered yourself "conscious," that is, "woke," in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then you knew that apartheid was akin to Jim Crow in the US, only Blacks in South Africa were the majority! Subjected to the brutality of a system that privileged white South Africans at the expense of its native population, apartheid spread its narrative of white supremacy, justifying the partitioning, marginalization, incarceration, and killing of Blacks for the least little offenses-- or no offense, except that of being Black. Assassinations of influential Blacks who could and did encourage protest and rebellion became normalized. Think of Medgar, Malcolm, King here in the US.

But Black Americans also suffered, as did Black South Africans, the terror of being Black in an undemocratic society, a society saluting in Nazi-fashion, while imprinting the image of a "Big Brother" so that Blacks in both countries practiced self-censoring. I know my father, grandfather, and grandmother went to their graves decades ago never talking about their experiences in the South.

In a documentary, Huge Masekala talked about sitting on a Central Park bench in New York, talking to himself. Far from grazing in the grass. Masekala sat, not caring with passersby thought but wanting to hear Xhosa. And so he talked and talked, alone on that park bench.

Miriam Makeba swaying while she spoke about the dance called, pata pata, suffered the death of her mother while she was in exile. Can you imagine: Makeba is unable to return home for the funeral of her mother!

You think immigrants come just to make it big in America. You have no idea. Many, including Makeba finally return home after Mandela walks out of Robben Island prison. Twenty-seven years before, Mandela said no to the ideology of white supremacy, to become the first democratically-elected Black president of South Africa.

Not all young white South Africans were cheering the way we were. They hadn't worn "Free Mandela" buttons as many of us, back in the day, wore "Free Angela" buttons in the US. They didn't spend one minute of their time listening to "Grazing in the Grass." Or reading James Baldwin or Toni Morrison. They were young South Africans, angry, as angry as supporters of Nixon and Reagan had been. Their parents despised the Civil Rights Movement, the college anti-war protesters, and the Black Power Movement. It's possible they cheered when they heard that prison security personnel had beaten activist Steve Biko to death in September 1977. America had assassinated and was now incarcerating its "problems" too.

It was as good a time as ever to consider "freedom."

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For US economist Milton Friedman, freedom was in compatible with democracy. To truly be free, you had to have wealthy, and abundance of wealth from resources owned by the wealthy in order to generate more wealth" and this super wealthy class had no interest in the freedom of other classes of people, certainly not of Blacks in South Africa or in the US. While Blacks throughout Africa were throwing off the shackles of colonialism the likes of Pay Pal co-founder Peter Thiel, a South African, influenced by Friedman, was considering his contribution to the sustaining of white supremacy.

Once Thiel left the "nightmare" of South Africa, he looked to places like Hong Kong, Canary Wharf, in London, and Singapore were Friedman's influence ruled, and capitalism was free to create white enclaves for the wealthy. Capitalist ventures for the super wealthy with "portfolios" would preclude the inclusion of those dreaded Black people. And where would the opportunity derive for Blacks to develop a real estate portfolio, if in America, for example, Black are incarcerated for the possession of pot or crack cocaine? In the meantime, developers entered agreements with local politicians to solve the problem of the economically poor in the "urban" enclaves.

Gentrification, writes Quinn Slobodian (Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy), was state assisted, whether in the US or elsewhere. It was a form of welfare-- but for certain citizens. Certain ones like those in Hong Kong, who in China and Qater, had the money. The wealth. The Market was free to those who valued the "freedom" that discriminated, marginalized, displaced the not so free. Plutocratic cities, in other words, as Slobodian explains, are fearless when it comes to democracy. That's why the inflation of "property values" becomes part of the reasoning for expelling the economically poor from their homes and neighborhoods. And then, combine "economic freedom with political servitude." works.

Listen to Trump testing the narrative his administration, with the help of Musk and Thiel, is peddling. And they are serious. Americans think it's another mouthing off of nonsense by Trump. But it's been done elsewhere as Slobodian explains in his book. It's been done to some extent in the US, in what was once called "urban," that is, Black neighborhoods. Trump and his oligarchs already see a Gaza turned into beach property for the wealthy.

What about the Inuit of Greenland? Are they to be forcefully removed or exploited as cheap labor for another Musk launching site?

"America's first developer" president, writes Slobodian, was an "early devotee of the zone." In the zone, the definition of freedom doesn't include democracy. In fact, "any expansion of social services" is a disservice to capitalists. To succeed in the zone, adds Slobodian, referring to Friedman's philosophy, capitalists dismiss democracy. The capture, then, of exclusive economic zones, means creating pockets of little worlds, what Thiel would come to envision as a world "of a thousand nations."

It's no accident that this kind of development begins in the apartheid era where the "geniuses" of capitalists developers work to replace free elections with the "decentralization of state power." Little economic towns are renamed and "radical capitalism," writes Slobodian, is sustained with politicians who establish "disciplinary" measures for the Black population while "subsidizing" the capitalists. It all works out so well, particularly after the Black population is forcefully removed!

That's South Africa! The home of our current oligarchs standing beside, if not in front, of Trump. That was South Africa with it's white enslaves and "Bantustans." The new order creates fragmented landscapes, writes Slobodian, dubbed "Bantustans."

Divide and rule!

Under this policy, Black South Africans lost their lands and even their South African citizenship as many "were made into citizens of homelands that many had never set foot in." Some 3.5 million Blacks were displaced, "relocated by force, especially the elderly, women, the unemployed, and opponents of the regime." All done in the effort to make South Africa whiter! And, as Slobodian suggests, the policy allowed white South Africa to retain "access to an itinerant labor force concentrated in balkanized territories."

Ciskei became one such town where whites lived in freedom and Blacks-- well, not so much! On the outskirts of the white enclave of wealthy South Africans, Blacks lived as "guest workers," in what has been described, writes Slobodian, as equivalent to "dumping grounds" or "open air" prisons. Before he's murdered, Biko called these sites "'sophisticated concentration camps'" and "'the greatest single fraud ever invented by the white man.'" The white homeland "that sold itself as 'Africa's Switzerland' was a caricature case of corporate welfare, overseen by union breakers willing to murder."

And just a little note: During apartheid and the brutal repression of Blacks in South Africa, the leadership was "courting investors in Israel." The leader "twinned," Slobodian explains, "Ciskei's capital city with the West Bank settlement of Ariel."

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When Musk graduates from high school at 17, apartheid is still present but dying. In the 1980s, Musk is living in Pretoria, where Biko was imprisoned and killed. South African Blacks are rising up, nonetheless. The Blacks have had enough while Musk, witness to "the stiff-armed Hitler salute" on the streets, according to reporter Chris McGreal, has had enough too-- but not of the "stiff-armed" salutes of the "neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) [that] captures 10% of white South Africans' support." That business impresses Musk, so that by 1988, McGreal writes, two years before FW de Klerk releases Nelson Mandela, the young Musk has had enough of protesting Blacks. McGreal encounters a woman who knew Musk in South Africa. She informed him that Musk "must have had a sense of what Black people were experiencing and why they were angry."

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The white minority is really a minority in South Africa. At only 8% of the total population, the white South Africans have who has the ear of that president who wishes Norwegians would emigrate to the US. The Iago to Trump, Musk, unraveled a story of struggle and violence in South Africa. Unfair treatment by brutes-- brutes set on exterminating the innocent.

And so Trump mouths what I suspect is a Musk narrative, fill of angry Blacks, dangerous Blacks, taking land and resources-- depriving whites of their right to "freedom" and the campaign to sustain white supremacy.

The rights of citizens is being trampled upon! These poor white South Africans are forced to give up their lands to the brutes! This barbaric behavior justified Trump's withdraw of aid to South Africa. Of the $440 million withdrawn, according to an AP report,17% funded South Africa's HIV program. That is gone! HIV clinic have shut their doors.

Can you see the staring and anger of an HIV patient as she sits at her kitchen table?

There's Musk's personal history, his "kitchen table issue" that zeros in on Blacks in South Africa. A nation, he claims, of "racist laws."

A little back story: The government headed by President Cyril Ramphosa turned down Musk's request to establish a Starlink "satellite internet service," according to AP, because it didn't meet South Africa's "affirmative action criteria." So that, too, would have sent Musk into a tailspin!

In turn, the White House talks of South Africa undermining US policy. Which is what? Do away with democracy? Trump would have his supporters believe, and they must be die-hard supporters even at this early stage, that South Africa is engaged in a "shocking disregard of its citizens' rights." And, here in the US, there's a frantic, if not illegal rush to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that protect the rights of women, Blacks, Latino/a, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and others historical and systemically excluded from inclusion in this country. But the US narrative isn't a "shocking disregard" of citizens' rights" at all! Not at all!

As the Minister of International Relations and Coordination noted in his response to the withdrawal of aid to his country:

"This order [Trump's executive order] lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognize South Africa's profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid." There's seems to be a campaign of "misinformation and propaganda aimed at misrepresenting our great nation," he continues. "It's disappointing to observe that such narratives seem to have found favor among decision-makers in the United States of America."

And there's South Africa, defending Palestine! Charging Israel with genocide!

Are we keeping track? There's "racist" DEI policy and the banning of Black history/US history, the "racist" country of South Africa, and "racist" Palestinians. There's the need to remove obstacles for the success of the fascists and oligarchs, a familiar pattern for making America and the West-- great again. To be clear, this DOGE operation isn't about waste or fraud, unless what's meant by Musk's waste is the inclusion of Black existence and the fraud committed by white liberals, betraying white supremacy, by wanting diversity, equity, and inclusion of Black lives.

As 80% of the total population of 60 million people, the Black South African population has the right to "seize ethnic minority Afrikaners' agricultural property without compensation." For Trump, and his Iago, Musk, the white landowners are welcome in the US as "refugees" but from what? "A besieged fortress"?

As McGreal writes, "Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler."

What more needs to be said? It's not personal: Musk isn't one of us!