Musk Is A Murderer

Who Has Been Assisted By Other Murderers

Yesterday, I was busy with family stuff, including a visit from my turkey toddler grandson but I’m back today! And thank you to the reader who saw me at a restaurant last night and said hello! I love meeting you guys in real life.

Anyway, in between loads of laundry this morning, I perused the newspaper and something I read made me extra sad, as opposed to extra angry, which is how I feel when I read about things like *CF Trump pardoning criminals who pay him or support his right-wing agenda. A convicted felon pardoning other convicted felons.

Anyway, back to that thing that made me extra sad. In a NY Times op-ed, columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote about Elon Musk’s legacy. Not his legacy at Tesla, but the things he did during his time at the DOGE. On February 3 he posted on X that instead of “going to some great parties” he had spent the “weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper.” I wish he had gone to those great parties instead.

Musk succeeded in achieving his goal of (largely) eliminating U.S.A.I.D. According to Goldberg, the administration says that it has terminated more than 80 percent of the United States Agency for International Development grants. Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that “these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them children.” It’s a foregone conclusion that there will be many more deaths by the end of the year.

I wish that some of the people who are decrying the situation in Gaza, where Hamas refuses to agree to a reasonable peace agreement, would talk about the blood on the hands of our own government. Blood that is being spilled through starvation in refugee camps on South Sudan and patients in Kenya with H.I.V. whose symptoms have advanced because we cut off their antiviral medications. Why are some lives more important than others? The answer is because some lives advance a political agenda. Or feed into a deep-rooted trope of hate, like antisemitism.

Musk has 14 children- so far. He has said he would like more. But it seems that being a father has not helped him feel any empathy for children who are not his. And I refuse to attribute that to his autism- plenty of autistic people exhibit empathy. Also, Musk’s policies were approved by a lot of non-autistic people.

I always think of the anti-abortionists who want to “save” embryos yet do not advocate on behalf of children outside the womb. Children who live a lot closer than the Sudan or Kenya. Children in this country who will go hungry due to cuts to SNAP and who could die because of cuts to Medicaid.

Where are those right-to-lifers? Why aren’t they holding signs depicting dying children like they do fetuses? Where is their outrage?

We have become a heartless nation. One that pushes through policies that hurt the vulnerable.

When I poke my Musk voodoo doll with pins tonight, I will be doing it on behalf of everyone he has hurt. My five pins will have to represent hundreds of thousands of innocents- perhaps more.

But as cathartic and satisfying as stabbing my voodoo doll is, I know it’s not enough. I will continue to speak out on behalf of those who can’t. And protest. And vote. And hope that someday, we will once again help those who need us.

Musk may be (mostly) gone from our government but as children continue to die from his callous actions, his despicable actions will live on.

*Convicted Felon