Can Elon Musk Lure Conservatives Back to Twitter?

Polarized America might not be able to sustain a two-party social media platform.

(Photo: duncan cumming)

The story of Elon Musk is the story of Icarus.

It is the story of an almost mythical figure who rose to great heights on wings held together by hope and sealing wax.

Once upon a happier time, Musk was the darling of the cultural left, a good Democrat with an excellent voting record, a history of political donations to all the right progressives, and a penchant for electric cars and interstellar space travel.

Musk’s love story with the left was a match made in tech heaven.

Or so it seemed.

Enter COVID-19, and with it, Musk’s first offense against the left: Refusing to close his Tesla factory down as a mitigation measure.

Musk took the COVID-19 closures hard, as many independent voters did. Eventually, harsh COVID-19 mitigation measures, high taxes, and even higher crime drove Elon Musk and Tesla from California to Texas — Musk’s second big strike with the forces of the American left.

Then Musk started openly expressing sympathy for Republicans and conservative viewpoints, which to the left is akin to expressing sympathy for the devil during the Spanish Inquisition.

Not a good idea.

But it wasn’t until Musk expressed an interest in buying Twitter, along with sympathy for the left’s ultimate boogeyman — Donald Trump — that Elon Musk began to experience the full force and power of Cancel Culture.

From electric car ubermensch to persona non grata; overnight, Elon Musk went from hero to zero on the left.

A deluge of bad press coverage was unleashed on Elon Musk — everything from cracks about his beach bod to bold think pieces declaring Musk’s father never loved him.

Once Elon Musk tried backing out of the Twitter deal, citing bots, Twitter sued, and a treasure trove of “embarrassing” text messages was revealed by media outlets to, ultimately, call Musk shallow — perhaps missing the irony in dedicating so much news space to text messages where the biggest revelation was auto-correct’s confusion about “Justin Bieber”.