[mikeash]

I imagine it's because Elon Musk leans liberal (or at least non-Republican), and in particular is a highly visible crusader for action to combat climate change. The American right wing has decided that denying climate change is a core value, and trying to get people to take action against it is a mortal sin. SpaceX is not directly involved in that, but Tesla is, and I doubt places like Breitbart are interested in carefully drawing lines between the man's different companies.

[hackerguy99]

>SpaceX is not directly involved in that, but Tesla is, and I doubt places like Breitbart are interested in carefully drawing lines between the man's different companies.

So you are accusing Breitbart of attacking Tesla (even though this is about SpaceX) because they won't "carefully draw lines", without a hint of irony that you can't be bothered to draw careful lines between the companies, and have dragged Tesla into the conversation?

Not every criticism about SpaceX or Tesla is about disliking Musk. If only it were that simple.

[mikeash]

You’re right, not every criticism is about disliking Musk. But I’m pretty sure this one is.

I dragged Tesla into the conversation because I think it’s relevant. So do they.

[LyndsySimon]

I spend most of my time online in what the HN crowd would describe as "right-wing circles", and I have to agree with this. I'm seeing a rising sentiment that Elon Musk is someone who is skilled at over-promising and under-delivering, while repeatedly using subsidy and direct government funding to fatten his own pockets.

I have no idea what this notion is based upon; it's not really something that has interested me.

[mikeash]

There's a kernel of truth to it: he does over-promise, and often deliver short of his promises. It's just that the result is still pretty spectacular. It's not like he promises the moon and then hands you a bag of crap.

[mercer]

Honestly I think part of it might be that Musk, in a way, represents an (almost) naive hope ("let's go to mars!"), and as far as I can tell the alt-right mostly runs on cynicism and criticism.

I find it hard to properly argue this, because it's based on mostly a feeling I get from following /r/the_donald and various other alt-right(-ish) sources.

But the best way I can explain it is how I feel when I watch Fight Club, in particular the scene where Jared Leto gets beaten to a bloody pulp, and the main character says that he just 'wanted to destroy something beautiful'. I remember that the first time I watched the movie as an angsty teenager, this scene gave me a (thankfully) fleeting feeling of power, anger, mixed with disgust and self-loathing.

Interestingly enough, a game like Bioshock had a similar effect. The message is clearly that the 'Randian' approach leads to all sorts of horror, but for some reason there's also something appealing about the situation, at least to the person that I am (and I can easily see a version of myself in a parallel universe being part of the alt-right).

Anyways, my point is that anything that has a whiff of naiveté, grand hopes, and the kind of 'moonshot' idea that could possibly lead to utter failure, all of that is antithetical to the general alt-right perspective.

At the risk of shoe-horning an author I like into this, I nonetheless feel that David Foster Wallace somehow is able to capture some of this.

> “So far it seems as if people think it really is sort of a book about drug addiction and recovery and, you know, intentional fallacies notwithstanding, what was really going on in my head was something more general like what you were talking about before, that there is a kind — that some of the sadness that it seems to me kind of infuses the culture right now has to do with this loss of purpose or organizing principles, something you’re willing to give yourself away to, basically. And that the addictive impulse, which is very much kind of in the cultural air right now, is interesting and powerful only because it’s a kind of obvious distortion of kind of a religious impulse or an impulse to be part of something bigger. And, you know, the stuff at the academy is kind of weird because, yeah, it’s very high-tech and it’s very “become technically better so you can achieve x, y, and z,” but also the guy who essentially runs the academy now is a fascist, and, whether it comes out or not, he’s really the only one there who to me is saying anything that’s even remotely non-horrifying, except it is horrifying because he’s a fascist. And part of the whole — part of the stuff that was rattling around in my head when I was doing this is that it seems to me that one of the scary things about sort of the nihilism of contemporary culture is that we’re really setting ourselves up for fascism. Because as we empty more and more kind of values, motivating principles, spiritual principles, almost, out of the culture, we’re creating a hunger that eventually is going to drive us to the sort of state where we may accept fascism just because — you know, the nice thing about fascists is they’ll tell you what to think, they’ll tell you what to do–they’ll tell you what’s important.”

My apologies if this doesn't really add up to anything. The topic just hits a nerve and I'm trying to find a way to properly put it into words.

EDIT: found the full quote

[PeachPlum]

Climate change is not denied.

The human contribution and the potential consequences are considered still unproven hyperbole. The cost/benefit of doing something else is an ongoing discussion.

[mikeash]

Climate change is denied. Human causation is denied. The damaging consequences are denied. The net benefit of mitigation is denied. All of these positions can be found from mainstream right wingers in the US.

[dwaltrip]

High quality links that cast credible doubt on the cause of rising co2 ppm and its long term effects? I'll bet money you have none.

Items that have been debunked many times are obviously not high quality or credible.

P.S. I wouldn't normally be so harsh... It's just a bit crazy how many times these claims keep coming up, when the evidence and the science is so crystal clear.

[PeachPlum]

I didn't say it was my hypothesis

[dwaltrip]

What was the point of your comment, then? It seems to be expressing doubt about the cause of climate change, as well as the risks.

[jbattle]

This theory should be easy to prove or disprove. Just look for other corporations that make money from government contracts or benefit from government policies and see if Breitbart is consistently going after all of them.