Elon Musk just stepped on the third rail
Anyone who understands politics, or has even so much as watched The West Wing, knows that Social Security is the third rail of American politics. As fictional Vice President John Hoynes put it, “you touch it, you die.”
This is such a basic fundamental of American politics that every politician in both parties knows better than to go there. If you mess with Social Security, or even threaten to mess with it, you’re going to instantly turn every retirement-age voter against you in angry fashion – along with the family members who worry about having to step in and help in the place of Social Security.
And why shouldn’t people be enraged about the idea of messing with Social Security? After all, it’s their money. If you’re a retiree receiving Social Security, it’s money you already paid into the system during your career. It would be no different than a politician trying to screw with your savings account.
Even Republicans, who want to cut everything that helps anyone so they can give all the money to the wealthy, know better than to openly go after Social Security. But apparently Elon Musk didn’t get the memo. That’s not surprising, given that he has less understanding of politics and government than perhaps anyone in history. If you know nothing about these topics, you still know more than Musk, because everything he “knows” about politics and government is hallucinatory nonsense. And so of course the idiot is very loudly and very proudly trying to go after Social Security.
To give you an idea of how big of a mess Musk is making with this, there are multiple major media reports of House and Senate Republicans privately begging Musk to cease even so much as talking about Social Security. But Musk just can’t help himself. In his fully broken, conspiracy theory ravaged mind, he’s now convinced himself that most of the money is going to dead people – and he’s going to take it away from all of those supposedly dead people.
Of course there are virtually no dead people receiving Social Security. It appears Musk is looking at records of people who used to receive Social Security back when they were alive, and he’s mistaking those records for current payments. Yes, he’s actually that much of a mentally incompetent moron.
It’s not clear what Musk will end up doing, or what the rest of the Trump regime will allow him to do. If Musk starts cutting off payments to those people he mistakenly believes are dead, there will be instant outrage. If Musk goes further and lays off so many people that Social Security checks fail to go out entirely – even just once – it’ll unleash the kind of holy hell never seen in America. Yet Musk doesn’t understand that, or doesn’t care.
That’s what happens when the keys to the presidency are handed to someone who wasn’t even elected. Elon Musk knows he can screw around with the government as derangedly as he wants and it won’t directly blow back on him. After all, it’s Trump and the Republicans who are in office. They’re the ones who have to worry about approval ratings, the midterms, mass protests, and so on. Musk knows that if he makes a big enough mess, the worst that can happen to him is that he’ll walk away and go back to screwing up Twitter and Tesla.
That’s why it’s so foolhardy for Trump to hand over the power of the presidency to Musk. If Musk ends up breaking Social Security in one way or another, Trump’s presidency will effectively be over right then and there. He’ll be facing an approval rating in the twenties, House and Senate Republicans who will be stabbing him in the back to try to get themselves reelected, and zero political muscle for the remainder of his agenda. But that’s what happens when you elect a fully senile criminal with zero interest in doing the job.
