We are constantly being told that the American dream is dead, that the system is rigged, that capitalism doesn’t work anymore, that we don’t build anything meaningful anymore, and that we can’t get ahead.
The idea is that billionaires just exploited everyone to make their money and then pulled up the ladder behind them. And unless you were born into the right family with the right connections, you should just give up now because basically, you’re screwed.
Here is the problem with that story: Not one aspect of it is true. Anyone who tells you that America just absolutely sucks in every way is doing so because 1) they want your vote, or 2) they work for America’s enemies.
The American Dream was never a promise of success for everyone. The American Dream has always been and continues to be a commitment to giving you the pathway you need to create success for yourself.
Perhaps no living person today embodies the opportunity of America more spectacularly than Elon Musk.
Think about what he has done: revolutionized online payments; basically made electric vehicles mainstream; looked at the space industry that had calcified for decades and decided he could do it better and cheaper — and then did it.
Musk became the richest person on planet Earth because he built things that everyone on planet Earth wanted.
But here’s the funny part: he was once celebrated for all of it — the former South African-born immigrant turned American entrepreneur building cars that would stop global warming.
And then something changed. It wasn’t that Elon stopped building things or that SpaceX stopped launching rockets. In fact, Tesla is coming out with a new car later this year.
Elon committed sins that the Left could not forgive. He supported Donald Trump and also bought Twitter, one of the most powerful information distribution systems in the world, and took it out of the hands of the Left.
In the eyes of the Left, their favorite billionaire became an oligarch overnight. Tesla became a threat to democracy. Musk’s success story was the very embodiment of right-wing extremism.
The Left is furious that they can’t use his success to their ends anymore.
I don’t agree with every decision Elon has made on X. I’ve talked about many of the problems with X, but let’s be clear: The regime on X before Elon was extraordinarily restrictive. You could be banned on the platform for simply saying a boy was not a girl in 2022.
That’s when Elon began buying Twitter stock; he eventually bought the company outright for $44 billion.
That was his money. And people on the Left were furious at him because they feel any area that has been conquered by the Left, e.g., the legacy media world, must never, ever be relinquished. And if ever it is relinquished, it must be won back.
After Elon bought Twitter, he laid off 50% of Twitter’s workforce and restored President Trump’s account after it had been banned from Twitter in the aftermath of January 6. Elon also spoke up about the radicalism of trans politics and how much he was opposed to it.
He has a pretty high stake in that issue, considering that one of his children, his son, now says that he is Elon’s daughter, and the Left has featured his son in a bunch of fashion ads.
So they hated Elon for his stance. And all of that was exacerbated by Elon’s endorsement of President Trump in July 2024. After the assassination attempt in Butler, Musk formed the America PAC, and he poured roughly $300 million into the Trump campaign. After the election, it was announced that he would head the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE.
Musk left his day job and moved into government to implement reforms that would cut waste, fraud, and abuse. By early 2025, DOGE was implementing mass layoffs and freezes across the federal government, and the Left started calling him the co-president (which, of course, wasn’t true because there’s only one president, and Elon was working for him).
Members of the Deep State — meaning longtime federal workers who are in non-answerable, often unaccountable positions — were very upset because it was possible that DOGE might get them fired. They claimed DOGE was violating privacy by accessing government data, which is what you need to determine whether someone should be fired.
It’s not as though Musk was all the way on board with everything Trump was doing; he didn’t favor the One Big Beautiful Bill. He regularly campaigned against it.
But the rule on the Left is that if you are not openly part of the Left, you are worth hating. If you’re Chris Pratt, you trend every couple of days on Twitter for not being openly part of the Left.
But if you’re Elon Musk and you’re anti-Left, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.
If Elon had voted for Kamala Harris, he would just be another eccentric billionaire. But he voted for Trump, and he took over X, and this means that he is Satan.
It’s not just that Elon took over X; it’s also that the Left claimed a couple of things about X: 1) they claimed it was a free speech space. It was not. 2) They claimed that they had objective metrics by which they banned people, which is also a lie.
That’s just a quick explanation of how Elon Musk went from hero to villain in the mind of the Left.
He’s not the only one. You’ll see it over and over again. As the Left moves even further Left, successful people like Elon Musk are going to get vilified.
It’s malevolent, and it’s stupid. The American Dream is a gift.
And the Left wants to throw it in the trash.
