The hardest thing for an American to do.
As our future president said last night, I need you to lock in for a moment and consider the hardest thing that you, as an American, can do.
You may not have the ability, but you can support those who do.
Are you ready?
I need you to look at everything Elon Musk has touched with righteous disgust and bring that opprobrium to every exchange you have with your colleagues, neighbors, family and friends. With strangers, even.
I need you to stop buying what he’s selling and get rid of what of his you have bought.
I need you to make people know that supporting him, in the most indirect way, is empowering him to steal money from every one in this country.
Treat Elon Musk like you would any other man, let alone an African American man, who kills for lust.
Because what he is killing is our government – and hundreds of thousands will literally die because he thinks he can get away with it because of the value of the stocks he owns.
Why it will be hard.
About three years ago, I posted to my stories on Instagram that I thought it was funny (read, hypocritical) that I can no longer enjoy Woody Allen movies but everywhere I look is a Tesla.
A kind and smart person, with whom I am friends, DM’ed me that I was being gross: Woody Allen’s children and ex-wife have accused him of sexual abuse and he married one of his foster kids. I answered, too quickly, that we can look forward to reading the memoirs of Elon’s children.
And then I deleted my public post and I apologized to my counterparty. Because I should not have been glib about child abuse.
I made sure I would not commit the same offense again: I chose to shield my friend from my future stories because they put food on their table with a paycheck from a Musk-owned company.
It was not lost on me then, nor should it be unclear to you now, that in our country a crime against one person is horrific – front page news, the song of the year! And a crime against millions is an op-ed, or a footnote.
We are what we eat.
It is said that you’re not supposed to talk about politics or religion in mixed company but of course we know the real taboo in America is talking about money as an instrument of power.
Asking people for money, telling people how much you have.
Unless, of course, you’re the world’s richest man. Or a “boss lady”, “making jefa moves.” Then money is celebrated, its distortive effects denied.
In the USA, poverty is either a sin to be suffered or a curse to be overcome.
Cognitively, you may know that’s not true, but culturally, in the same way that we don’t wipe our asses with our bare hands, we don’t talk about wealth as anything but a blessing.1
Least of all in public.
Until, of course, it’s too late. And the affliction of misery – of being a miser – has spread.
The hardest thing for an American to do is put their money where their mouth is: to consume differently.
I don’t want to be cute. I really mean it.
And in America, we eat wealth – in all its forms, its presence and absence – for breakfast, lunch and dinner.2
As Malcolm X says in the Spike Lee movie: “I grew up thinking ‘Not for Sale’ was a brand.”
As with the scenes of the Klan attempting to drive his family out of town, and the recurring scene of his father being killed for standing up to the Klan, that sentence, “I grew up thinking ‘Not for Sale’ was a brand,” is intended to convey just how much of an outsider Malcolm Little was before becoming Malcolm X, on his way to becoming el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.
Government food. Not store-bought. Not made holy with money.
We will not change the official religion of this country, the God in whom we trust. (Crypto will only re-sanctify this immoral contract, as with all ritual oblations.)
So, instead, I ask that you make pure your commitment to die in a freer country.
And take away from this murderous man, who kills strangers with the stroke of a key, all the stolen power his paper wealth has afforded him.
It’s literally a matter of life and death.
Perhaps, our freedom is costly.
Perhaps, we are willing to pay that price.
And here I must again mention that our Secretary of Defense has bragged that he never washes his hands. Given his record of adultery, you can imagine those days and nights. ↩
I grew up with the strange privilege of being a refugee, an outsider. I have done everything I can – and certainly more than most native sons and daughters – to integrate myself into this country’s rich history (the very one being censored and banned, right now.) And I remember vividly watching “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” as a child, becoming an American. We have become exactly who we always were, no more, no less. ↩