Vigilantism is on the rise in America. Like you, I don't condone this, but we should probably try to analyze and understand why the phenomenon is occurring. This is a flashing warning about how unhealthy our economy and society has become. For anyone who remembers history (which is apparently no one in 2025, lol), the Gilded Age was characterized by not only massive wealth inequality, but also a lot of political violence.
In a world where the assassin Luigi Mangione is being cheered on as a folk hero and far-right "pedophile hunters" are assaulting people in their homes, Musk et al should be glad that the protests against his wanton destruction are only property crimes.
I'll say maybe don't burn the things. I am an environmentalist, after all. But relentless mockery has its upsides as well. Make the damn things so uncool that people continue to not buy them (as is happening now), but at an ever-accelerating pace.
This kind of reaction is a trauma response—an expected, even anticipated outcome of living under an accelerating collapse state with no functional recourse. It’s also useful to those in power. These bursts of desperate resistance feed energy back into the system they oppose. They become spectacle. They reinforce the paradigms being used against people. The pain gets weaponized. Hurt people hurt people—and the system counts on that.
The better frame is this: Elon Musk and the current cartel of American oligarchs are not an anomaly, they’re the continuation of a long pattern—an evolved strain of the Gilded Age’s Robber Barons. The core issue isn’t new wealth or tech eccentricity, it’s that the last generation of extractive elites was never dismantled. This is what happens when monopolists are allowed to consolidate unchecked: they start reshaping reality itself.
There are systems—legal, economic, diplomatic—designed to counter this kind of transnational harm. Sanctions against oligarchs aren’t just for post-Soviet states. They can and should be applied to the executives, investors, and enablers who sustain extractive systems from within the U.S. as well. Media figures, political operators, financial institutions—they’re not exempt just because the flag is familiar.
The International Criminal Court should already be preparing frameworks for future prosecution. It must also offer whistleblower protections to U.S. citizens who want to expose systemic crimes. Because the state itself isn’t going to protect them. It can’t. It’s too compromised.
The truth is that this kind of state failure is so far outside the Overton window that individuals and communities default to the few available modes of reaction—trauma loops, symbolic destruction, emotional rebellion. But that doesn’t make them wrong. It makes the system illegible and the resistance predictable. And both of those conditions serve the empire.
I don’t care. It’s not my problem. It’s Elmo’s problem. If Elmo wishes my assistance with his problem, I’m for hire at reasonable rates. Otherwise, not my problem.
Vigilantism is on the rise in America. Like you, I don't condone this, but we should probably try to analyze and understand why the phenomenon is occurring. This is a flashing warning about how unhealthy our economy and society has become. For anyone who remembers history (which is apparently no one in 2025, lol), the Gilded Age was characterized by not only massive wealth inequality, but also a lot of political violence.
In a world where the assassin Luigi Mangione is being cheered on as a folk hero and far-right "pedophile hunters" are assaulting people in their homes, Musk et al should be glad that the protests against his wanton destruction are only property crimes.
I'll say maybe don't burn the things. I am an environmentalist, after all. But relentless mockery has its upsides as well. Make the damn things so uncool that people continue to not buy them (as is happening now), but at an ever-accelerating pace.
If they don't want people smashing their things, they'll be begging for it when they start smashing their faces instead.
Keep it up: it's working.
This kind of reaction is a trauma response—an expected, even anticipated outcome of living under an accelerating collapse state with no functional recourse. It’s also useful to those in power. These bursts of desperate resistance feed energy back into the system they oppose. They become spectacle. They reinforce the paradigms being used against people. The pain gets weaponized. Hurt people hurt people—and the system counts on that.
The better frame is this: Elon Musk and the current cartel of American oligarchs are not an anomaly, they’re the continuation of a long pattern—an evolved strain of the Gilded Age’s Robber Barons. The core issue isn’t new wealth or tech eccentricity, it’s that the last generation of extractive elites was never dismantled. This is what happens when monopolists are allowed to consolidate unchecked: they start reshaping reality itself.
There are systems—legal, economic, diplomatic—designed to counter this kind of transnational harm. Sanctions against oligarchs aren’t just for post-Soviet states. They can and should be applied to the executives, investors, and enablers who sustain extractive systems from within the U.S. as well. Media figures, political operators, financial institutions—they’re not exempt just because the flag is familiar.
The International Criminal Court should already be preparing frameworks for future prosecution. It must also offer whistleblower protections to U.S. citizens who want to expose systemic crimes. Because the state itself isn’t going to protect them. It can’t. It’s too compromised.
The truth is that this kind of state failure is so far outside the Overton window that individuals and communities default to the few available modes of reaction—trauma loops, symbolic destruction, emotional rebellion. But that doesn’t make them wrong. It makes the system illegible and the resistance predictable. And both of those conditions serve the empire.
I don’t care. It’s not my problem. It’s Elmo’s problem. If Elmo wishes my assistance with his problem, I’m for hire at reasonable rates. Otherwise, not my problem.