So, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, this UFO billionaire, decided to afford the Twitter platform for 44 billion dollars. Elon fascinates. He makes many dream of it by his fortune, his accomplishments; the Tesla, the SpaceX flights, the invention of the PayPal payment system, through his fantasies; implant a chip in the brain, by his sometimes extreme words. Above all, I believe, by his insolent freedom. The one that brings an infinite fortune.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
It is precisely this absolutist freedom that he promises to Twitter. A regained freedom, after attempts at regulation imposed on delinquent users. But make no mistake, Musk’s freedom doesn’t automatically trickle down to his ordinary admirers. His total freedom is inaccessible, beyond morality. It makes the crowds dream, and makes Musk a hero tailor-made for these hyper individualistic times.
It’s still amazing, the synchronicity. Musk takes over Twitter when there is the final eulogy of Guy Lafleur, hero too, much more modest, but hero of a people. Hero of an almost country at a time when the group was important. He embodied this young, winning, rebellious Quebec; that of individuals who come together and count. He was an accessible hero, who spoke to ordinary people who adored him. He dreamed big. His death marks the end of an era. After him, hockey players became ultra-liberalism’s disciples on skates.
Musk and Lafleur embody two facets of the dream. Because what are we really dreaming about? What do crowds want? To step out of the ordinary, to rise, literally.
Elon Musk offers just that to billionaires: get laid a few kilometers above the Mojave Desert. Flee vertically from the ordinary.
The ordinary is therefore the backdrop from which the heroes extricate us.
PHOTO ROBERT NADON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Guy Lafleur facing Boston Bruins goaltender Ron Grahame in the Stanley Cup final, May 23, 1978, at the Montreal Forum
But what about this ordinary, which becomes, over time, more and more difficult to manage for a large part of our fellow citizens, neighbors, families, including for members of the so-called middle class? The ordinary becomes out of reach for many. The cost of housing, even rental, even modest, the price of food, especially essential, the price of gasoline, when the car is necessary for daily travel outside major centers, the difficulty of access to health care, dilapidated schools, school dropouts. The pain. The heaviness of life. The ordinary.
We take the economic and cultural inequalities in the face. It is the great return of social classes, which we thought disappeared with the end of ideologies. But no ! Reality has a hard skin, despite the dreams sprinkled everywhere, in every corner of our economic lives. But it is not the return of the CLASS STRUGGLE, because from one caste to another, the ideology is not so different. Poor, impoverished or affluent, we all kinda yearn for what Musk wants for himself and his cocky friends; endless money and the brutal freedom that comes with it. It is the return of social classes, of raw, harsh and cruel reality. The ordinary disintegrates and moves away from the dream, more and more inaccessible.
Guy Lafleur belongs to a time when the social ladder was working. Where, without denying their place of origin, many could aspire to better.
It is the whole of society which, through education, collective progress, its convictions, drew its best elements upwards, which then gave back to the group. The dream was possible.
Today, some of the most broken, the most clueless commune with Musk’s libertarian philosophy at the forefront. His biggest fans, the happiest of the “rediscovered” freedom on Twitter, the admirers of his rockets and his provocations are not only his wealthiest friends. They are ordinary. His insolent, his ostentatious freedom, that which only infinite money and power procures, is beyond anyone’s reach. No one we knew. Is it even desirable? Absolute freedom is no longer freedom, it is the brutal law of the strongest.
The social elevator does not rise very high any more. The system is blocked, the very rich have a lot to do with it. Musk sure, but Bill Gates, the corporate giants buying up farmland and homes in the US in droves, should worry us about the impacts on everyday life. The ordinary is threatened by the super-rich… who make people dream! But when the dream is paralyzing and the heroes unreachable, frustration and resentment can be shoplifted.
Elon Musk claims to release a blue bird for our good. Guy Lafleur gave wings…