Stephen Fry released a statement: "Elon Musk is not a Nazi. Nazis make really good cars."
What's great about this, and Stephen Fry is brilliant, is not that he's absolving Musk, or that he's criticizing Tesla, but that it is an argument likely leading to Elon Musk protesting,
'No, my cars are good enough that I can be a Nazi!'
Exactly this. My grandmother lived under the Nazis and she said they were fucking idiots. Exactly the same type of incompetent blowhards. The whole hyper scientific ubermensch BS in the cultural zeitgeist is so frustrating.
I blame all the WWII video games and movies that played up the myth to have more interesting villains than the sleazy shit stains that they actually were.
At no point did they "nearly win" against the world. In World War 1 they made desperate attempts to break out of trench warfare because the blockade was obliterating their wartime economy. In World War 2 they were cooked the second they invaded the USSR and the USA landed in the UK. Those were unwinnable areas for them. Even if they eventually managed to wear down the British, the Americans were right behind them manufacturing 100 tanks a day and 15 Aircraft Carriers in 1943 alone. Which means all of those tanks are getting to the European theater.
And once the USSR got it's production under way the Germans were on the defensive all the way back to Berlin.
Um it did not take the entire world, for a lot of their early success most of the fighting was against countries that were unprepared and devastated after ww1.
Small country? They were a highly industrialized, highly educated and still quite materially wealthy colonial power going into the wars. They didn't need to be competent. Enough people went along with them and there was plenty of residual wealth to burn on the war machine.
You don't need to be an architect to burn down a building.
I would describe Elon Musk as an autistic adult whose weird behavior patterns and way too much money are dangerous in a system that gives money way too much power.
edit: just to be clear to the angry arrow smashers, I'm not offering excuses, rationalizations or support for Elon Musk, just a purely clinical view of his behavior, and why it's so dangerous that our system gives so much power to money. Without the influence his billions give him he would be just another annoying weird guy. Some people would probably even feel some sympathy for him if it didn't carry the risk of being called Evil.