Elon Musk: "I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds"

Musk's and Trump's destructiveness will not outlive their well-earned infamy.

While Elon Musk was tripping on ketamine, ecstasy, shrooms and adderall, as reported by the New York Times, and boasting about having fed USAID into the “woodchipper,” some 300,000 people — two-thirds of them children — are estimated to have died as a result of his summary destruction of the foreign aid agency.

While reportedly spending hours on end playing video games and hate-posting on “X,” including, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead,” U.S. embassy staff in Kenya reported that news of funding cuts to refugee camps’ food programs sparked violent demonstrations, according to Pro Publica. At one, police responded with gunfire, wounding four people. Refugees, moreover, have died at food distribution centers, embassy officials reported, including a pregnant woman who was trampled to death in a stampede. Officials said that they expect more will suffer and die “as vulnerable households become increasingly desperate.” U.S. funding cuts to the World Food Program have “yielded a sharp increase in criminality, sexual violence, and instances of human trafficking,” U.S. diplomats cabled the State Department in April. Nearly 50 percent of the WFP’s budget came from the U.S. in 2024. That is now near zero. WFP is being forced to cut rations from a sustainable 2100 calories per day down to starvation-level 600 calories. Meanwhile, up to 66,000 tons of food assistance valued at $98 million is now rotting in warehouses, reports Reuters.

A former senior USAID health official told the NYT’s Michelle Goldberg that during a trip to Kenya in May, he observed a major increase in the number of patients suffering from advanced HIV infection due the shut-off of U.S.-provided antiretroviral medication.

While Elon Musk was struggling with bladder control due to overconsumption of the powerful anesthetic ketamine for recreational purposes, according to the NYT, U.S. diplomats in the Middle East reported to Washington that slashing American aid “could put U.S. troops in the region at risk,” noting that it could empower terrorist groups like the Taliban and ISIS and lead to a rise in narcotics trafficking and illegal immigration. “We are deeply concerned that suddenly discontinuing all USAID counter terrorism-focused stabilization and humanitarian programs in Somalia will immediately and negatively affect U.S. national security interests,” the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu, cabled in February. The U.S. embassy in Malawi reported that it was closely monitoring for “increased risks to the safety and security of Embassy personnel.”

Musk complained to the conservative podcaster Joe Rogan earlier this year that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Ergo, we mustn’t fuss about 300,000 people perishing because of U.S. aid cuts, with many more on the way. Not to mention the human suffering at home that will result from his mindless demolishing of federal programs, or the pain he has inflicted upon tens of thousands of federal workers he fired overnight, along with their families.

“There is something seriously wrong with his moral compass, if not his perception of reality,” a former friend of Musk wrote to explain why he ended the friendship. “I have been quite amazed at Elon’s evolution, both as a man and as an avatar of chaos,” he added. “Elon has pushed the boundaries of his bad behavior more and more,” wrote another estranged friend.

Then there are the many brazen lies, starting with the apocryphal claim that he has saved the government $160 billion dollars from his DOGE-wreaked destruction — down from the original goal to cut $2 trillion. An analysis by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service finds that Musk’s iconoclasm will actually cost taxpayers $135 billion due to productivity losses, rehiring mistakes, and operational disruptions. Then there were his assertions that Social Security was “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” with countless dead people collecting benefits, that USAID was a “criminal organization,” USAID planned to spend $50 million on condoms for Gaza, FEMA sent $59 million to luxury New York City hotels “to house illegal migrants,” Democrats were encouraging migrants to illegally enter the U.S. in order to get them to vote for their party, Michigan has more voters than residents eligible to vote, and on and on.

Meantime, Musk has shut down government investigations into his business practices simply by firing the officials leading them and gutting their agencies. And he has been steering more government contracts to his companies.

Recent polling shows that just 33 percent of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Musk, down from an already low 41 percent in December.

In a recent essay, I wrote, “Authoritarian regimes attract crackpots, sadists and the mentally ill.” The Trump regime is a prime example. Add Elon Musk to the mix. His many years of drug use has had to have affected his mental state. The Wall Street Journal, after interviewing a number of Musk’s past associates last year, reported, “Elon Musk’s use of drugs — including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine — has made some Tesla and SpaceX leaders worry about potential risk to his companies.” The NYT piece on his drug use echoes these concerns: “Some board members at Tesla, his electric vehicle company, have worried about his use of drugs, including Ambien, a sleep medication.” This has been borne out in Tesla’s cratering revenues (down by $71 billion), SpaceX’s recent triple rocket launch failures and Musk’s net worth declining by $59 billion since he took on the DOGE mission.

And then there’s his messy personal life. Musk is a believer in crackpot theories, one of them being indiscriminate procreation, namely to use his genius sperm to create as many mini-Musks as he can. In his very own Lebensborn program, Musk has sired 14 “known” children with a variety of women. His apparent favorite, a four-year old son he often takes with him on his business rounds, including to the Hill and the Oval Office, is actually named X Æ A-12, whom he affectionately calls, “Little X.” The boy will have to live with that ridiculous name, evoking the embarrassment in Johnny Cash’s hit song, “A Boy Named Sue.”

Musk is a good, though hardly perfect, fit in the Trump administration. As with the president and his bizarre coterie of miscreant senior officials, he lacks empathy, has a galactically sized ego, has no idea how government works and revels in inflicting cruelty on innocents. Bill Gates aptly captures this in describing Musk as “the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children.” Without even a blink of an eye.

Musk is like the weird kid at school whose off-putting, anti-social behavior and total lack of emotional intelligence tagged him as an extreme class nerd, one to steer clear of — though one with distinct talents which have made him the planet’s richest individual. He takes a place next to past such highly eccentric business geniuses as Howard Hughes, John McAfee and Steve Jobs.

In the ancient Indian epic poem Bhagavad Gita the god Krishna reveals his divine nature to the warrior prince, Arjuna:

“Who are you?” asks Arjuna.

“I am Time,” replies Krishna, “powerful destroyer of worlds, grown immense here to annihilate these men.”

The popular appeal of the poem lies in its message of what constitutes righteous action in the face of moral ambiguity and its warnings of the dangers of men who aspire to dominate the world.

The demonic person thinks: “So much wealth do I have today, and I will gain more according to my schemes. So much is mine now, and it will increase in the future, more and more. He is my enemy, and I have killed him; and my other enemy will also be killed. I am the lord of everything, I am the enjoyer, I am perfect, powerful and happy. I am the richest man, surrounded by aristocratic relatives. There is none so powerful and happy as I am. I shall perform sacrifices, I shall give some charity, and thus I shall rejoice.” In this way, such persons are deluded by ignorance.

Elon Musk and his partner in crime Donald Trump, blinded by vast wealth and power and their misguided sense of infallibility, will inevitably find that they are not gods, not the destroyers of worlds, but petty thief-vandals whose destructiveness will not outlive their well-earned infamy.