Despite What People Fervently Believe, People Aren't Paid to Protest Trump and Musk or Give Disney Movies Good Reviews
On the Joe Rogan Experience, the titular dumbass claimed, without proof, that left-wing movements against Donald Trump and Elon Musk do not represent authentic anger against the destruction of our country’s most important institutions.
Rogan insisted that these protests aren’t a grassroots expression of righteous rage toward one of the greatest threats our democracy has ever faced. Rogan accuses them of being faked and funded by mysterious, powerful, and no doubt Jewish forces with deep enough pockets to pay protesters a thousand dollars to pretend to be angry at Donald Trump.
As always, Conservatives grow apoplectic at the idea that the enemy might be doing something in secret that they’re doing publicly and with great delight.
Elon Musk bought Trump the presidency for around a quarter of a billion dollars. He’s intent on getting the highest possible return on his investment.
Trump rewarded him by giving him control over much of the government, with a mandate to destroy anything he dislikes or understands, including social security. Bad news, Grandma! A crazed narcissist wacked out of his mind on ketamine all the time decided that something that senior citizens have relied upon for ninety years to keep them from poverty, homelessness, and despair is a Ponzi scheme that must be stopped. Just like the Woke Mind Virus.
Trump and Musk have gone out of their way to antagonize their enemies. They’re the two most powerful men in the world, one of whom is also the wealthiest. They’ve devoted much of that boundless power and influence to trolling the left.
Musk bought Twitter specifically so that he would have a high-profile forum to rant against the people he despises, like a trans daughter he has described as dead to him, a victim of the dreaded Woke Mind Virus Musk has vowed to destroy.
Musk publicly used a chainsaw as a prop to represent how DOGE is taking a metaphorical chainsaw to institutions we hold dear.
Under Trump and Musk, our government got out of the business of helping people and got into the business of hurting people.
Trump insists that the left is so overcome with rage toward him that it has driven them insane, victims of TDS, or Trump Derangement Syndrome. He’s all about drinking liberal tears.
Trump and Musk take great pleasure and pride in baiting the other side, yet they have a hard time imagining that anyone could object to their extreme actions enough to protest.
It’s inconceivable to the MAGA mob that people protest Trump and Musk because they are legitimately enraged by their actions, so they cling to the pathetic delusion that protestors must be paid handsomely to pretend to find fault with Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
As always, there is an element of projection involved. Musk hands out outsized million-dollar novelty checks to people who help him achieve his ends, like a Fascist Ed McMahon crossed with a society-destroying Carrot Top, yet is enraged at the idea that the Jews/George Soros might be using their money to help achieve their political goals.
Paid protesters exist. Musk and Trump have both used them extensively, but the idea that paid protesters make up a sizable percentage of the movement publicly objecting to Trump and Musk is insane.
Here’s the thing. We don’t need to be paid to work against Donald Trump and Elon Musk. We do not have to be paid to protest the destruction of our government and all we hold dear.
We do that shit for free. We do it because we care about our country and do not want it transformed into a fascist dictatorship where the richest among us conspire to make life as difficult as possible for the most vulnerable and least powerful.
Musk tweeted, “In most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie. It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.”
Musk himself is famously a drug addict and criminal with a severe mental illness. I’m not talking about autism. That’s a condition, not a disease. I’m talking about his sociopathy and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
The wealthiest man in the world, who could play a huge role in ending homelessness worldwide if he wanted to, has zero empathy for people living in the streets. He knows that they’re bad people who do not deserve compassion.
But when a nice dad derived schadenfreude from Musk’s main business struggling, it was an act of emotional violence so extreme Musk could barely wrap his mind around it. Don’t they want him to fix the government by transforming it into Twitter, AKA a broken machine that exists to serve the egos of Donald Trump and Elon Musk? Don’t they want to colonize Mars and Make America Great Again?
On a semi-related note, I am perpetually amused and mildly enraged by the seemingly widespread conviction that powerful movie studios pay critics to give good reviews to their films and negative reviews to their rivals.
People who hate Disney and Marvel for political reasons (a.k.a. being woke) are convinced that the only reason they get good reviews is that studios pay bribes.
People pushing this conspiracy theory hold critics in low regard. They think they’re dishonest, pretentious, narcissistic, and abuse what little power they have.
These critic-haters stubbornly insist that critics don’t matter and have no real effect. Yet, they also see critics as powerful and influential enough for studios to consider them worth bribing.
I’ve been writing about film for twenty-eight years now. I speak from experience when I say studios sometimes curry favor with prominent critics (like when I was head writer at The A.V. Club) by treating them like big shots at junkets or sending sweet promotional items.
The film critics at The A.V. Club each got a George Foreman grill to promote Old School. I’m semi-proud to say I panned it all the same.
Studios and filmmakers obviously want critics to like their output, but the idea that Marvel is paying professional critics to give their movies good reviews is false. It’s not something that exists outside of critic-hater’s fervent imaginations. Also, superhero movies don’t rely on good reviews to make money and generally solid but less-than-transcendent reviews. Just because a racist or misogynist did not like Black Panther or Captain Marvel doesn’t mean that no one did;
The idea that people need to be paid off to protest Elon Musk and Donald Trump or give Disney or Marvel movies good reviews is rooted in arrogance.
These paranoid conspiracy theorists can’t bear the idea that other people have different opinions than them and that those opinions might be valid. So they act as if the only reason critics and protestors behave in ways that they don’t understand is that they get a fat envelope full of cash to pretend that Elon Musk is somehow a destructive force and that movies like Captain Marvel and Black Panther are good when haters know that they are objectively bad. The only reason they act otherwise is because of bribery and woke.
In conclusion, people aren’t being paid to protest Elon Musk and Donald Trump. We do that shit for free. Hell, this website would probably be markedly more successful if I didn’t write about Trump and Musk so often. But I do so because of my fierce political convictions and concern for a country that seems to be devolving into madness.
Disney and Marvel aren’t paying off critics to give their movies good reviews. This will sound crazy, but movie reviews almost invariably reflect the critic’s authentic feelings about a film. They’re imperfect and not powerful or influential but they are generally honest, and in this fucked up world, that counts for an awful lot.
You can pre-order The Fractured Mirror here: https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan didn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
Did you enjoy this article? Then consider becoming a patron here.