'According to a new CNN/SSRS poll released [on March 12], about 53% of Americans said they have an “unfavorable opinion” of [Musk], compared with 35% who have a positive view and 9% offering no opinion (and 2% saying they have “never heard” of Musk).
By comparison, Trump’s overall favorability rating was 45% and his unfavorability rating was 52%, according to the poll, which was in line with Trump’s highest ratings for his first term in office. Meanwhile, about Vice President JD Vance, 44% of Americans polled have an unfavorable opinion, 33% rated him favorably and 23% had no opinion. The poll was conducted March 6-9.'
I'm not sure if he's more hated than Vance, but he's definitely more hated than Koch right now. I thinks the Kochs have sort of faded into the background of political discussion, especially after David Koch died.
This isn’t hard. The Kochs helped pave the way to Trump. As far as demonology goes, he’s Lucifer’s herald.
I just learned last week that Pol Pot of all people was famously extremely kind in person. Koch doesn’t have to be personally mean to be evil.
To be clear, I’m not arguing against the existence of right wing billionaires. I’d genuinely prefer if they used their political activism to get more useful things done — for instance, if the Kochs had dedicated their efforts to abolishing zoning, I’d regard them at least as more complicated figures than mere heralds of Lucifer. But by that same token, I’d ALSO prefer that left wing billionaires do helpful things, like defunding the toxic activist ecosystem they created, and working with the right-wing billionaires on abolishing zoning.
Either way though, I consider the Kochs evil because of things they actually did or failed to do, not because of some wider demonology.
Just to build on my reply: In a very real sense, TRUMP continued THEIR war against the establishment. THEY funded the Tea Party that mobilized the birther myth, after all.
The astroturf and propaganda networks that they built for the Tea Party were the same ones that Trump piggybacked on in his early birther years (2008-2012). Without them driving that, he probably never establishes a foothold in the GOP base, such that Romney never comes to “kiss the ring” at Trump Tower.
It's really not complicated. Leftist politics is correct, righteous and obviously so, so anyone standing in the way of cosmic justice is a monster, regardless of their purported justification.
It's a bit like the Rogue's Gallery in a superhero movie. Obviously Batman is the hero, so the baddies are ranked by how likely they are to beat him, not by the plausibility of their motivations, or the differences in their plans for Gotham. We know Riddler is the baddie because of the mood music that plays when he comes onscreen, we don't seriously entertain what he has to say.
One major reason people like Trump is that he’s funny! He doesn’t seem like he has a stick up his butt. While he is uniquely devoid of both morals and cognitive competence, he seems like he’d be fun to get a beer with.
In starkest contrast, whatever you think about Trump’s ideas, he is obviously an absolute pig of a human being. To paraphrase Tolkien’s Treebeard, “There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men” to describe how loathsome the man is. The way he talks! The way he treats people! If a family of staunch Trump supporters contained a person who acted like Trump, he wouldn’t even be allowed to come to Thanksgiving.
I think you’re missing the main factor here. The Koch brothers gave so much money to congressional republicans in elections, they probably single-handedly reduced democrats’ share of seats in congress many times. And that money came from the fossil fuel industry. That’s enough to justify the hatred they received, without ideology or other donations entering the picture at all.
So what is the principal sin in your view: investing in the fossil fuel industry or donating the proceeds to Republican candidates? As you say that ideology doesn't enter into it, are we to believe you'd hate them just as much if they'd donated the money in ways more to your liking?
Depends on which democrat you ask. It was reasonable for democrats across the board to view them as a powerful political enemy. But probably some proportion of environmentalist democrats hate them even more for the fossil fuel industry and climate change denying angle.
If, as Bryan Caplan says, Koch has publicly accepted the consensus that the planet is warming and has funded research confirming it I don't see how anyone can fairly accuse him of climate-change denial, let alone hating him for same.
Very few people deny the climate is warming. Most so-called climate skeptics deny the human contribution is significant and that the degree or two of warming by 2100 is worth spending any amount of money trying to prevent or rollback.
I don't know why this is worth even writing about. This is just human nature. The right is no different. I recall distinctly when Clinton was hounded by the right for ethical, moral, and character issues, and yet on Trump utter crickets. Chinese people can't stand what the Japanese did to their nation yet love Mao. And on and on and on
I'm light on the details, but I had a Stanford professor who disapproved of some of the land deals the Koch brothers had finagled. If I recall correctly, he claimed the Koch brothers dealt dishonestly with some American Indians to get rights to their land.
Your work has always been consequential. This article is the least consequential that I have seen in a long time. Do you really need to call Trump a Pig to appease some in your reader base! Or you may believe this, but is it necessary when making your case. The beauty of Trump is his unpredictability and chaos mixed in with an intellect that relies on "action" through plurality of paths as form a change not "precaution", a dialectical method the left are obsessed with forcing upon the world, that has no natural course of change.
Demonology is just "projection" from the left. Now that would have been much more consequential contribution!
Trump’s proposal of a “Gold Card” visa lets the very rich buy their way into the U.S. for a flat fee of \$5 million. In our alternative plan, instead of paying an upfront fee, every legal immigrant must pay a total of \$5 million in taxes over a 40‑year career. Today, immigrants on average pay about \$500,000 in lifetime taxes. The idea is to raise that number by using a progressive tax system.
Under this system, the tax increase is customized according to earnings. For example, a poor immigrant might come from a country where he earns about \$8,000 a year. When he moves to the U.S., he could earn around \$30,000 a year. Currently, his taxes might total about \$75,000 over his life. With our new plan, we adjust the tax multiplier for low earners so that his lifetime tax grows to roughly \$280,000. That means he would pay about \$7,000 a year and still keep roughly \$23,000 per year after taxes. In contrast, a high‐income immigrant—one who might earn around \$1,000,000 a year and currently pays about \$2,500,000 in lifetime taxes—would be required to pay far more by applying a much higher multiplier. In this way, overall the average immigrant ends up paying \$5 million in lifetime taxes, but the burden is much lighter on the poor and much heavier on the rich.
Additionally, in this system legal immigrants do not have the right to vote. Furthermore, if an immigrant lives a life of crime, they would face deportation. By setting these clear fiscal and behavioral requirements as the only way to enter, the U.S. effectively blocks illegal immigration.
It’s odd but I think the left doesn’t actually recognize the difference between those two. They actually believe that any right of center ideas as so toxic that they might as well be outright lies. So they don’t distinguish those two things. And that’s a part of why our politics is so terrible.
I suspect Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" #13 has a lot to do with it: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." The Kochs were "picked, frozen, personalized, and polarized" long ago. Once done, it's difficult to undo.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Musk once. I expect he's more hated than Vance.
Not more than Vance. Maybe they are hated equally?
'According to a new CNN/SSRS poll released [on March 12], about 53% of Americans said they have an “unfavorable opinion” of [Musk], compared with 35% who have a positive view and 9% offering no opinion (and 2% saying they have “never heard” of Musk).
By comparison, Trump’s overall favorability rating was 45% and his unfavorability rating was 52%, according to the poll, which was in line with Trump’s highest ratings for his first term in office. Meanwhile, about Vice President JD Vance, 44% of Americans polled have an unfavorable opinion, 33% rated him favorably and 23% had no opinion. The poll was conducted March 6-9.'
I'm not sure if he's more hated than Vance, but he's definitely more hated than Koch right now. I thinks the Kochs have sort of faded into the background of political discussion, especially after David Koch died.
This isn’t hard. The Kochs helped pave the way to Trump. As far as demonology goes, he’s Lucifer’s herald.
I just learned last week that Pol Pot of all people was famously extremely kind in person. Koch doesn’t have to be personally mean to be evil.
To be clear, I’m not arguing against the existence of right wing billionaires. I’d genuinely prefer if they used their political activism to get more useful things done — for instance, if the Kochs had dedicated their efforts to abolishing zoning, I’d regard them at least as more complicated figures than mere heralds of Lucifer. But by that same token, I’d ALSO prefer that left wing billionaires do helpful things, like defunding the toxic activist ecosystem they created, and working with the right-wing billionaires on abolishing zoning.
Either way though, I consider the Kochs evil because of things they actually did or failed to do, not because of some wider demonology.
>The Kochs helped pave the way to Trump.
How specifically? I think of them as part of the GOP establishment which Trump went to war with.
Just to build on my reply: In a very real sense, TRUMP continued THEIR war against the establishment. THEY funded the Tea Party that mobilized the birther myth, after all.
The astroturf and propaganda networks that they built for the Tea Party were the same ones that Trump piggybacked on in his early birther years (2008-2012). Without them driving that, he probably never establishes a foothold in the GOP base, such that Romney never comes to “kiss the ring” at Trump Tower.
It's really not complicated. Leftist politics is correct, righteous and obviously so, so anyone standing in the way of cosmic justice is a monster, regardless of their purported justification.
It's a bit like the Rogue's Gallery in a superhero movie. Obviously Batman is the hero, so the baddies are ranked by how likely they are to beat him, not by the plausibility of their motivations, or the differences in their plans for Gotham. We know Riddler is the baddie because of the mood music that plays when he comes onscreen, we don't seriously entertain what he has to say.
Ok but how much did he pay you to write this?
An insult lacking substance. I thought this crowd was smarter than this.
Joke
Hard to do sarcasm in print. Ask me how I know.
One major reason people like Trump is that he’s funny! He doesn’t seem like he has a stick up his butt. While he is uniquely devoid of both morals and cognitive competence, he seems like he’d be fun to get a beer with.
In starkest contrast, whatever you think about Trump’s ideas, he is obviously an absolute pig of a human being. To paraphrase Tolkien’s Treebeard, “There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men” to describe how loathsome the man is. The way he talks! The way he treats people! If a family of staunch Trump supporters contained a person who acted like Trump, he wouldn’t even be allowed to come to Thanksgiving.
Reading those back to back is funny
I think you’re missing the main factor here. The Koch brothers gave so much money to congressional republicans in elections, they probably single-handedly reduced democrats’ share of seats in congress many times. And that money came from the fossil fuel industry. That’s enough to justify the hatred they received, without ideology or other donations entering the picture at all.
So what is the principal sin in your view: investing in the fossil fuel industry or donating the proceeds to Republican candidates? As you say that ideology doesn't enter into it, are we to believe you'd hate them just as much if they'd donated the money in ways more to your liking?
Depends on which democrat you ask. It was reasonable for democrats across the board to view them as a powerful political enemy. But probably some proportion of environmentalist democrats hate them even more for the fossil fuel industry and climate change denying angle.
If, as Bryan Caplan says, Koch has publicly accepted the consensus that the planet is warming and has funded research confirming it I don't see how anyone can fairly accuse him of climate-change denial, let alone hating him for same.
Very few people deny the climate is warming. Most so-called climate skeptics deny the human contribution is significant and that the degree or two of warming by 2100 is worth spending any amount of money trying to prevent or rollback.
He wrote a book apologizing for his part in getting Trump elected.
I don't know why this is worth even writing about. This is just human nature. The right is no different. I recall distinctly when Clinton was hounded by the right for ethical, moral, and character issues, and yet on Trump utter crickets. Chinese people can't stand what the Japanese did to their nation yet love Mao. And on and on and on
Advocating for markets wipes out any other good you do in the minds of the left, because to quote a certain economist "the left is anti-market"
There are a lot of Trump supporters who demonize the Kochs just for not supporting Trump. TDS affects both right and left.
Great post and picture. I agree wholeheartedly
I'm light on the details, but I had a Stanford professor who disapproved of some of the land deals the Koch brothers had finagled. If I recall correctly, he claimed the Koch brothers dealt dishonestly with some American Indians to get rights to their land.
Your work has always been consequential. This article is the least consequential that I have seen in a long time. Do you really need to call Trump a Pig to appease some in your reader base! Or you may believe this, but is it necessary when making your case. The beauty of Trump is his unpredictability and chaos mixed in with an intellect that relies on "action" through plurality of paths as form a change not "precaution", a dialectical method the left are obsessed with forcing upon the world, that has no natural course of change.
Demonology is just "projection" from the left. Now that would have been much more consequential contribution!
Trump’s proposal of a “Gold Card” visa lets the very rich buy their way into the U.S. for a flat fee of \$5 million. In our alternative plan, instead of paying an upfront fee, every legal immigrant must pay a total of \$5 million in taxes over a 40‑year career. Today, immigrants on average pay about \$500,000 in lifetime taxes. The idea is to raise that number by using a progressive tax system.
Under this system, the tax increase is customized according to earnings. For example, a poor immigrant might come from a country where he earns about \$8,000 a year. When he moves to the U.S., he could earn around \$30,000 a year. Currently, his taxes might total about \$75,000 over his life. With our new plan, we adjust the tax multiplier for low earners so that his lifetime tax grows to roughly \$280,000. That means he would pay about \$7,000 a year and still keep roughly \$23,000 per year after taxes. In contrast, a high‐income immigrant—one who might earn around \$1,000,000 a year and currently pays about \$2,500,000 in lifetime taxes—would be required to pay far more by applying a much higher multiplier. In this way, overall the average immigrant ends up paying \$5 million in lifetime taxes, but the burden is much lighter on the poor and much heavier on the rich.
Additionally, in this system legal immigrants do not have the right to vote. Furthermore, if an immigrant lives a life of crime, they would face deportation. By setting these clear fiscal and behavioral requirements as the only way to enter, the U.S. effectively blocks illegal immigration.
It’s odd but I think the left doesn’t actually recognize the difference between those two. They actually believe that any right of center ideas as so toxic that they might as well be outright lies. So they don’t distinguish those two things. And that’s a part of why our politics is so terrible.
I suspect Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" #13 has a lot to do with it: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." The Kochs were "picked, frozen, personalized, and polarized" long ago. Once done, it's difficult to undo.