Mars is for Martians

Elon Musk has been receiving a great deal of criticism about the public arguments he's been having with the children from his first two relationships and responded by showing up for press conferences with the children of his most recent relationship on his lap.

I've known people who were on one side or the other of "replacement families," and pitting these kids against each other like that is just evil, but then I'm pretty sure rejecting your own children because of their sexuality and then blaming it on the "woke education" you provided for them is pretty evil too.

The entire time, he posts graphics on Twitter about how the only way to save the white race is to increase the white birthrate. Why that doesn't get more press is beyond me. He calls it "Demographic Winter," but it really is just white people. Brown and Black races seem to be reproducing just fine. The world’s center for population growth right now is India. India doesn’t really fit into his equation. Most of the Indians I’ve met were smarter than Elon Musk and better human beings.

It's been my experience with people from South Africa that they're either brilliant people, acutely aware of all the subtleties of the human condition, or they were just really terrible people. It’s a complicated, complicated place. When Apartheid was the center of the news cycle when I was a young man, I responded by learning as much as I could about what South Africa was like before Europeans. This is why I know so much about Shaka Zulu and his famous weapons, the iklwa and the assegai.

Shaka Zulu was born in Melmoth, South Africa, in 1787. Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. One is often called the greatest African of all time. The other is often called a European asshole. South Africa is one of the few places on earth where people from Mississippi can say, “Man, those guys have some terrible problems.” Ironically, they’re some of the same problems. People who study Shaka Zulu call him a Spartan King. People who study Elon Musk call him a successful nerd. Which would you rather be?

They say he's a genius. Sometimes, economists are among the smartest people in the room. Sometimes, they're just good at numbers. Musk has been very successful at understanding trends in internet usage and government spending. I always thought it was funny that the guy who made most of his money exploiting government contracts and government regulations will soon be in charge of waste in government spending.

That's either gonna work out really well because he uses his knowledge of exploiting government spending to control it, or it's gonna work out really horribly by making it easier for people like him to exploit government spending.

I'm not one of these people who is against government spending. A poor state like Mississippi couldn't function without government spending. A lot of people don't seem to understand that the Mississippi River Bridges, the levees in the Delta, and the Stennis Space Center are all the products of socialism in action. Socialism isn't all government cheese and workfare; it's roads and bridges and rocket ships, too.

Rocketships bring back another issue. Musk wants to Terraform Mars. Lots of people have talked about this through the years. I've had conversations about "The Martian Chronicles" with the guy who wrote it. Neil Degrasse Tyson said that "Mars belongs to the Martians, even if they're just microbes." Bradbury wasn't alive when he said that, but if you've read "The Martian Chronicles," he would probably agree with that sentiment.

Some people say they hate how my essays meander from one point to the other, trying to weave an argument that’s not clear, even by the end of it. Some people say they love it. I can’t really make excuses. I have ADHD. This is how my brain works.

Interplanetary travel and colonization are complicated. Government spending is complicated. Families and being a father are perhaps the most complicated. Sometimes, I say a little prayer for the children of Elon Musk. I say a little prayer for all the children who lost their father because they weren’t heterosexual enough. I say a little prayer for all the educators who get attacked for spreading the “woke virus” when all they’re trying to do is teach history or language.

I think we should go to Mars. I think we’re going to Mars, no matter what I think. I have doubts about the colonization of Mars, though. I’ve had them for a lot longer than I’ve known who Elon Musk was. The colonization and whiteification of South Africa didn’t turn out so great. I learned to have these concerns about Mars from a little man with coke-bottle glasses who had a model of Godzilla next to his IBM Wheelwriter Selectric typewriter.