ELON MUSK AND Benjamin Netanyahu have one striking thing in common: they are nothing like as bright as they think they are. Although they operate in quite separate worlds, they share a wildly exaggerated sense of self-worth that stems largely from the same delusion, namely that having the most advanced technology at their disposal equates to significant brainpower or even basic intelligence.
It takes exceptional talents of a specific kind to build up successful companies, as Musk has done, with SpaceX and Tesla. It likewise takes particular abilities to build up – like Netanyahu – the largest war machine in the Middle East. However, being successful at business or good at waging war are no guarantee whatever, as the world can plainly see, of wisdom or real intelligence.
No doubt many very wealthy people are also wise. However, to imagine that the accumulation of banknotes is always a measure of brainpower is one of the great follies of humankind. Similarly, history has known some military geniuses, but to believe that weaponry and wisdom necessarily go hand in hand would be the height of idiocy.
Musk has long been spreading his manifest foolishness far and wide. Most notably, he has recently been giving unquestioning support to former President Trump, including via a cringemaking, infantile appearance at a Trump election rally.
He supports Trump’s campaign to undermine American democracy and to bring mayhem and madness back to the White House. Increasingly, Musk blunders around US politics, as well as the complex world of international relations, like a particularly clumsy bull in a china shop. He sprinkles his personal brand of superficiality on anything that takes his fancy, without a trace of insight or understanding.
Not content with his already vast public outreach, he bought Twitter — renaming it X – in order to diffuse his incoherent ramblings even further into the public domain. Since Musk took over X, it has deteriorated rapidly as a platform for rational objective debate. It is increasingly difficult on X to avoid being confronted by Musk’s slapdash musings, manipulated by deliberate algorithm to the top of the feed.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Musk’s world view is how trite and childish it is. He no doubt sees himself as some sort of genius, aiming to become the world’s first trillionaire, but he has no more real intelligence than a farcically pompous twelve-year-old — ill-informed, incoherent and struggling to get attention.
Netanyahu is an altogether different type of narcissist, but he shares Musk’s preening sense of self-importance and his utter lack of self-awareness. The Israeli Prime Minister does indeed have the military hardware, backed as he is by the United States, to rain down death and destruction on Palestine and Lebanon — both on Israel’s enemies and on innocent civilians alike, the latter being indiscriminately killed in vastly greater numbers.
He also has the technology available to him to blow up pagers and walkie-talkies, killing and maiming the innocent along with Israel’s foes. All of that requires cleverness and technological know-how. However, it requires nothing that could be regarded as real intelligence, as the world understands it. On the contrary, Netanyahu’s most conspicuous characteristic in recent months has been utter foolishness.
If he were truly intelligent, Netanyahu would realise that in the long run Israel will have to live at peace with its neighbours. He would understand that the systematic humiliation of the Palestinian people and the injustices inflicted on them, in particular the ongoing illegal seizure of their land, will inevitably breed more anger and future violence. If he were truly wise, he would appreciate that Israel’s hard-won reputation, for decency rather than for military prowess, is increasingly damaged and will be difficult to restore.
He would understand that targeted Israeli attacks on UN peacekeepers will contribute further to Israel’s isolation. He would listen to his many fellow Israelis who insist that his own political survival is less important than the release of the appallingly brutalised Israeli hostages. He would realise, from the tragic history of his own people, that treating the lives of other people as of lesser value, is a betrayal of Israel’s raison d’être.
But instead of reflecting on that, he doubles down on the temporary comfort of Israel’s superior firepower and on his articulate hard-faced spokespersons who will happily insist that black is white. The claim that the IDF is “the most moral army in the world” is self-evident nonsense.
The world is threatened by these two colossal egos and their manifest lack of basic or emotional intelligence. Netanyahu seems determined to ignore every call, even from his only significant ally, to avoid provoking a wider Middle East conflict. He seeks every opportunity to stir up confrontation in order to draw a reluctant Biden administration, its hands tied in this US election year, into a wider war it has been seeking desperately to avoid. In Netanyahu’s blinkered world, Israel is the innocent victim of everything that happens.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the other man-child, Elon Musk, continues his relentless banal support for Trump. Nothing apparently is too dumb for the world’s great technological wizard. He has been asserting repeatedly that, if Trump is not elected, this will be the last US election, and that far from being a threat to democracy, Trump is the only way to save it. Insisting thus that the direct opposite of the truth is actually true is disturbingly Orwellian, but it also demonstrates exceptionally mediocre intelligence. Even a pompous 12-year-old should be embarrassed by such drivel.
Bobby McDonagh is a former Irish Ambassador to the EU, UK and Italy. He is an executive coach and commentator on subjects around EU and Brexit.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say