Because I Have Eyes
Why Elon’s Nazi salute can’t be ignored and can’t be argued away.
It’s simple. There are times when an argument has two sides. There are times when an argument has multiple viewpoints. But sometimes, a thing happens that is so blatantly obvious, so immune to spin that and any appeal to “both sides” is just … well, embarrassing. Sometimes, the other guy is simply wrong, and it’s ok if we don’t listen to him. And if he keeps it up, it’s even OK if we mock him for attempting to convince us of something based on what we know is a lie.
Enter Elon Musk, and his now infamous Nazi salute. Conservative pundits have been arguing for weeks now that it wasn’t what we saw. I mean, just imagine that; imagine the sheer arrogance it takes to tell thinking Americans that the thing we all clearly saw never happened. It would be nonsensical if it weren’t for the dominance of right-wing media, the willingness of right-wing pundits to sell us all out for fame and wealth, and the mountain of cash our oligarchs are willing to pay to make sure we remain a divided nation that cannot rule itself.
And I get it. I get why my neighbors are willing to argue that it was actually something other than what we saw. Our information chain is in worse shape than the supply chain was during the pandemic. We can’t get what we need, so we take whatever we can get, and that means right-wing, corporate controlled, propagandist media. It’s just about the only thing that still exists.
Even our legacy media is bending the knee, softening the headlines and legitimizing the lies just to keep people viewing and reading. After all, standing up for America might be a good thing, but it’s not what gets clicks and views, and clicks and views are all that matters. Legacy media, after all, is a business first, and everything else a distant second.
But lies, even well-funded ones, have limits. And no matter how much money our wealth class spends, there are some lies that simply never become true. January 6 will never be anything but a terrorist attack. Billionaires will never be anything but an immoral drain on the rest of us. And no matter what the right-wing machine tells us, and no matter how much they pay podcasters and social media types to tell us Elon didn’t throw out a nazi salute, he did. How do I know this?
Because I have eyes.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days fighting for working families as the Executive Producer of The Rick Smith Show, and his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.
They do the Nazi salute, wear the swastika, sane-wash Hitler, and the media still treats it like its a mystery yet to be unraveled. We are screwed.
I’ve taught blind people for years and, with or without eyes, this is so clearly an assault on our democratic oath and the beauty that we profess as American values. This is a brutal attempt to destroy us from within. It may be an ugly fight, but in no way will we give up our hopes and dreams of living together peacefully, despite small differences in policy, from democracy to autocracy.