A vintage photo, 1960s.
My Seattle cousin, Ellen—an educator and an activist—sent me a Guardian article yesterday about the Tesla Take Down Movement. I hadn't read much in the American press about it which, in itself, is interesting even though it's a movement. My heart soars as I write that word, worthy of a different, bold font.
I don't own a Tesla, but I have friends and family members who do own a Tesla. If I could have afforded one way back when, in the era before the American berserk—more later—I would have bought one, and bought stock in the company, too. Indeed, before Elon Musk started channeling apartheid fascism, or exposed his inner apartheid fascism for all to see, he was an a-WOKE environmentally conscious entrepreneur. So, it's sad and dangerous that the a-WOKE life-affirming impulse in him did not stick. He just couldn't control his arm at the Republican convention. Maybe it spasmed.
I think I have written here about a recent trip in a Tesla, if not my first, then one of my first. I was in the back seat of the car marveling at the technology and its intent—a cleaner, safer world. The car is a miracle of engineering. Even though there is a necessary reckoning at the moment, there should be no guilt among those who have purchased this miracle vehicle. After all, the fascist impulse was in hiding. I hope the boycotts and marches continue, though, and the movement builds and builds. Until what? Hard to say.
We are in the midst of a profound sundering, the "indigenous American berserk" as Philip Roth dubbed it in his masterpiece, American Pastoral. I recommend the trilogy—American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain, and the more recent, The Plot Against America, all prescient.
In the meantime I rest easy, without guilt, in the driver's seat of my 2003 nearly vintage Honda lovingly maintained by an honest mechanic in my hood. And though I don't have to make any immediate divestment decisions, I will reflect with enthusiasm on the Take Down Tesla Movement, and write about it.