Elon Musk is fuming. His social media empire, X, has become a digital Colosseum where the loudest, most uninformed gladiators proudly parade their ignorance, armed with iPhones and a generous helping of outrage. The latest trigger? The unceremonious dumping of Senator Jacinta Price from the Shadow Ministry, followed by a cacophony of demands from her far-right fanbase that she be catapulted straight to Leader of the Opposition – and, why not, Prime Minister while we’re at it.
“It’s a circus out there, Roswell,” Musk muttered to me at last night’s Tesla shareholders meeting, sipping a kombucha that probably cost more than my mortgage. “X is swarming with folks who think tweeting #JacintaForPM is a personality trait. I’m all for free speech, but I’m also a stickler for rules – call it my inner Martian bureaucrat. And the rules are crystal clear: a senator can’t be Leader of the Opposition, let alone Prime Minister, unless they swap the Senate’s red leather for the House’s green chaos. It’s not rocket science. Well, maybe it is for some of these people.”
Musk’s solution? A stroke of galaxy-brained genius: X University. Yes, you read that right. In response to the tidal wave of posts demanding Senator Jacinta Price’s coronation as Australia’s next PM, X University has launched a free online course titled Civics 101: How Australia Actually Works. It’s Musk’s attempt to save democracy – or at least stop people from embarrassing themselves on his platform.
X University’s Crash Course: Saving Democracy, One Confused Tweeter at a Time
The course, dubbed “a lifeboat for the politically clueless,” aims to teach X’s most outraged users the basics of Australia’s political system. Spoiler alert: a senator can’t lead the opposition or become prime minister without first parachuting into the House of Representatives. Who knew? Apparently not the 47,000 accounts behind #JacintaForPM.
“We saw #JacintaForPM trending for the 83rd time this week and realised we had a national emergency on our hands,” said X University’s inaugural Dean of Reality, Professor Alison Factcheck, who moonlights as a myth-buster on X when she’s not grading virtual papers. “A lot of Aussies seem to think Parliament is like Australian Idol – get enough likes on X, and boom, you’re running the country. We’re here to gently, lovingly, whack them over the head with a constitution.”
The ten-part course is a masterclass in political basics, with a side of snark. Highlights include:
- Week 1: Senators vs. MPs: No, They’re Not Interchangeable Action Figures
- Week 2: Prime Ministers: Not Grown in the Senate’s Organic Veggie Patch
- Week 3: Opposition Leaders: Chosen by MPs, Not Your Mate Dave on Talkback Radio
- Week 5: Why Screaming ‘Jacinta for PM!’ on X Won’t Rewrite the Constitution
- Week 8: The Governor-General: Not Your Personal Complaints Department
The final exam? Correctly identify which chamber politicians sit in and resist posting “Jacinta for PM!” for a full 24 hours. Pass, and you’ll earn a digital badge: “I Survived Civics 101 – and Democracy Might, Too.” Fail, and you’re doomed to retweet Sky After Dark clips into eternity.
The Backlash: “Elitist” or “Woke Tyranny”?
The reaction has been predictably chaotic. Right-wing commentators have branded the course “elitist” and “insultingly woke,” arguing that “the will of the X masses should trump dusty constitutional nonsense.” One Sky After Dark host, sweating through his third monologue of the night, claimed it’s a “deep-state plot to silence Aussies who just want a PM who vibes with their TV rants.”
Meanwhile, X University reports a staggering 50,000 enrolments in the first hour – though half seem to be bots, and the other half are just there to spam the welcome video with crying emojis. “It’s a start,” Professor Factcheck sighed, adjusting her glasses. “If we can convince even one person that Parliament has two chambers, not a suggestion box, I’ll call it a win. Baby steps, you know?”
Enrolment is free, but students are warned they’ll need to survive ten whole minutes away from their X feed – a requirement some have already called “oppressive” and “a violation of human rights.” One user posted, “Forcing me to learn about the Senate is literally communism. #JacintaForPM.”
A Flicker of Hope?
Despite the outrage, Professor Factcheck remains optimistic. “We’re not just teaching civics; we’re teaching people how to argue without sounding like they flunked Year 9 social studies. If we can save one soul from posting ‘Jacinta for PM!’ without checking the rulebook, democracy might just survive.”
As for Musk, he’s already planning Civics 102: Why Yelling at Clouds Isn’t a Policy Platform. “Ignorance is a choice,” he told me, adjusting his Cybertruck-shaped cufflinks. “And I’m making it harder to choose it on my platform.”
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Thanks Roswell, another great read to start my weekend.
I didn’t realise you were a friend of Musk —- looking forward to that complimentary self-driving Tesla I assume.
Which reminds me, I heard a ‘contributor’ to SKY after Dark seriously ask Pauline Hanson:’could Pauline and One Nation be the Australian version of Nigel Farage and Reform UK [and save Australia]?.
Pauline looked over her shoulder to ensure that the question was not being directed to some alter ego behind her and, quite alarmed, as if to say: ‘You do realize that One Nation is not really a political party with policies and I’m not a real leader, don’t you?’
Has the joke gone too far are people really taking this stuff seriously?
Roswell, I keep sayin’ it cos it’s true — you just get better and better.
Here’s one from 9News today that’s right up your alley:
“Billionaire Clive Palmer’s human rights may have been impeded”
“They have to take the Human Rights Act seriously,” he said.
“Of course, I’m always under persecution from somebody at some time because of my views and my controversy. But it’s important if you can make precedence for other people so they get the benefit of it.”
So selfless!
Thanks, Uncle. Not so much a friend of Musk, it’s just that he respects my opinion. It was my advice that convinced him to abandon Trump. 😉
Terry, if you get a chance watch Trump’s chat with Fox News this morning. You can catch it on the MeidasTouch network on YouTube.
It’s pure comedy.
Keep sayin’ it, Steve. 😁
Yes., It IS a good piece from Roswell.
Are some folk thinking the fantasy is “right”. Have a think about the nazi thug with the pencil moustache who just got canned for assault at a demo..Does he just actually beleive his own bullsh-t, or is he just a prophet crying the wilderness? Odd beleifs?
For Elon Musk, a cryptic clue is in the term “Grok”, some thing that applies to the term “empathy”, a Martian term. The hero is human but brough up by Martians in their culture. (I thought I was the only kid who had experienced this)
This come from a gem of a 1960’s sci fi novel by Robert Heinlein, “Stranger in a Strange Land” and (also the auther of a book called “Starship Trooper”, books that anticipated Californian
(counter)”culture” from that era on. The basis comes from a term called “esoterism”,pehaps “Intuitionism” which has deteriorated to the level of that hyper-self that emanates in our time. Basically it contends, “More under heaven and hell that meets out philosophy, Horatio”, from Hamlet.
It had much to do with breaking the mind slavery of a capitalist/ bureacratic mindset. We are inured to the “cosmic noise”, so to speak.
So our hero practices things like transgresiive “free” love and a sort of intuitivism at odds with mid capitalist culture. Any one familiar with Herbert Marcuse will get the drift…
In a sense, Musk is a reversal of what many take to be true, here,and Marcuse thought on the notion that capitalist culture both replicates itself and us, hence the attack on Wokeism, so rampant in our time. Sees some thing “derivative” after a long time, so out of something close to the alienation of the beat generation that hasn’t realised that its heuristic has been absorbed back into the System (ie Blairism).
Musk said we have to realise the world is an ecological mess and we need to think seriously about leaving, preferably in an X space-ship.
His thinking may self serving, but is there not a grain of truth when you consider the almost total refusal to consider ecology as a legitimate component of world socio-economic affairs?
We dig our own graves.
paul: The problem with LoneSkum is clearly illustrated by his contention that global environmental collapse (to which he has contributed enormously) can only be dealt with by abandoning the mess and finding another planet to screw up. It has never occured to him that when your bedroom is so messy and dirty that you can’t see the floor, or out the windows, that the solution is to clean it up and then make sure it doesn’t get like that again. It’s the mentality of a teenage boy who never had to learn to take care of himself.
Leefe,
Mum, then other sheilas, always used to say this. I replied, why clean it up when it only gets untidy again?
O
Then exist, alone, in your filth.
Nah, universities don’t suck enough.
X-Files investigations have revealed that everything of and about him is shrinking. The ‘Elongate’ affair reveals he and his world are souring. The users of his various platforms and devices, craving something to sweeten their existence, are complaining there’s a lack of ‘Musk Sticks’, ‘Lollipops’ and ‘Fairyfloss’.
It has been found these inveterate ‘suckers’ are moving en masse to the world of T-Rump and Truth Social where they can be regaled by the real power of bling, and a promised burgeoning intake leveraged by RFK Jr.
‘La Grande Bouffe.’
“X-Files investigation…”
Clakka, I’m a good mate of the Assistant Director who headed the investigation.
Which brings us back to Leefe.
I am not a fanboy. I want to find out what shapes the thinking and ideas of this sort of person. No point in communicating with them unless you first understand where they “come from”
And, I don’t “exist in my own filth” ( that WAS a joke, wasn’t it?).
The Housing Trust inspection today lasted all of ten minutes, the place was as clean a pin.