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Jessy, bitchain vision
On July 5 local time, Musk announced the establishment of a new party independent of the Republican and Democratic parties – the “American Party”.
In recent days, Musk has published several posts criticizing the “Big and Beauty” bill for being “extremely crazy and destructive”, etc., and said that if the bill is passed, a new party will be established immediately.
Trump himself also came forward to respond that Musk’s dissatisfaction was because the bill canceled the tax credit for electric vehicle consumers.Trump also said on July 1 that he might consider deporting Musk.
Trump and Musk formed an alliance in last year’s presidential election, and in May this year, they completely “break up”. Originally, Musk used a lot of money and time to support Trump as president, and after Trump took office, he actually led the U.S. government efficiency department, mainly to reduce government spending and build a streamlined and efficient government.
He relied on supporting Trump as president to realize his political ideals.But in the end, Trump broke out completely due to policy conflicts of interest, power games and ideological differences.The announcement of the establishment of a third party is essentially another attempt to political ideals after understanding that the current government cannot bear and help it realize its political ideals.When a businessman has achieved great success in the business world, he wants to pursue the realization of his personal will and technological vision in politics, will he succeed this time?
Why did we reach the point of founding the Party?
Initially, Musk and Trump’s cooperation was essentially an exchange of interests.
Musk needs to use state power to promote his political ideals of reducing government spending and reshaping government efficiency. At the same time, in his eyes, Trump’s businessman background will support the development of the economy and technology.Trump needs Musk’s money, resources and his identity as a tech tycoon to win votes from young people and tech upstarts for himself.As it turns out, with Musk’s leading support and the promises Trump made during his campaign, most of the tech giants in Silicon Valley who believe in “technological accelerationism” have indeed voted for Trump.
After Trump came to power, Musk did get the opportunity to begin to realize his political ideals. He was appointed as the actual head of the “Ministry of Government Efficiency”, although his external identity has always been a special consultant.The Ministry of Government Efficiency promotes the political reform of “slimming the government” from the inside: significantly reducing redundant budgets, reorganizing administrative structures, and replacing inefficient manpower with technology.
The drastic reforms of the Ministry of Government Efficiency have also been met with resistance from the federal government, public controversy, and even multiple lawsuits. On May 30, Musk announced his withdrawal from the Ministry of Government Efficiency.
Trump and Musk also ushered in a concentrated outbreak of conflicts after a short honeymoon period.
The “Big and Beauty” bill is the high point of this conflict. The bill cancels the tax credit for new energy vehicles. Musk believes that this is an “elite punishment” for emerging industries such as Tesla and a countercurrent that tilts the budget back to traditional energy and military-industrial groups.He repeatedly posted on X to object, calling it “an ugly manifestation of corrupt politics.”
Trump pointed out Musk’s “greedy and ungratefulness”, claiming that Musk was fighting for his own interests and publicly threatened that “maybe he should consider deporting him.”
At this point, the political alliance between Musk, the tech elite, and Trump, the populist leader, has completely broken down.
From policy differences to personality mismatch, this technology tycoon who also has a political ideal that wants to change the world realizes that the political reforms they want cannot be achieved through the existing system and cannot be relied on Trump.
Establishing an independent third party seemed to be the only way for him to get rid of his dependence and be able to take over the steering wheel independently
A political ideal of technological accelerationism
Musk has never been a typical businessman.He built rockets, cars, brain-computer interfaces, and even acquired social platforms.These behaviors seem crazy and dispersed.In fact, it revolves around a core: technology drives the future, governments become smaller, and humans become free.
This is also his political background.On many occasions, Musk has expressed distrust of the “big government”: he hates complex supervision, bloated budgets and inefficient administrative systems.He believes that technology can fully undertake most of the governance functions, such as AI layoffs, automated process management, and blockchain transparent audit… These tools can not only reduce costs, but also reduce “risk of corruption in human nature.”
His ideal is a kind of “technological rational rule” – the government operates like an efficient company, the bureaucracy is streamlined, and citizens have more autonomy, which should be achieved by the computing of technology and engineers.
In his opinion, the existing two-party system is a compromise machine that will always serve interest groups, and it is impossible to truly “upgrade the system.”He even believes that the opposition between the two parties is essentially to cover up the old order they jointly guard.
Therefore, Musk’s founding of the Party was not to become another politician.Instead, we must use our own political party to embed the concept of technological governance into the national operating system, and one day we will cancel the form of “political party” itself.
At present, Musk does have many resources to launch a third party. For example, he controls the social media X, which allows him to guide public opinion and incite emotions without the need for media endorsement.Moreover, he personally has a large number of fans, who are young people who hold cryptocurrencies and advocate technology.Moreover, he is the richest man, has a lot of money and has technology.
But establishing a new political party is still many different from establishing a tech empire.The construction of a tech business empire and the construction of an influential party require different capabilities.Businessmen build empires according to the logic of capital, while politicians rely on identity.
Musk can rely on a star product to leverage billions of revenue in business, but his public image is unstable. He is both a genius engineer and an emotional social platform “crazy”; he supports freedom of speech and bans reporters’ accounts; his “political philosophy” is not systematic, and even mixed with obvious personal emotions, and the above chaos and madness also weakens his credibility in the hearts of mainstream middle-class and neutral voters.
How far is Musk from the founding of the Party?
Moreover, the US political system is extremely unfriendly to the Third Party. The vote system of each state, the presidential electoral college mechanism, as well as party subsidies and media resource allocation are all seriously inclined to the two major parties.
It can be said that the current electoral system in the United States greatly restricts the rise of the third party.U.S. election expert Bret Kapoor said that the laws of all states are biased towards the two major political parties, republican and democratic, and create obstacles to the emergence of the third party as much as possible.
Moreover, historical data shows that there are very few successful cases of third-party political parties in the United States.In American political history, the most successful third-party candidate is Ross Perro, the 1992 independent presidential candidate, who won 18.9% of the popular vote.However, even such votes cannot be converted into electoral votes.In the 2016 general election, Liberal Gary Johnson won 3.27% of the popular vote, creating the party’s best record in history.In 2020, Gil Stan of the Greens also received only about 1.1% of the popular vote.
The Washington Post also pointed out that the “American Party” or any newly established party will face many obstacles to shake the long-standing political structure of the United States.
At present, Musk has not officially released a complete party program, but according to Musk’s speech, the “American Party” plans to become an active political force in next year’s midterm elections – “focusing on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House constituencies.”
Kapoor, the above-mentioned election expert, said that although Musk may push a few candidates to the ballot in some states, it may take years to establish a brand new national party, and it is impossible to complete it before the 2026 midterm elections.
