personal essay

How Dare Elon Musk Label My 8-Year-Old Son a ‘Parasite’

Musk has claimed his DOGE bros were all about “cutting government waste” and rooting out “massive fraud.” But then the mask slipped.

My son can’t address you right now, Elon, because he’s sedated into oblivion. Why? Because the other option is him shrieking and writhing over the chemo sores in his guts.

He’s too young, anyway, to understand much of anything about federal programs, “cost savings” and how easily claims of stolen “federal entitlements” can be used to whip people, ordinary people like his teachers and neighbors, into a partisan frenzy.

Which is exactly what you’re doing with the financial fraud fantasies you’re firing off furiously on X, far-right delusions that incite shock and outrage and yet, if they weren’t so godd--n loud, would take only a few seconds and some rudimentary critical thinking to debunk.

Opinion

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Who could forget the $50 million worth of condoms sent to Gaza? The condoms weren’t actually sent to Gaza, of course, but still provided cover for the incitement of incredulous rage over government waste. (Probably safer sex too.)

Then there’s another “total scam” your DOGE bros had uncovered: That Reuters, a longtime pillar of world news, was in cahoots with the U.S. government to pull off “large scale social deception”—in exchange for millions of dollars!

OUCH!

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“Just wow” was how you summarized it, exactly the kind of mindless assessment you’d expect from someone who is either really dumb or in a psychedelic stupor. Or, more likely, being deliberately misleading. How else to explain an uber-talented billionaire failing to distinguish between Reuters the news agency and Thomson Reuters Special Services, a data company (with, yes, the same parent company) that won a contract during Donald Trump’s first term to help the government protect against social deception?

But hey, shit happens, right? You said it yourself: “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected.”

Well, here’s a mistake you corrected yourself: At first it was all about that “government waste” and rooting out “massive fraud”—the magic words, right? Anybody can get behind that kind of reform! But then your mask slipped, and suddenly there was a “parasite class,” which we all knew is what you meant all along anyway.

“90% of America loves DOGE,” you tweeted, because only that “parasite class” relying on federal programs will be affected by your full-scale demolition of America’s government:

That “parasite class”? The poor, the elderly, the disabled. And my son, whose life, if he manages to keep it, will be a series of struggles and hurdles to overcome, ‘thanks’ to a rare genetic disease for which there is no cure and the bone marrow transplant that may or may not stop said disease from consuming his brain.

My son is not what you’d expect when it comes to disabled children. He loves trolling online, describes you, Elon, as “cool” and just yesterday he wrote “radioactive sh-t penis” in marker on his hospital window.

But he is disabled, and like more than a million other kids nationwide, is relying on Social Security even before his ninth birthday. You know, the federal agency known for not letting the nation’s “parasites” starve and die. The same one you’ve now set your sights on, alleging massive “fraud in federal entitlements.”

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I understand the theatrics. I’m familiar with the show, this basest of all human traditions—wanting red meat and wanting it raw. But politics and attention-seeking edgelord antics aside, I have to ask you, Elon: Think back to 2002. The year you lost a child—your firstborn son, who might very well be leading the charge at DOGE if he were still alive today.

You told us all you held him as he died at just 10 weeks old. That you “felt his last heartbeat.” This, of course, is where I’m supposed to get all sentimental and appeal to emotion.

Except I won’t. I’ll state the obvious: You of all people should know the value of human life. But you’re cheering on a veritable cull of the needy and kids like my son, so perhaps it’s no surprise that even that’s a lie.

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Allison QuinnNews Editor

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