Elon Musk is the New Running Man
Shôn Ellerton, Dec 16, 2022
The comparison of the 1983 film, The Running Man, and Elon Musk is all too uncanny.
I often wonder if we’re now living within a generation of adults who’ve completely missed out on the sci-fi dystopia films of the 80s. They may have heard about them or, perhaps, watched them as kids but not really taking in the message they’re trying to convey.
Take, for example, the war between Russia and Ukraine. Inarguably, this is the most important news story of 2022, and rightfully so. The potential to unleash the horrors of the nuclear weapon is very real. The enormity of the devastating consequences of a nuclear strike seems so underplayed amongst news circles and the public sphere, it beggars belief that new strains of COVID, the takeover of Twitter associated with EDS (Elon Derangement Syndrome), and climate change are more of a threat to mankind. And yet, there are many, frankly very ignorant people out there, dreaming that the West beats Russia. And I don’t mean pushing back Russia out of Ukraine or thwarting their plans of hostility, but to destabilise Russia, break it apart, or even to take it over. This is madman’s talk and a recipe for sparking off the dreaded nuclear apocalypse. Back any animal into a corner, and it gets very dangerous.
One classic sci-film of the 80s which many kids watched at their local cinemas was War Games. It was a cute movie of a couple of high-school teenagers who inadvertently set off a mainframe computer as they were playing around hacking into school and government systems using a simple modem and home computer. It so happened, that this mainframe, amusingly called the WOPR, simulated nuclear strikes and their outcomes, each one, of course, predicting total devastation. Our young hackers, after tiring of playing chess with the computer chose a different game called Global Thermonuclear Warfare, merely thinking this was another game and one with a cool name as well. But deep in the heart of NORAD, lights were flashing, and the top military brass began to panic and sealed themselves in the world’s most famous fortified mountain cave in Colorado Springs. Once WOPR had completed hundreds of these simulations escalating to a frenzy, the screen suddenly went blank and everything went quiet in the room. Moments later, its tinny artificial robotic voice summed up its results in what could be one of the most poignant lines in the world of science fiction, or indeed, science.
‘The only winning move is not to play’
Well. That message has long been forgotten by the so-called ‘adults in the room’ today as they prod sticks into the giant angry red bear instead of exercising, or even attempting, a serious recall to diplomacy. One can reminisce back to the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an event which could have ended up with our generation getting to grips with bows and arrows.
So, let’s discuss another one of my favourite sci-fi movies from the 80s. It hails from 1987 and is called The Running Man, written by Stephen King and starring none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays the hero. I re-watched this film recently expecting to find how much it would have aged after the introduction of so much new technology since the 1980s. I was pleasantly surprised to find the film hardly aged. Sure, there was no Internet, but there was the power of TV which cultivated a new era of mass propaganda pushed hard by an ultra-corrupt tyrannical government in total control of its people.
The recent events of Elon Musk unearthing the shadowy history of Twitter with its Stasi-like nature of silencing dissenters and those with opposing opinions against the political narrative of the day, resonated so incredibly well with the storyline of The Running Man.
For those not familiar with this movie, I’ll give a quick rundown, but honestly, this is a great movie which has aged remarkably well and should be watched or re-watched. In the near future, which is about now, it all starts with our hero, Ben Richards, played by Schwarzenegger, who reports a riot in the town of Bakersfield from a helicopter and is ordered to aim and fire at the crowd. Richards responds that no one is armed in the crowd and refuses to cooperate. He is then interned at a detention labour camp and deemed an enemy of the state. The video that contained the footage of Richards in the helicopter was doctored to show that he was firing on innocent unarmed civilians. It is broadcast for the whole nation to see. With nearly all the nation firmly blue-pilled and beholden to the political narrative, Richards is public enemy number one. It’s interesting to note that for a film of 1987, the use of wafer-sized media containing digital video is strikingly accurate to today’s flash cards.
Richards manages to escape the detention centre, but with an incensed and angry nation of people who watched the doctored video, he remains in hiding but eventually gets caught. In the story, the government of the United States morphed into a one-party authoritarian state and used the TV networks to distribute its propaganda. Much like the ending days of the Roman Empire in which prisoners were thrown to the lions, modern day dissenters, criminals, and other enemies of the state were ‘thrown to the lions’ by being given a chance to play in the popular TV game called, The Running Man. The game show had a host by the name of Kilian, an odious character at best, who cheered on his cadre of stalkers including a muscle-bound biker armed with a chainsaw, a fat slob who sent bolts of electricity, an Oriental dude with an ice hockey stick as sharp as a Samurai sword, and a cool-looking dude with a rocket-pack on his back sporting a flamethrower. The condemned person, known as a Runner, would be offered a pardon and a lifetime of luxury if he manages to outwit and escape the Stalkers.
Before the show commences, video coverage is shown of purportedly successful runners sipping on martinis on an island beach, but it turns out, much like the helicopter incident, the videos were doctored and our new runner, Richards, discovers their burnt carcasses later. Richards, being our hero of course, manages to outwit all the stalkers and, with the help of one of his fellow geeky runners, manages to find the original raw footage and broadcasts it to the entire nation. Meanwhile, our odious game show host, Kilian, stands there in the spotlight against an angry and bewildered crowd with his mouth agape while the mob begins to boo and hiss.
The narrative is shattered.
There are so many parallels with this movie to the events that are quickly unfolding regarding the cover-ups, censorship and collusion with Twitter and the Biden administration, or more specifically, the DNC (Democratic National Committee). Musk is essentially playing Richards in this new exciting drama and there is very little the DNC can do but sit and watch helplessly. Despite attempts at mainstream media like ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC to downplay, what is to be known as The Twitter Files, the new angry bird has been released by Musk, a figure that is beginning to be hated and to be deemed more dangerous than Trump by the White House and the Left. We have bred a new breed of blue-pilled haters suffering with EDS, or otherwise known as, Elon Derangement Syndrome. Predictably, the infamous ESPN commentator, Keith Olbermann, known for his legendary tirades against Donald Trump has contracted this syndrome and, amusingly, has been shut down by Elon’s Twitter.
Which leads me on to Musk’s behaviour. It is, by no means perfect and is flawed with respect to temperament resembling much of Donald Trump’s. Probably bullied as a kid, and, perhaps, through the course of his exceedingly illustrious career with both its ups and downs, Musk had developed a coat of Teflon upon his person. Most recently, by his many detractors with his, often logical, contrarian views surrounding the pandemic, the DNC, and a variety of other social issues so heavily pushed by the Left. In short, Musk wanted to ‘avenge the system’, as the system had done so to him and his own set of beliefs.
An example of Musk’s seemingly vindictive behaviour can be summed up in a tweet he put out.
‘My pronouns are Prosecute / Fauci’
Musk, with only five words, manages to demonise the pronoun-loving, leftie, blue-pilled, orthodox, trans, and the entire mainstream community all in one hit. Personally, I found it funny as I also believe that Fauci had promulgated a series of lies for the sake of political gainsay and find the whole pronoun thing utterly preposterous. But that’s my opinion and there will be others with a differing one. But there we are. A tweet that probably really wasn’t necessary, especially for someone with total control of the world’s biggest social media platform of this type. It may have been more becoming if Musk simply allowed the whole Twitter-verse to be less censorious without poking a pointed stick at the proverbial pit bull behind the picket fence to induce ‘angertainment’. Especially, when you have friends and family which are unnecessarily being targeted for attack by Musk-haters. This is when ideology and vengeance start becoming too engrained in the mindset of someone with real influence and power. To cite an example, Musk has de-platformed some of his own detractors, which counters his principal tenets of absolutist free speech, although he did respond that he was being doxxed and concerned for the safety of his family. Allegedly.
As for being the modern equivalent of The Running Man, Musk disrupted the entire ecosystem of the many collusions and cover-ups between big tech and the behemoth of the political corporate machine buttressing the DNC and the military war machine. During Pre-Musk Twitter, someone mentioning a differing opinion on vaccines, or gaining support for a third political party, or delineating what makes a woman, or mentioning anything against the war with Ukraine, was liable of being de-platformed. The de-platforming of former president Trump could be considered one of the most atrocious acts of violating the principles of free speech and what the Twitter Files has revealed was that the process of kicking him off Twitter started well before the Capitol Hill riot.
The public now have unprecedented insight to the workings on what happened within the bowels of Twitter’s over-bloated workforce before Musk’s entrance. Twitter set up its own ‘star chamber’ under the guise of safety to eradicate voices on the platform which did not resonate with the political and social narratives orchestrated by the DNC and its supporting lobbyists, most of which benefited enormously in wealth increase. Meanwhile, small business owners or those organisations not cosying up to the DNC were in risk of losing their businesses or certainly made harder for them to survive. The war machine between Ukraine and Russia continues with little or no discourse in diplomacy or negotiation while weapons and arms manufacturers in the United States are in a state of economic euphoria. Pharmaceutical companies had increased their market cap by ten-fold or more on products relating to the pandemic, assisted by big tech and mainstream media to silence those voices who claimed scepticism of the efficacy of the vaccines. Much like the Patriot Act after the events of 9/11, strange new dictatorial and perverse rules across the globe, once the WHO declared the virus as a pandemic, came into being grinding the wheels of industry to a halt, except, of course, for those willing to ‘play the game’.
Without Musk’s intervention, the United States and the rest of the world’s nations beholden to it, had been going down the dangerous path of collective groupthink or, what Dr Robert Malone defined as mass formation psychosis, for the purpose of obfuscating inconvenient truths. What Musk did was to ‘correct’ the situation; however, as I alluded to earlier, Musk’s zeal to avenge the so-called ‘crimes of the Left’ could swing too far the other way which has its own dangerous implications.
In any case, at least for the time being, the new light being unearthed by Musk’s presence have left the mainstream audience in a flux of bewilderment, denial, anger, and serendipity of new knowledge once veiled by the shroud of corruption, greed, and fear.
Musk is the new Running Man.
