If you blink these days, you miss another meltdown on the left. So-called progressives, as they self-identify, are seething with frustration and poised to lash out at whatever poor soul gets in their way. Tesla billionaire Elon Musk crossed over into this danger zone recently and is being subjected to an adrenaline-induced leftist whipping. But the broader issues at play here expose the hypocrisy of those on the left, especially the ones who inhabit Tinseltown.

Take the Red Pill

As CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is undoubtedly an original thinker. While he lists himself as a political Independent, his actions tell a more conservative tale. So, when he tweeted out a simple message — “Take the Red Pill,” and Ivanka Trump answered, “Taken!” — Hollywood went postal. Lilly Wachowski, a producer of the cult movie The Matrix (to which the red pill refers), did not wait too long before tweeting out a thoughtful and gracious rejoinder: “F— both of you.”

This little red pill has increasingly become a prickly problem for Hollywood devotees who bleed Democratic blue. The plot in the 1999 sci-fi flick The Matrix presents the lead character with a choice: to take a red or a blue pill. The blue pill allows the protagonist to look at life through “a beautiful prison — it would lead him back to ignorance, living in confined comfort without want or fear within the simulated reality of the Matrix.” However, if he chooses the red pill, a much more challenging journey lies before him because it will mean “an uncertain future” that would “free him from the enslaving control of the machine-generated dream world.” In other words, “Do you want to live in bondage in a false reality or take your chances with freedom in the real world?”

Much to the chagrin of The Matrix Hollywood producers, it is not too arduous a task to see how the red pill fits into a conservative worldview. And the right has latched on to this with increasing frequency. For example, there is a conservative news and media app called The Red Pill. Conservative darling Candace Owens launched a website and YouTube channel in 2017 called “Red Pill Black.” In a 2018 tweet, Kanye West acknowledged, “I’m just refusing to be enslaved by monolithic thought.” This caused the website Wired to thunder: “They’ve turned it into a verb, and spread it so successfully that to be ‘red-pilled’ is now widely understood shorthand for having your eyes opened to a certain kind of ‘conservatism’–generally nationalistic, often white-supremacist, and nearly always suffused with violent misogyny.”

What is a Hollywood producer to do when his or her creativity takes a right turn? Or, as Wired put it, is “pooled at just the right place to be lapped up and internalized as a self-valorizing metaphor by the dark, toxic wilds of the proto-alt-right-internet.” Rants like this unmask a distraught and easily affronted state of mind by those on the left.

Suddenly, some folks who champion themselves as open-minded and kind demonstrate that lurking just beneath the surface are angry, name-calling bullies who brook no one or nothing that counters them — wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Suddenly people like Musk, West, and Owens become the enemy. They are lumped in with white supremacists, particularly amusing in the case of Owens. Civil discourse is exiled, and in its place are insults designed to discredit and disparage good people.

This is the hypocrisy of the left: that those who choose to live authentically should suffer a good beat down and then be cast into a dystopian abyss. Soon the left will have its way as it seeks to control free speech in multiple ways over internet platforms that millions of people use. But one wonders if this tyranny of the left may produce more Americans who like Musk — in defiance of their leftist betters — choose the red pill.

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Read more from Leesa K. Donner.

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