Thread by @PnictogenHorses

the real enemy in "Akira" is, of course, the United States.

let's face it, this is one of the only things that the United States of America has actually been any good at: indiscriminate bombings.

there's a kinship between Shima Tetsuo here, out of control of his own body, and @elonmusk. really!

what's Elon Musk's self-image? what's his ego? there's really not much to his self-definition: he's powerful and he's The Best™. best at what? why, best at everything of course!

in a sense, that's all there is to the general obsession with "intelligence" that one gets from right-wing ideologues: to be "intelligent", in the vague way that's meant by @elonmusk or @NateSilver538 or @EPoe187, is simply to be good at everything—an expert at all thinking.

the difficulty is that @elonmusk can't sustain the act—not without help. the bigger his boasts, the further he falls short of them. he can only make up the shortfall by absorbing others: the faith and adulation of cultists like @catturd2 is what keeps Musk's weak ego inflated.

he's like Tetsuo absorbing all the matter around him, desperately trying to stabilize himself and his runaway power—except the more Tetsuo absorbs, the less human he becomes. his inner sense of self is too weak; he degenerates into a mere blob of barely differentiated stuff.

in a somewhat similar fashion, @elonmusk has absorbed the personalities of the people who worship him, the people who still honor his illusions of infinite greatness...and now he's indistinguishable from them. he's a collection of stupid memes and stale nerd jokes and bigotries.

his fans all laugh, of course! but they'd laugh at anything @elonmusk farted out. he's like Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese's "The King of Comedy", surrounded with cardboard-cutout figures who laugh at all his jokes. @APompliano and @catturd2 and the rest may as well be made of paper.

the rapid disintegration of @Twitter and inevitable collapse of @mtaibbi's fraudulent "independence" aren't going to help with @elonmusk's cognitive dissonance. he's The Best™ and yet his ambitions are turning out to be horseshıt—how's he going to reconcile the contradiction?

I have a feeling that, when @elonmusk's egotism finally gives way...the results are bound to be extremely *messy*.

~Mona Drafter of Pnictogen

Akira and the other espers are reunited, in spirit.

do you suppose @elonmusk or @mtaibbi ever daydream about nuking cities? or dropping asteroids on them? somehow I think it's a regular subject of animated conversation, among that crowd.

at the heart of Shima Tetsuo's memories: the central image of an abandoned child, weeping, surrounded by emptiness. (it's quite possible that @elonmusk's got a similar core memory—we know that his father Errol was a abusive tyrant. he still is, so far as I know.)

but who is @elonmusk's Kaneda? is there anyone? Musk is surrounded by admirers, subordinates, business associates; the propagandists who hopped on the #ElonMusk bandwagon, like @mtaibbi and @bariweiss, almost certainly are only using him.

does Elon Musk have a friend?

Kei does the Kaneda bike slide. nice.

the end! A for Akira? or for anarchy? perhaps they work out to about the same thing.

"Akira" has, at its core, a message of tremendous simplicity and power: anyone could become a god. Shima Tetsuo is awakened to apotheosis by pure chance—an accident on the road.