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Protest art is hot right now, museum footage turned over to it with populist ease. Who doesn't want to take down Elon Musk, the cartoon villain extraordinaire who painted himself green to hide the robotic machination of his hyper-capitalism, neoliberal as savior. Musk is dolt. It feels good to curse him. It feels good to send out the rhetorical curses of the protest sign's curtness. The retort of his loyal followers, "what have you done to compete?" always coming with the implicit understanding that one wants to do something, and further that one wants to do something that panders to markets deeming it marketable. How can one invest in getting Musk to stop? To take a break. How could we invest in shutting off the wheels for a day, and we could all go outside. The internet shuttered. The lights dimmed, the rare earths would stop being mined, iPhones depleting their charges, and the capital would be stored in whatever vaults they now use for dust. The fossils we burn as fuel could be temporarily cooled. We could stand blinkered at the sun we haven't seen. For a while, we could erect giant balloons, for the firefighters to watch the world be set afire. It feels good to take down, to erect fingers.
