The Intellectual Situation The Editors Elon Musk’s DOGE moonshot Dena Yago, Cursed Virtues . 2022, acrylic, flashe, and inkjet on canvas, 50 × 57 7/8". Courtesy of the artist. It was not so long ago that Elon Musk was regarded, in certain credulous sectors of the liberal imagination, as a shining hope. Here was a rare pro-environment billionaire, whose commitment to making electric cars might help solve capitalism’s planetary crisis. Sure, he was a weird guy, with weird politics, but perhaps less offensive than the tech oligarchs who had helped Donald Trump to power in 2016. Musk never loved unions, or taxes, or regulations — he was a Silicon Valley libertarian and auto tycoon, after all — but he was liberal on gay rights. He supported Obama in 2012, Clinton in 2016, and Biden in 2020. For a time, he even saw himself as a mitigating influence on Trump. “He was very much like: ‘I need to be here to change Trump’s mind.…