Over the weekend, Musk's name also made an unflattering appearance in The Hill, which reported that he is one of the top quarterly donors to Protect the House, a political action committee formed to preserve Republican control of Congress in the November midterms. When asked about this decision, Musk—a self-described moderate who has both raised money for Hillary Clinton and demonstrated a remarkable amount of patience for our sitting president—reassured his dubious followers that this investment in Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Zombie Paul Ryan is all part of a pay-to-play master plan that we, mere mortals unencumbered by eleven-figure net worths, are incapable of appreciating in the moment.

Ah yes, because as we all know, you can't expect to change the world unless you hand over tens of thousands of dollars to the politicians hell-bent on destroying it.

Musk's submarine meltdown and his dopey, cynical, both-sides brand of political gamesmanship stem from the same fatal character flaw, which is the unyielding belief among our Silicon Valley overlords in their ability to swoop into literally any situation and use their superhuman intellects to solve puzzles that have flummoxed and frustrated everyone else who has set their minds to that task. Death-defying cave rescues? Sure! Hyperpolarized partisan politics? No problem! Stay tuned till next week, when Musk will respond to an especially frustrating breakfast-making experience by dedicating his life to the creation of a refrigeration method that will eliminate the gross layer of watery residue sitting at the top of every container of Greek yogurt.

To a certain extent, brainstorming ambitious solutions to seemingly intractable problems is just a description of inventing things, which, on balance, has been a net positive throughout the course of human history. (SpaceX seems cool. Teslas are great, and I wish I could afford one.) For Musk and his ilk, however, their reputations as creative geniuses have become more important than their participation in the creative process. When the time and energy and tweets they invest in a project don't pay off as they'd hoped, they don't shrug and move on to the next one—they are humiliated, and they lash out in their own defense. Musk's temper tantrum is the most compelling piece of evidence that the submarine was a shameless PR stunt, as Unsworth suggested. This was never about contributing to a global community of experts in order to save a dozen kids. It was about being their one and only savior, and if Musk can't have the credit, he'll make damn sure the other guy doesn't get it, either.