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Elon Musk—CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, founder of The Boring Company and compulsive Twitter user—is TIME’s person of the year. Too many remarks and questions have popped up following this befitting choice. But the most important one is “what took them so long?”
Musk has actively tackled some of humanity’s burning urgencies, and might probably be the one person out there who understands the importance of expanding out of this little rock we call earth. And yet, outstanding as this all is, this is not the reason TIME’s choice is superb.
Unlike TIME’s previous pick (Biden and Kamala) Musk is not a politician. We may agree to disagree on many issues, but we’re all on the same page when it comes to one thing: we don’t need yet another bureaucrat. Musk is a doer; he drafts; engineers; designs; fixes and recalculates.
But even more significantly, Elon Musk is a rebel. He’s not always nice but—and I hate to break this one to you—none of us really is. With genius, darkness, and wit, Musk embodies the very essence of humanity, and that humanity is very much worth TIME’s selection.
Musk does what we mostly do in private: he questions the system. He is not always right (just like any of us) but he goes (and sees) beyond. He could be, as a trillionaire, a simple and comfortable useful idiot, one of those who are functional to a rotten and liberticidal power.
Musk is not like that and he, with such vices, does not negotiate. That TIME‘s Person of the Year is an individual who believes in (and works for) the future, who symbolizes innovation and free trade, who understands economics and human nature is not a minor fact, it is an event that celebrates us all.
At the end of the day, love him or hate him, the truth is that no one forgets Musk is still alive.
Pris Guinovart is a writer, editor and teacher. In 2014, she published her fiction book «The head of God» (Rumbo, Montevideo). She speaks six languages. Columnist since the age of 19, she has written for media in Latin America and the United States // Pris Guinovart es escritora, editora y docente. En 2014, publicó su libro de ficciones «La cabeza de Dios» (Rumbo, Montevideo). Habla seis idiomas. Columnista desde los 19 años, ha escrito para medios de America Latina y Estados Unidos