Because it is a game. A personality cult. Elon made it so because that shoots the value of his companies towards the moon as the true believers buy & hold. And in any game there is opposition, the scale of which will be directly proportional to the fans (so just as fanatical, just as loud). The root cause of this situation is Elon correctly understanding that he could become much wealthier making people dream of Tony Stark than in emulating Tim Cook.
Also, plenty of people want him to fail because this is a clearly unhealthy corruption of the public markets and is likely to have negative consequences for otherwise uninterested bystanders who get caught in the blast radius.
And some of us are bitter that this is as close as we're ever going to get to a real life Tony Stark, and it stings.
Also, the reality is, Elon made himself a massive public figure deliberately, he very publicly embraced one side of the culture war and make his opinion on every public constantly. He literally one of the most important people because he literally bought one of the largest media platforms and made sure it fully embraced right wing points of view.
You are complaining why Elon is in public debate and people are so interested. That's because politics is a public argument between different parties, and Elon has used all his influence to support one side of that. And that is the result.
And not just in the US, Elon tried to insert himself into politics of other nations, such as Britain or Germany as well. Making most of the western world angry.
Why are you surprised that he gets treated like a politician when he acting like a politician?
You can't be the CEO of total independent technocratic companies and at the same time be a public ultra-right wing facist supporter who endlessly engages in a public culture war. Specially if those companies are directly linked to him view voting shares that give him ultimate power.