"Any eulogy for this relationship [ Trump and Musk] must first and foremost be a eulogy for the United States of America. An amoral billionaire who by rights should have been impeached and barred from running for office for life became president again—legitimately this time, as far as we know—put the world’s richest multibillionaire in charge of a sensitive task that he oversaw with the delicacy of a hyena stripping a wildebeest carcass clean. Their efforts have already resulted in deaths around the globe and will cause untold harm in this country over time.
And now they’re engaged in a “substantive” argument that can be summarized like this. One, Trump wants a bill that is the usual Republican recipe for fiscal disaster—massive tax cuts for the rich, cuts to programs that help working and poor people, huge deficits and debts as far as the eye can see. The other, Musk, at least professes to care about the deficits and debt, but he’s totally chill with the massive tax cuts for the rich. He’s just against the “pork,” which is rich-man speak for things that might actually benefit people and communities.
It’s tragic that working Americans are held hostage to this madness."
Michael Tomasky @ The New Republic
Amen. But this analysis goes on to suggest Musk can bring down Trump if he likes? The case is that Musk can bring down Grump with X/Twitter. I am willing to entertain evidence Musk's X/Twitter won the election for Trump. I expect it exists. But the proposition that Musk can bring down Trump by tweaking the algorithms at X/Twitter and trash-talking Grump with an army of troll-bots into being impeached strikes me as a bit of a stretch. We'll see.
Musk's Starlink satellite system and Space X remain Musk's greatest leverage over the gov; the former is apparently essential now to national security. Tesla, on the other hand, might already be irrelevant. Anyway, the gov needs Musk, Starlink, and Musk needs the gov to fund his tech interests in AI, a Mars mission, and protection from China's superior models of EVs.
One ironic turn in this saga might include Trump. He just threatened-- I know, so just as likely more TACO-- to end all government contracts and subsidies going to Musk. Besides being impossible in the short run for national security reasons already stated, if Trump were to go nuclear because that's the kind of crazy he is, watching Musk twist in the wind articulating his new position on the constitutional importance of the anti-Impoundment law will be a special treat.
More likely, Musk returns to his front row seat and settles for mouthing off now and then about how he's going start a new political party for the middle 80%. And Trump blunders on building his golden parachute and Project 2025's Christian Nationalist surveillance state, or until a serious economic recession sets in and the electorate realizes they've been had, again.
And then again, if running the country with X/Twitter isn't cartoon evil enough for you, here's a snapshot of the whole "Dark MAGA/Dark Enlightenment" conspiracy theory, which Musk apparently reps for when he wears his Dark MAGA black hat:
— There’s a “Dark MAGA/Dark Enlightenment” conspiracy theory going around where Musk destroys Trump and he and his tech bro buddies take over our democracy. I’ve written before about the “Dark Enlightenment” movement that’s all the rage among tech billionaires and followers of Curtis Yarvin. The basic theory is that democracy is “out of date software” that needs to be “rebooted” by replacing our presidency with a CEO-style dictator (Yarvin says we must “get over our dislike of dictators”) drawn from the ranks of tech billionaires. Elon Musk and JD Vance are both apparently proponents of the concept, so the theory going around is that they’re conspiring to get Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declare Trump incompetent, and remove him from office, putting Vance in charge of the country. Vance will then bring in the tech bros to replace the Cabinet, expand the DOGE project, deconstruct our New Deal/Great Society social safety nets and rule of law, and turn America into an authoritarian state that runs with greater efficiency and productivity. It sounds nuts, but these people are apparently dead serious about it, as David Gardner writes over at Daily Beast. He notes that Musk wears black MAGA hats as a signal to the Dark Enlightenment advocates, and their goal is pretty clear: “Federal employees would be fired in such quantities that the government would no longer be manageable. Elections would be deemed obsolete. Policies would engender fear and distract the population. The Dark MAGA or Dark Enlightenment theory says it is the remit of the tech billionaires to run the world because they are the only ones with the resources and the know-how to fix it.” Will the Musk/Trump falling out speed up this project or slow it down or even kill it? Stay tuned…
We must get over our dislike of dictators, because Big Tech CEO dictators are how we get things done! Strikingly similar argument to to the one Putin makes for his takeover in Russia in the '90s; or so that's my memory of Masha Gessen's account in The Future is History from 2017. Democracy means chaos and conflict; my dictatorship will make the trains run on time again, etc. And all rolled up in a snowball of media hype about foreign threats and internal enemies; immigrants of color, Nazis, Trans, homosexuals, the liberal rule of constitutional law, etc.
And Big Tech as "the only ones" that "know-how to fix it," by nearly all accounts, are deeply into hedging their bets that the earth, only they can save, is in fact un-savable, and they are busy, Space X and Blue Horizon, innovating ways for people to live off world, in giant space stations, or on Mars. Okay, so invest in their space exploration; some competition for NASA is probably a good idea. But when was it ever a good idea to let guys like these, Trump, Musk, Tech Bros, all conservative republican billionaires, run the world?
Absolutely never.
John Maynard Keynes:
"How could I bring myself to be a Conservative? They offer me neither food nor drink-- neither intellectual or spiritual consolation. I should not be amused or excited or edified. That which is common to the atmosphere, the mentality, the view of life of-- well, I will not mention names--promotes neither my self-interest nor the public good. It leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard; it is not even safe, or calculated to preserve from spoilers that degree of civilization which we have already attained." From "Am I a Liberal?" 1925
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