We likely won’t know all the results of America’s midterm election for a while, but consider two people not on any ballot who are setting the tenor for much of what we have heard and seen.
First is Elon Musk, who last Friday fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, including teams devoted to combating election misinformation – and did it so haphazardly and arbitrarily that most had no idea they were fired until their email accounts were shut off.
This was after he fired Twitter’s executives to avoid paying them the golden parachutes they’re owed. And after posting an article suggesting without evidence that Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was in a drunken fight with a male prostitute.
It has been a long 10 days since Musk bought Twitter.
But this has been his MO all along.
Taunting opponents. Treating employees like dung. Bullying adversaries. Demeaning critics. Craving attention. Refusing to be held accountable. Attracting millions of followers and gaining cult status. Spreading misleading information. Making gobs of money.
Impetuous. Unpredictable. Ruthless. Autocratic. Vindictive.
Remind you of anyone?
Musk is not exactly Donald Trump. They’re different generations, possess different skills, occupy different roles in the bizarre firmament of modern America. And Trump is far more dangerous to democracy – so far.
But both represent the emergence of a particularly American personality in the early decades of the 21st century: the wildly disruptive narcissist.
Both wield sledgehammers to protect their fragile egos. Both are utterly lacking in empathy. Both push baseless conspiracy theories (such as the one cooked up about Paul Pelosi).
Both are indefatigable self-promoters.
Both are billionaires, but they are not motivated primarily by money. Nor are they fueled by any larger purpose, principle or ideology.
Their singular goal is to imprint their giant egos on everyone else – to exercise raw power over people. To make others grovel.
Their politics is neither conservative nor liberal. Call it megalomaniacal authoritarian. (It seems likely Musk will give Trump back the giant Twitter megaphone Trump lost when he incited the attack on the US Capitol.)
But why have both achieved such prominence at this point in history? Why are so many enthralled with them?
The answer, I think, is that a large segment of the American public projects its needs and fantasies on them. People who are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” crave strongmen who shake up the system.
People who have been bullied their whole lives want to identify with super bullies who give the finger to the establishment, answerable to only their own ravenous egos.
Their arrogance and certitude attract millions of followers, fans, and cultish devotees, along with a fair number of goons and thugs, who want to vicariously feel superior.
But they are not leaders. They are bullies who demean America.
Others aspire to the same status – Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who flies undocumented immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blames wildfires on Jewish space lasers. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who refuses to commit to the outcome of the election. And the other infamous high-tech zillionaires, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Yet none comes close to Musk and Trump for sheer in-your-facedness, gleeful bombast and the brazen assertion of power to dominate and force others to submit.
Beware. The last time the world gave in to megalomaniacs it did not end well.
The robber barons of the Gilded Age – men like William (“the public be damned”) Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller – siphoned off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest of the nation had to go deep into debt to maintain their standard of living and overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced.
When that debt bubble burst in 1929, the world got a Great Depression. And that depression paved the way for Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, who created the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed, and the most deaths.
We are much safer when economic and political power is widely diffused. We are better off when people like Musk and Trump cannot gain such untrammeled wealth and influence.
We all do better when fewer Americans feel so helpless and insecure that they’re drawn to reprehensible bullies who parade across the public stage as if possessing admirable qualities.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
