Elon Musk has just become the world’s first trillionaire. Donald Trump is America’s first dictator. But they have more in common than their economic and political dominance.
To describe both as selfish narcissists would be a wild understatement. Both are maniacally obsessed with increasing their own personal wealth, power, and control.
Both have been willing to break laws, norms, and other social constraints in pursuit of these goals. Both have manipulated, bribed, conned, robbed, and bullied their ways to dominance.
Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was impeached twice, found criminally liable for cooking his corporate books, and civilly liable for sexual abuse.
Musk paid a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected president, then ran Trump’s illegal and hugely destructive DOGE. Musk’s SpaceX has all the hallmarks of a gigantic Ponzi scheme in which insiders pocket the winnings and leave latecomers holding the bag.
Both pride themselves on paying little or no taxes. Trump famously said that paying not paying federal income taxes “makes me smart.” Musk paid zero taxes in 2018.
Both are notoriously lacking in empathy; they view all relationships as transactions. Trump refuses to be a “consoler-in-chief” in national tragedies and openly withholds sympathy for families of political opponents who die. (When Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered, Trump asserted they were killed “due to the anger [Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”)
Musk has stated that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy” — arguing that a society can only afford to practice broad empathy if it operates from a position of systemic strength.
Both regard themselves as omnipotent and invincible. Both lash out verbally or physically at anyone who crosses them, often getting into raging disputes and fights.
To the extent they have any belief beyond their own omnipotence, it’s white male nationalism. “Whites are a rapidly dying minority,” Musk wrote his 240 million followers in a January post on X. In a February post, he declared that “there has been unrelenting hate and poisonous propaganda in the West against anyone White, straight or male over the past decade or more,” adding, “No more guilt trips. ENOUGH.”
Musk has suggested that race plays a detrimental role in hiring. He’s touted the role of white people in eliminating slavery. He’s accused public figures of racism against white and Asian people.
In recent months, Musk has increased his online posts about perceived threats to whiteness, or what he views as calls for a “genocide” against white people. Over the past seven months, he has posted 850 times about race, nearly daily and triple the rate for the previous two years.
Trump also has a well-documented history of white supremacist actions and rhetoric, including the 1973 lawsuit brought against Trump management for allegedly discriminating against Black renters; his full-page ads in 1989 calling for the death penalty for the five Black and Latino teenagers eventually exonerated in the Central Park jogger case; his leading role in the debunked, racially-charged conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States; his 2016 accusation that Mexican immigrants were criminals and “rapists;” his 2017 “Muslim ban;” his “fine people on both sides” of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville; his view of Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as “shithole” countries; his determination to erase Black history from America’s classrooms; and his campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Both Musk and Trump have pushed the conspiracy theory that Democrats are seeking to import undocumented immigrants so they can take over the U.S. government forever.
Both have fomented white nationalism abroad. Trump was an enthusiastic ally of Viktor Orbán, who saw Western civilization threatened by Muslim immigration into Europe. Many people in Trump’s circle continue to support and encourage leaders of the European far-right.
Musk, too, encourages white nationalism abroad. During the recent anti-immigrant protests and riots in the United Kingdom—particularly in Belfast and London—Musk posted that “civil war is inevitable” and urged British protesters to “fight back or die” (prompting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to condemn Musk’s comments as “dangerous.”) In response to the recent killing in Belfast, Musk blamed “murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their home town.” He shared an image of the stabbing suspect, who is Black, alongside the caption declaring “millions must go.” And he reposted messages claiming that Starmer “hates white people.”
Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate report that “Musk’s amplification” of anti-migrant narratives to his hundreds of millions of followers was “instrumental” in provoking the violence in Belfast: “No individual played a bigger role in spreading [hateful] content on X than Musk himself.”
Both Trump and Musk also have long histories of misogyny.
Throughout his business and political careers, Trump has frequently disparaged women, describing female opponents and journalists as “disgusting,” “slobs,” and “piggy.” He has a well-documented history of sexual aggression. A federal jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation against writer E. Jean Carroll, awarding her millions in damages. And he has appointed conservative judges instrumental in rulings that overturned long-standing reproductive rights.
Musk, too, has faced frequent claims of misogyny and sexism. Eight former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit detailing a pervasive “'Animal House’” culture — accusing Musk of creating a hostile environment, treating female employees as sexual objects, and retaliating when employees challenged his sexism. Separate reports have also emerged alleging that Musk engaged in inappropriate relationships and persistent advances toward employees, including asking them to bear his children.
Musk has 14 kids with different mothers, and talks about them as a “legion,” as in a Roman military unit. “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse,” he told one of his partners, “we will need to use surrogates.” He has frequently drawn ire for promoting a “bro culture” and mocking femininity. He sparked a major online debate by stating that “Instagram is for girls” and has repeatedly shared or amplified sexist theories and extremist content regarding traditional gender roles.
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The question, then, is why have two such loathsome men come to dominate America and much of the rest of the world at this point in history? Is there something about American capitalism or culture in the 21st century that has given both such extraordinary power?
Part of the answer, it seems to me, is a loss of our sense of common good — a decline of the role of public honor and public shame, and a disintegration of public morality — which has allowed, even encouraged, these two dangerous men to acquire such untrammeled wealth and power.
The idea of “the common good” was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare”— not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.”
To be sure, the Gilded Age, which ran from the late 1880s to the 1910s, was dominated by a few extraordinarily wealthy men who violated social norms and monopolized the economy. “The public be damned,” said William Henry Vanderbilt, head of the New York Central Railroad.
But the reign of these “robber barons” ended when the American public — outraged by their abuses of wealth and power — rose up to demand reform and a return to the common good.
Subsequently, during the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, Americans faced common perils that required that we work together for the common good. Many of us — both white and black Americans — were motivated to fight for civil rights and voting rights in the 1960s. And a sense of common good moved many of us to act against the injustice of the Vietnam War, and others of us to serve bravely in that besotted conflict.
Yet the common good is no longer a fashionable idea. The phrase is rarely uttered today. It feels slightly corny and antiquated if not irrelevant. There is no longer any restraint on aggressive men (almost all of them men) using whatever means possible to accumulate vast wealth and power on a scale that exceeds even the Gilded Age.
This moral breakdown is not one of personal, private, religious morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality — in a broad understanding of what we owe one another as members of the same society. Trump and Musk exemplify that breakdown. The wealth and power accumulated by these two deeply flawed men is evidence of how far we’ve fallen, and the scale of the challenge we face to rectify it.
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