Money Can't Buy You Love: Fascist Oligarchs as a Cautionary Tale

Musk and Trump and their whole cadre of conspirators are joyless and give the lie of capitalism away. We should be grateful.

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On Thursday, Tesla agreed with Elon Musk’s demands for a pay package that, if a host of incentives were realized, would make him the world’s first trillionaire. This, in and of itself, is a preposterous and insulting development, especially as America declines rapidly and over forty million people are worried over their next meal, not to mention estimates that Musk’s demonic attack on USAID has already caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Then, Saturday morning, Musk posted the following AI content on X:

I doubt that I have to explain the significance here, but, out of an abundance of caution, let’s go. The world’s richest man had to instruct his in-house AI program to give him the simulation of a woman looking at him and promising that she will always love him. It is one of those moments of clarity, of which there are almost too many now. Musk is, and has always been, one of the most pathetic and loneliest individuals. That he is also the wealthiest provides invaluable context.

We have arrived at the inevitable endpoint of a capitalist delusion. Since the 1980’s, when we were told that “Greed is good” and treated to endless depictions of individuals like Donald Trump practicing conspicuous consumption as they surrounded themselves with all the audacious and chintzy signifiers of wealth. Our government, economy, and culture were all being rewired to redistribute our hard-earned resources to Trump and others, granting them a life of ease and comfort in exchange for the fantasy it communicated to the rest of us: if you play by the rules and work hard, you can someday live like this.

For nearly half a century this fantasy has gripped our culture. You see it in our entertainment, in our movies and shows, in our music, in everyday life, and you must have noticed that it has lost any of its luster. For Trump to live in the White House, a building supposedly owned by the people, and defile it with some of the most godawful and embarrassing decorations, to transform it into a monument and reflection of himself, all while we suffer, is one of the most potent symbols of where we are as a country and a society as you could ever imagine.

The lie has lost all of its power. We know that Trump and the wealthy have closed the trapdoor behind them. We went to school. We got the jobs. We did the work. And all we got in return was a country where it is nearly impossible to afford food, let alone a house or healthcare. We were sold a false bill of goods and we are living at the stage where the deception is abundantly clear. All that’s left is the grief and rage and denial.

We are fortunate that the oligarchical class is populated with these people. Trump is one of the most transparently inept and incompetent human beings the United States of America has ever produced. Everyone sees it and feels it who isn’t lost in his cult. Watching him hold the presidency and fail to so much as inform himself of some of the major issues of the time or even fall asleep in the middle of a presentation is wild. He has everything he has ever wanted. All the money, all the power, all the adoration. And it looks miserable.

Musk is a perfect accompaniment. Not only is he the wealthiest man in the world and not only does he own a giant social media company that is completely wired to deliver him adoration, but he is a techno-messiah who people believe will literally deliver us into an interstellar future. Never mind that he is incapable and incompetent and demonstrably a fraud. He has “won” a rigged game and that is enough for his adherents.

But not for him.

For an individual to “win” the game of capitalism, they must behave in fundamentally anti-human ways. Capitalism is, in and of itself, an immoral enterprise, and with each step on the ladder you are faced with more and more immoral decisions. Only those who sublimate their humanity, who hurts others, whether strangers or those closest to them, can ascend to the next stage. Whatever happens to Trump, whatever happens to Musk, the blood will never be washed from their hands.

The rest of us have the opportunity to see this clearly. We have never wanted to be the world’s richest person. Most of our goals have had safety and our most basic needs at heart. Sure, there are fantasies of indulgences like travel or even some large purchases, but to fantasize about power or wealth at this level is fundamentally a failure in being a human being. I doubt anyone reading this, if given the choice of money or avoiding hurting the people we care about, would bat an eye before choosing the latter. For Musk, for Trump, there’s no question of where they fall on the matter.

Eventually, it becomes their nature, which is how the wealth and oligarchical classes both reach their points of power and why they seek to expand it. Destroying democracy is as elementary to them as destroying the environment or hurting or killing or exploiting strangers. One minute you’re hawking bibles you’ve signed, the next you’re murdering people on fishing boats while starving entire countries. At this level, it will not stop until it is stopped.

Fascism is theft. Capitalism reaching the stage where it must dismantle the last remaining impediments, including representative democracy and liberal protections under the law. Those are the financial incentives powering this crisis, but the personal ones are a mixture of greed and the necessity of answering these lingering wounds among the wealthy. The dictator and the fascist industrialist seek to use the power of the state to pad their pockets but also to eliminate any criticism or friction. This is why the critic is attacked, why culture is warped. They are so brittle and hate themselves so much that the world must be wiped clean of any evidence that their self-hatred is well-founded, and if you cannot read between the lines let’s be clear again: that means destroying everyone and everything, including themselves.

This isn’t meant as an observation simply about Musk and Trump. That is shallow and self-serving. We cannot just let their poisonous examples and fragility make us feel better about ourselves. We must look at our own lives and our own behaviors and root out where these lies have warped us and led us astray. The system we have participated in has been powered by the lie that is now declaring itself. The paths many of us, or most of us for that matter, have been on, is a path that leads to Musk and Trump and the world they desire. Each one of these confessions and glimpses into their misery is another opportunity to take stock and change course.

The lie has never been more apparent. We’ve been led astray. There’s still time to right ourselves. Just look at the alternative and ask yourself: is this what I want?