This piece by David French in the NYTimes makes the point that the right’s bully strategy as exemplified by Donald Trump and Elon Musk is predictably creating a backlash. I think this is a particularly apt observation:
Any form of domination and bullying will create a backlash, and that backlash will gain particular momentum when the bullies are both aggressive and absurd — and that’s exactly the world that both Trump and Musk built.
When I watch the world’s richest man take “Catturd” seriously, traffic in conspiracy theories and interact with a menagerie of right-wing trolls, these words come to mind: Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Who can forget when the legal team of the president of the United States, including Rudy Giuliani, promoted its alleged examples of voter fraud at a landscaping business in Philadelphia almost adjacent to a crematory and a porn shop? The only thing that keeps one from laughing at episodes like this one, and at Musk’s juvenile tweets, is the depressing realization that both Trump and Musk possess immense power and maintain loyal followings in the tens of millions.
It is profoundly depressing. It’s very hard to imagine how this species is going to fix massive collective problems like climate change with absurd people like Musk and Trump in the driver’s seat. The fact that we have to fight so hard to beat them is simply mind-boggling. But we have no choice.