Disconcerting States #7

Saturday, November 9, 2024. Round Midnight

By John Dean

So now it’s the first weekend after the election and what I found most striking among the mood of the people today— at home base and in general out in the city crowds — is relief.

I was out on the DC Mall today in the bright sunshine and mild, leafy Fall weather between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. It felt like a Sunday afternoon stroll through a European park with the parents, grandparents, kids in their strollers and other youngsters goofing around with their plastic swords or rubber balls.

The week’s tension had passed. It’s a new day.  Let’s take a walk on the mall. That seemingly never-ending struggle of the never-ending US Presidential marathon is over. Calm rules.

But…I did see one small motorcycle group like a 2020s versions of The Wild Ones flying three-meter square Trump Forever flags off the rear end of their chrome bright and fire-engine loud Harley Davidsons. Looking for a second Insurrection that didn’t need to happen.

People on the street paid the small motorcycle gang
no attention. It was like seeing a group of passé hippies celebrating flower power. Weird, but: Been there, Done that.  So what? We’re moving on.  On the surface there was no worry in the city.

And then I saw a newspaper stand nestled in among the trucks of Burmese, Trinidad, Filipino, Japanese grilled chicken and Bangalore street food sellers here in DC. I looked closer at the old-time news stand and saw a headline with no words — only a striking color photo of fourteen smiling Trump family members ages ten to seventy-eight plus.

Near to the far left was Donald Trump. And on the far right, appended to the family like a golden good luck charm, holding his wife with his left hand and his son chest high with his right arm — was Mr. Elon Musk all squared jawed, beady dark eyed, and his shark-wide mouth looking ready to take a bite out of something bigger than the Federal Reserve.

What was he doing there with the family?  The world’s richest man. Mr. Triple Citizenship with his South African, Canadian, and American passports. It made me wonder and consider US traditions, old and renewed.  That is…

There’s a tradition here in America since the late nineteenth-early twentieth century of respect for the person who has achieved great wealth due to his or her own genius.  Wealth not as privilege, but as achievement. At any cost.

All the better, too, if that person has produced something of great use for everyone. Like an electric car that promises to drive itself? If they are an innovator, a salesman or woman. What they’ve created promises to improve everyone’s life. All ships shall rise with the tide.

The American twentieth century’s single greatest example of this was Henry Ford.  A farmer’s son who hiked to town, got a menial job in an early Edison Electric plant, gradually worked his way up and eventually produced the Model T car.  At its height in the 1920s about half of the US automobile market was Ford Motor Company controlled, while also holding a quarter of the earth-wide market. Life was never the same in auto-erotic USA and in the American Century.

Henry Ford’s word were worshipped in America. People believed the man spoke gospel. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” he said . He knew “The history of historians is usually bunk….but history that you can  see is of great value.  It is not the past of the books…it is the past of living men and women; folks pretty much like ourselves.”

The winner is hero.  For a long time Henry Ford seemed to do no wrong. Of course he eventually did. Hubris knocks out the best of fighters. Yet Ford motor company is still there to this day, mainly owned and controlled by the Ford family.

But a strange American tradition was established. Believe in the rich person, in the words of the wealthy to lead. The bitch goddess success knows what you want.

I do not digress.  What does this have to do with the 2024 US Presidential election, you may ask —  or walking down the mall this mild Saturday afternoon that felt like Sunday?

Elon Musk is symptom and cause.  In America and in many other parts of the world Musk took earth’s primary visionary businessman position once Steve Jobs died.  Here is earth’s role model for western, capitalistic success

With Trump, Musk hitched his wagon to a star. And vice versa. Unlike other great business leaders, Musk loudly endorsed Donald Trump immediately following the July 2024 assassination attempt — just as fast as Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s candidate. The relation between D. J. Trump and Elon Musk quickly became a supreme win-win example. More important that the Trump-D. J. Vance relationship. More successful than Harris and Waltz.

The ongoing success of one has amplified the ongoing success of the other. Both Trump & Musk reinforce a self-made man image and the supposed wisdom of the billion-trillion-zillionaire. (Though there’s no more such a thing as a self-made man as there is a self-laid egg.) These people are the capstones of pyramids of power, temples of value.

There is Musk on page one in the Trump Family photo.  Celebrate! — says the photo. He and Donald J. Trump beat the woke liberals.  The richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world.  Who together challenge the dominant silicone valley political and economic culture. Who are ready to walk alone into the future without any other nation’s help  Favor me, says Musk the new Trump family member, and I will guide this new American presidency to ever greater economic power and even to the planet Mars.

That’s today’s dominant conceit while TV’s Saturday Night Live jokes on about senile Joe Biden.

As in most revolutions, American know what they do not like. Love to mock what’s left behind. And count on what comes next to be astonishingly better.