Donald Trump and Elon Musk Invent the Wheel – Fair Observer

No one can claim that US president Donald Trump lacks empathy for at least some of the downtrodden. Interviewed by CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump responded to a question about Elon Musk. Given all that Musk has been through in recent times, Trump acknowledges that the poor fellow deserves the pity his fellow billionaires. After all, Musk has been denigrated by multiple critics in the past 18 months, even, on occasion, excoriated in the Daily Devils Dictionary. As Teslas CEO, he has been under regulatory scrutiny after the Security Exchange Commission accused him of fraud for attempting to manipulate share prices.

Conscience of the injustice done to Musk due simply to his sometimes unorthodox business practices, Trump praised the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company and Neuralink because he likes rockets and he does good at rockets too. Trump then added this pertinent comment: I was worried about him, because hes one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius. You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with, originally, the lightbulb, and the wheel and all of these things.

Here is todays3D definition:

Protect:

Enshrine the already successful and extremely wealthy, granting them the status of unassailable icons to ensure their limitless prosperity and deflect any criticism of their methods or actions.

Describing Trumps CNBC interview, The New York Times dryly and indulgently explains that President Trump reflected the enthusiasm that many investors have for Mr. Musk, comparing him to Thomas Edison and describing him as one of our great geniuses. In the same article, The Times provides an evaluation of Musks fortune. We learn that Forbes and Bloomberg estimate Mr. Musks current net worth at about $32 billion before being reminded that, according to the exceptional compensation deal recently voted by the Tesla board of directions, Mr. Musk could receive up to $55 billion in compensation.

As Trumpinsists, Musk is in dire need of the governments and societys protection. Hefears that people like Musk are may be left by the wayside. We want to cherishthose people, he told his CNBC interviewer. Musk and others like him need tobe encouraged in their noble quest to add to the billions they already possess.Otherwise, unloved and insufficiently pampered, they might choose to crawl backinto their shells and deprive humanity of the searing light of their genius.

From Trumps Davos interview, most commentators have highlighted the presidents apparent belief that the wheel is an American invention. Some, like the Huffington Post, have taken the trouble to point out that the wheel was invented some 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. Two hypotheses may account for Trumps attribution. The first is that, as the US continues to occupy Iraq against the Iraqi governments own wishes, Trump may consider it licit to claim the industrial property rights on Iraqs inventions as repayment for the burdensome cost of sending an army in to massacre its people and spread chaos throughout the region.

The second seems more credible. Trump, like any 10-year-old schoolboy, knows that the invention of the wheel was a prehistoric accomplishment and couldnt have been invented in America. But the wheel Trump was referencing isnt the one you find on vehicles. Its the Wheel of Fortune, the popular TV show often simply called Wheel. It has been running since 1975 and is now a fixture of US consumer culture. It was invented by another billionaire, TV game show creator and host, Merv Griffin.

This reference to television should have been obvious since in the same interview Trump revealed his understanding of what he sees essentially as a two-class system in the US. At the top, we find the billionaires, like Trump and Musk, stable geniuses who are abused not only by villainous critics jealous of their success but also the media. They are crying out for protection. At the bottom subsists a vast class called consumers, represented, in Trumps mind, by an individual he refers to as the consumer. In the interview Trump made this clear when he announced this basic truth: The consumer has never been so rich We have a consumer that has never done so well.

This vision ofsociety is extremely coherent. Listening to the full 19-minute interview makesTrumps vision extremely clear. On one side, you have the billionaires whoserve three essential purposes in society, besides earning excessive fortunesfor themselves. They create jobs for the hapless but rich consumers; throughthe products they invent and control, they secure valuable industrial propertyrights that should not be stolen by other nations; and they create a vast arrayof goods the consumer class will buy to affirm its status as citizen consumersof the capitalist republic.

As Trump tells it, the consumer is now basking in the glory afforded by the wealth shared by the entire consumer class. Consumers are so well-off these days that an impressive proportion of them can now afford to consume luxury products such as the opioids they are increasingly addicted to. Diabetics find it a bit more difficult to procure insulin, but Trump intends to address that problem in his second term.

In themeantime, billionaires add billions to their already impressive fortunes,protected by the government and its bloated military, whose essentially purposeis to guarantee their unfettered access to the worlds resources. And thanks totheir fortunes, they also provide jobs and a growing catalogue of shiny,well-packaged products to consume in an increasingly deregulated economy thatTrump promises will be even more prosperous as soon asthe Fed gets aroundto implementing negative interest rates.

Such is Trumpsvision of the US economy and society three years after taking office. On thesame day as the interview, Trumps Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin grappledwith 17-year-old Greta Thunberg at Davos, informing her that he will listen toher musings only after she goes and studies economics in college. He mighthave said, more fittingly, the same thing to Trump after listening to TrumpsDavos interview. But of course Trump did study economics at Wharton.

Some think that when Thunberg graduates high school, she might be better off studying a subject less prone to pure hyperreal fantasy than economics.

Half ofhumanity or rather half of the human oligarchy that runs the economy believes in the hyperreal success story of Elon Musk. Apparently, another halfsees it in a different light, as a manifestation of hyperreality, a bit ofinflated fiction that seduces the media who, in turn, use it to trigger theadulation of broad swathes of the public.

A recent article in Forbes sums up the dispute about believing in Musk and cherishing his contribution. Its author, Amiyatosh Purnanandam, writes: Elon Musk thinks Tesla will change the world. Short-seller Jim Chanos believes it is a worthless enterprise. One of them has to be wrong, and the wrong one will lose a fortune. On the subject of Musks eventual astronomic payout of $50 billion, The New York Times quotes Bob Sloan, the founder of financial services firm S3 Partners: The amount is just telling you that the soap opera continues.

The story ofMusks rise to the level of cultural icon over the past 10 years bringstogether all the ingredients required for the production of unadulteratedhyperreality: his flogging of futuristic technology, the mountains of venturecapital, Musks provocative personality, his unbounded appetite for practicallyany wild idea derived from science fiction that he can convince other people tofund and, concerning Tesla alone, the entire myth built around a largelyunsubstantial promise by which the company claims to be about improving theworld and saving humanity from the recognized threat of global warming.

This is what weare asked to believe: Rich people driving expensive cars will usher in a new utopiathanks to electric vehicles destined to solve the climate crisis bydemonstrating that humanity (starting at a certain level of income or networth) no longer depend on fossil fuel.

And if all those future self-driving electric cars dont end up solving the climate crisis, Musk will provide the rockets that will enable humanity to move to Mars. He is already blanketing the Earths atmosphere with tens of thousands of satellites astronomers on earth are complaining will hamper their ability to observe the universe. But, as Trump says, Musk is good at rockets and wants to use the satellites to position himself as the worlds number one internet access provider. This may incite the astronomers to be the first to book passage on a SpaceX rocket, if only to set up business on Mars, where they will be able to observe the universe unencumbered.

All this illustrates a deeper problem in society as a whole. As with climate change, human civilization finds itself at a historical turning point, in which the stakes have become survival or extinction. In this context, the success or failure of Tesla and SpaceX will serve as a metaphor for the fate of the planet and its inhabitants. Some think the planet and its economy will thrive, others see it coursing toward extinction. Both of Musks favorite solutions the electric car and rockets that will permit the colonization of Mars skirt the real questions humanity is dealing with.

Tesla and SpaceX are modern enterprises focused not on achieving some generous goal, but on establishing a monopolistic position through the uniqueness of their offer with the goal of gaining a captive market that will translate into maximum profit. In other words, the future of humanity when things are left in the hands of people like Trump and Musk turns out to be an exaggeration of the worst trends of the recent past. Its about a small group of people controlling simultaneously the worlds resources and the principle levers of the human economy or whats left of that economy before those who can afford it will need to book their SpaceX rocket ticket to Mars.

[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devils Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk Invent the Wheel - Fair Observer