NO SHAME: Trump and Musk defile a national symbol

Their project is a corruption of the spirit. How is it even legal?

If one image encapsulates the crude corruption of our time, it might be this one: Donald Trump and his benefactor-lackey Elon Musk leering at innocent Teslas parked on the White House driveway. The spectacle of this klepto-oligarchy hawking wares on ground where Lincoln once did tread was so vulgar as to make a used car lot look dignified by comparison.

This, because a billionaire who controls information, transportation, and even space travel spent a mountain of cash to basically purchase a position as unelected co-president. Musk’s role in Trump’s reelection bid — and his subsequent political rewards — exemplifies the deep entanglement of money and power in America in a manner so excruciating that even the most complacent should be contemplating how things went so horribly wrong.

Musk’s earlier purchase of Twitter (now X) turned the platform into a political juggernaut for the right, amplifying anti-woke and anti-liberal rhetoric; his public endorsement of Trump, the far-right AfD party in Germany, and anti-EU forces all over Europe directly impacted political landscapes all over; and now he, as the world’s richest man, struts about obliterating global foreign aid and slashing domestic entitlement programs, immiserating millions.

Though Musk’s DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency, Orwellian even in its naming aesthetic) claims to target inefficiency and waste — which undoubtedly exist — the transparent actual endgame is insidious: dismantling the very gatekeepers and regulators that serve as checks on corporate overreach, while slashing programs aimed at lifting up the poor.