by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m hardcore dreamer and, as such, I like to keep tabs on what’s going on in Silicon Valley. I occasionally find myself listening to the “All-In” podcast. It’s usually interesting and informative and generally fun to get some sense of what tech bros “smartest guys in the room” are thinking about these days.
And then, sometimes, out of the blue, it gets really dark.
Several of the regulars on the podcast simply can not, will not shut up about how much they love Trump. What they’re really saying is they don’t believe in something as pedestrian as democracy and they want a nation run by the fascist concept of the “leadership principle.” They even occasionally come out and say it when they blurt out that they wish, “Elon Musk could be named king of America” or some such.
It’s all very frustrating because they cherry pick the elements of the Trumplandia era that fit their pre-conceived narrative. They praise Trump for “keeping us out of war” because he was a “populist” while totally ignoring the complete supernova of bullshit and anarchy that otherwise was his administration.
This seems very reminiscent of why German industrialists loved Hitler so much before, well, you know. He “made Germany great again” by managing inflation and you know the rest.
And, in all honesty, people who support Trump like those on All-In are, by far, the absolute worst form of MAGA. They should know better! And, yet, here we are. Because of a combination of greed and misguided contrarianism they support Trump and the rise of autocracy in the United States.
It’s stuff like this that again makes me think we’ve passed the event horizon for tyranny in the United States. When people who should know better willfully embrace autocracy, then, well, lulz, nothing matters. I suppose when autocracy comes to the United States they will find themselves in a situation similar to Russian oligarchs. They will travel freely around the world, and their lives won’t be any different — in fact, they will be better because they’ll pay even less taxes than they do today.
Of course, there is always the risk that there will be a civil war and these American oligarchs will be on the wrong side of history should the Blue States win. Now THAT would be interesting.
But I still don’t think we’re having a civil war. We’re just going to peacefully slip into autocracy, the All-In podcast participants cheering all the way.
