If the last couple of weeks haven’t convinced you that the obscenely wealthy are no better than the rest of us, nothing will.
Boy, do people in this country have a thing for the very rich. Americans seem to worship them, convinced they got that way because they’re smarter, and work harder, than anybody else. That’s no coincidence: Our up-by-the-bootstraps gospel — preached for so long, and leveraged by trickle-downers trying to avoid regulation and fair taxes — helps keep the very rich very rich.
But even the most devoted fans have had their commitment tested lately, as two of the country’s most celebrated rich people have further revealed the pathetic clowns behind their myths.
Born rich, Elon Musk has millions of folks convinced he is self-made, that he is some kind of genius whose big ideas will save us all. Since he bought Twitter, the onetime world’s richest man has shown himself to be a chaotic and clumsy manager and a trash-posting troll.
In less than two months since he vastly overpaid for the site at $44 billion, Musk has fired and driven away more than half of Twitter’s staff, and plenty of advertisers. He has attacked former employees, including accusing the platform’s former head of trust and safety of supporting pedophilia, causing him to flee his home. He has reinstated the accounts of Nazis and other scum, suspended journalists’ accounts, and presided over a surge in hateful rhetoric on the site. His erratic and constant tweeting — replete with conspiracy theories, crackpot logic, and juvenile memes — is driving users away too.
Musk has lost billions since the purchase, and is no longer the world’s richest man. Stock in Tesla, his electric car company, has been plummeting too.
None of this is very surprising to those who have been paying close attention to Musk over the years: It was all there, particularly in his conduct at the helm of Tesla. It’s just that Musk’s deplorable qualities are much more obvious now that he spends all day using his $44 billion toy to quench his bottomless thirst for attention.
As pathetic as he is, Musk looks positively dignified compared to former president Donald Trump, whose latest grift is below even the former president’s standards. On Thursday, after teasing “a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT,” Trump unveiled a digital store to sell cartoonish, digital trading cards at $99 each. The images are a cringe-fest, depicting an idealized Trump in various costumes and settings: as a superhero whose eyes shoot laser beams, an astronaut, a cowboy, a boxer. The NFTs, from which Trump profits personally, look like they were made by a 10-year-old.
In a video pitch, Trump boasted that as president he was “better than Lincoln, better than Washington.” Then he went full-on flimflam man: “These cards feature some of the really incredible artwork pertaining to my life and my career.”
The spectacle was so sad that even a few of Trump’s staunchest allies disapproved. They were fine when he was boasting about sexual assault, telling thousands of lies, and encouraging insurrection, but this kind of naked con crossed a line.
Will it — and Musk’s implosion — make more people question their reverence for the insanely wealthy, to conclude there is no inherent virtue in being rich? Perhaps on the margins, but the myth of meritocracy is pretty hard to shift. There are still legions on Twitter who maintain a cult-like devotion to its new owner. And Trump’s 44,000 NFTs sold out in a day.
But the big picture isn’t entirely grim. There are plenty of very rich people who use their good fortune to benefit others —- people like the late Edward Avedisian, the retired Boston Pops clarinetist who truly did come from nothing, got wealthy with some smart and gutsy investing, and recently donated $100 million to Boston University’s medical school.
And despite the mythology, plenty of Americans support Democratic efforts to impose fairer taxes on the luckiest of us. Here in Massachusetts, we took a step in that direction with the Fair Share Amendment, imposing a 4 percent surtax on net earnings over a million dollars. That measure barely got over the finish line, but now it’s law.
It’s a limited victory, but a real one. We’ll take it.
Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeAbraham.
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Pay no attention to the small men behind the curtain - The Boston Globe
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