It’s not just Navarro and The Muskrat who’ve gotten crosswise. The Dearest Donald and The Muskrat have gotten crosswise with each other.
Musk’s promoting an eventual outcome of zero mutual tariffs (contrary to Trump’s ideas about how to use tariffs) and Musk’s throwing shade on Navarro (Trump’s trade guru) are pretty direct challenges to …
It’s not just Navarro and The Muskrat who’ve gotten crosswise. The Dearest Donald and The Muskrat have gotten crosswise with each other.
Musk’s promoting an eventual outcome of zero mutual tariffs (contrary to Trump’s ideas about how to use tariffs) and Musk’s throwing shade on Navarro (Trump’s trade guru) are pretty direct challenges to Trump himself. Maybe Musk hopes that Trump will take a hint to retreat from his trade war and make Navarro the scapegoat for the trade war’s economic damage, which will harm Musk’s financial interests.
If it really is Musk’s hope that Trump will throw Navarro under the trade war bus and start looking for the nearest off ramp, Musk has probably miscalculated. Trump doesn’t like his fantasies to be challenged, he doesn’t like to retreat, and he sure as heck doesn’t like and never liked Elon Musk—for a reason that’s almost too obvious to mention: envy. Envy of Musk’s brains, wealth, influence, success, and cult-like status. In the deepest recesses of his feces-filled hollow heart, Trump hates Musk. For his part, Musk doesn’t hate Trump, but he is contemptuous of Trump. Musk thinks Trump is an easily-manipulated fool.
No matter how Trump and Musk perceive each other, we must have the imagination to perceive that both Trump and Musk are non-state actors. Neither feels a sense of duty or even loyalty to the United States, to any other country, or to a liberal world order. They will use, misuse, and abuse the levers, systems and processes of national governments and international institutions to their own advantage, but they do not considered themselves bound to those governments and institutions. They are extra-national figures, attached to no nation-uniting principle or aspiration. They are driven only by their egotistical sociopathic desires for wealth and power. They will do whatever they can get away with to obtain an advantage. They will stop at nothing.
When the world’s most powerful national executive comes into open conflict with the world’s richest man, neither of the two narcissistic, masochistic psychopaths is likely to back down. And that fight might quickly devolve into a virtual civil war, fought not with bullets, but with Trump wielding his regulatory and prosecutorial power against Musk and Musk’s allies, while Musk marshals his financial and high tech power against Trump and Trump’s allies.
In such a virtual civil war, our Republic and its people are likely to suffer grave and lasting damage. Whoever wins will win only because he was willing and able to deploy his power more effectively in extra-legal, quasi-legal, and unjust ways. After a man prevails in such a momentous struggle, he will perceive that he cannot remain secure if he stops acting unjustly. So he will continue to use his power unjustly, ever more unjustly, including the power he will have acquired from his rival by defeating him.
If Trump and Musk come into open conflict, our polity might not survive the contest.
It’s not just Navarro and The Muskrat who’ve gotten crosswise. The Dearest Donald and The Muskrat have gotten crosswise with each other.
Musk’s promoting an eventual outcome of zero mutual tariffs (contrary to Trump’s ideas about how to use tariffs) and Musk’s throwing shade on Navarro (Trump’s trade guru) are pretty direct challenges to Trump himself. Maybe Musk hopes that Trump will take a hint to retreat from his trade war and make Navarro the scapegoat for the trade war’s economic damage, which will harm Musk’s financial interests.
If it really is Musk’s hope that Trump will throw Navarro under the trade war bus and start looking for the nearest off ramp, Musk has probably miscalculated. Trump doesn’t like his fantasies to be challenged, he doesn’t like to retreat, and he sure as heck doesn’t like and never liked Elon Musk—for a reason that’s almost too obvious to mention: envy. Envy of Musk’s brains, wealth, influence, success, and cult-like status. In the deepest recesses of his feces-filled hollow heart, Trump hates Musk. For his part, Musk doesn’t hate Trump, but he is contemptuous of Trump. Musk thinks Trump is an easily-manipulated fool.
No matter how Trump and Musk perceive each other, we must have the imagination to perceive that both Trump and Musk are non-state actors. Neither feels a sense of duty or even loyalty to the United States, to any other country, or to a liberal world order. They will use, misuse, and abuse the levers, systems and processes of national governments and international institutions to their own advantage, but they do not considered themselves bound to those governments and institutions. They are extra-national figures, attached to no nation-uniting principle or aspiration. They are driven only by their egotistical sociopathic desires for wealth and power. They will do whatever they can get away with to obtain an advantage. They will stop at nothing.
When the world’s most powerful national executive comes into open conflict with the world’s richest man, neither of the two narcissistic, masochistic psychopaths is likely to back down. And that fight might quickly devolve into a virtual civil war, fought not with bullets, but with Trump wielding his regulatory and prosecutorial power against Musk and Musk’s allies, while Musk marshals his financial and high tech power against Trump and Trump’s allies.
In such a virtual civil war, our Republic and its people are likely to suffer grave and lasting damage. Whoever wins will win only because he was willing and able to deploy his power more effectively in extra-legal, quasi-legal, and unjust ways. After a man prevails in such a momentous struggle, he will perceive that he cannot remain secure if he stops acting unjustly. So he will continue to use his power unjustly, ever more unjustly, including the power he will have acquired from his rival by defeating him.
If Trump and Musk come into open conflict, our polity might not survive the contest.
Do all these people receive federal benefits and pension?