Billionaire Influence as America's Funhouse Mirror
Elon Musk is opening eyes to a problem that long predated him. He simply outperformed the oligarchs of the left.
The world is moving quite fast right now. Rather than a fully articulated essay, I will be putting out some short-form thoughts that I’m not seeing articulated elsewhere. I have many thoughts on the election, but for the moment, I am more interested in approaching it from alternative angles.
As a child, I always found myself terrified of funhouse mirrors at the county fair. No matter which way I turned, I would find my own appearance constantly waxing and waning. The claustrophobic environment would easily induce panic, even if I was just looking at a convex reflection of myself. American politics are feeling a bit like that today, especially when we’re stuck looking at something frightening that we all know to be real. Not only real, but a reflection of what we have created.
America has a billionaire problem. But what that problem looks like depends greatly on which media sources you consume and which ideological tent you call home. Are you concerned about Elon Musk, the tech mogul who loves trolling and antagonizing the Woke Mind Virus on his social media platform? Or perhaps you on the right, which would mean you are worried about Bill Gates, the former Microsoft CEO who has been funding questionable pharmaceutical initiatives and purchasing up American farmland in bulk?
There are dozens of billionaires and billionaire-funded political groups. Industries pay to influence what we see and how we vote. Voters on both the right and the left hate this reality, except for when these influences are working for the home team.
We could spend a lifetime conducting an exhaustive breakdown of how monied interests truly stack up against each other in elections. That may actually be fun to do as a type of fantasy football draft. Would the left’s Reid Hoffman be able to outperform the Koch brothers if you grab him in the first round? Is George Soros past his prime, or could he muster up some value as a late round pick due to his experience in the influence game? Can the crypto billionaires make a mark as political rookies? Maybe this is how ESPN can bolster their ratings.
In many ways, the 2024 election was one elaborate billionaire matchup. Chris Hedges saw this election as the battle between corporate and oligarchic power. I’m inclined to agree with his framing. This is why it’s harder for me to feel incensed about Elon Musk’s influence when you consider how right-aligned voters felt about the left’s influencers in 2008 and 2020. The same should be obvious for an increasing amount of blue-collar workers cheering on Musk because he chose the GOP. These billionaires matter more than ever, and we should look at their efforts on both sides of the political spectrum.
Kamala Harris’ campaign outspent Trump’s, but key contributions from Musk turned out to be quite influential in his victory. If this is what our democracy is driven by, I think we owe it to ourselves to stare the process in the mirror and reject the convenient narratives. The ones that say our opponents are bought and paid for while the billionaires funding our side are enlightened and self-sacrificing. This sort of worldview ends up turning us all into hypocritical patsies.
I have seen way too many on the left rail against Musk this week, only to conveniently forget when big tech platforms supposedly helped Trump win in 2016, only for them to swing left in 2020. Heck, the left was downright excited when these oligarchs colluded with the democrats to limit conservative political speech during COVID. There are many examples of this sort of cognitive dissonance. When you only see the boogiemen where you want to see them, you do the elites a favor and become easy to manipulate.
I am not interested in campaigning for either team of billionaires. All I hope is that my opinions end up impacted by billionaires as little as possible. That is core to my skepticism of mainstream media, and it should be core your skepticism as well. Because no matter which candidate you backed or what you read in the news today, you are downstream of a wealthy person’s influence. Let’s face that with clear eyes.