My 2025 Venture: Beginning a New Column, “Hiding in Plain Sight”

Seven years in the past, whereas we have been each giving talks at a e-book honest in Northern California, I met creator Leslie Berlin. I picked up a replica of her e-book, Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age, after which put it on my bookshelves and (I’m sheepish to confess) promptly forgot about it.

Seven years later, with tech titans accumulating wealth at an insane trot and inserting themselves in ever-more-nefarious methods into the political course of, I lastly obtained round to studying it. It’s a marvelously eye-opening historical past of the primary a long time of Silicon Valley’s explosive progress. It chronicles how the high-tech innovators of the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, and their counterparts a technology later, went from being iconoclastic, rebellious figures to ultimately morphing into financial titans. Their corporations are a number of the largest and strongest on earth, they usually, as people, are among the many very richest people ever to have walked the planet.

I want that I’d learn Berlin’s e-book years in the past. It helped me acquire a deeper understanding of the cultural and political forces which have burst forth from Silicon Valley in current occasions, and the self-confidence cum hubris that defines so most of the valley’s elites. These technological whiz youngsters take no prisoners and have a tendency to have a outstanding lack of introspection. They consider they’re entitled to rule the universe, they usually have cultivated a rare system as a way to get there: of bulldozing their method into what they see as the longer term with little to no concern for the collateral harm.

That goes for the way tech billionaires have steamrolled conventional information organizations of their quest to regulate the messages and tales that customers see. And, more and more, it goes for the foundations and rules that traditionally have bounded that now oh-so-quaint preferrred of knowledgeable participatory democracy.

Need to perceive how and why Trump’s attraction proved so extraordinary within the November elections? Look to Elon Musk’s quarter-billion-dollar intervention, and his tipping the scales of X firmly in Trump’s favor, particularly when it got here to promoting to younger males. Take a look at the rumors that unfold like wildfire on Fb, with no sense of accountability from the company house owners for the hurt they brought on in individuals’s lives or the harm they did to the physique politic. Take a look at the ritual kissing of the ring carried out by Jeff Bezos and the way his Washington Publish ordered its staff to not endorse Kamala Harris. Take a look at Peter Thiel’s hard-right political agenda and his patronage of rising political stars corresponding to JD Vance.

And now, a lot of those self same billionaires are raking within the money. Bloomberg reported that Musk’s internet price has elevated upwards of 60 p.c because the election; the world’s richest man is now approaching the half-trillion-dollar mark. Bezos and Zuckerberg aren’t far behind. Between the three of them, they now have belongings within the $1 trillion vary. As Bernie Sanders not too long ago identified in a scathing tweet, it’s an completely grotesque accumulation of wealth and energy—and one which appears virtually sure to speed up as Trump’s American oligarchy kicks into excessive gear.

Making it extra grotesque is that Musk, America’s most in-your-face oligarch, is strutting his stuff as co-head of the newly established “Division of Authorities Effectivity,” charged with slashing federal spending. He has gone about it along with his normal lack of tact and dignity, focusing on particular person civil servants in social-media blasts; intimidating political figures who may need reservations concerning the scale of his proposals—or, certainly, the legitimacy of the unelected Musk’s mandate to unilaterally redesign all the federal authorities; denigrating the work habits of presidency civil servants, when his personal corporations face allegations that they’ve a office tradition tolerant of every thing from sexual harassment to racist messaging; and, most not too long ago, demanding that Congress not move a bipartisan spending invoice designed to maintain authorities operations functioning and federal staff receiving their much-needed paychecks.

When you don’t get heartburn on the sight of the world’s wealthiest particular person pretending to be a individuals’s tribune and goading on a pliant GOP-led Congress to close down the federal government and deprive a whole lot of 1000’s of federal staff their paychecks simply in time for the vacation season, I don’t know what is going to ruffle your feathers.

To not put too high-quality some extent on it, however Musk, with Trump’s full blessing, is treating America as he handled X; he’s concerning it as his private prize, as conquered company territory, its belongings to be disposed of how he sees match. And due course of be damned.

That a lot of America appears OK with Musk’s arrogating such excessive powers to himself is extraordinary. However then once more, a lot of our present political and cultural second is totally irregular.

And that brings me to the purpose of this column. Since early 2021, I’ve been writing my “Left Coast” column, exploring political developments and goings-on via the coastal and desert West. By my depend, that is quantity 180. I’ve liked each minute of it.

In writing columns on the Western states for 4 years, I’ve develop into ever extra satisfied that this a part of the nation is just now coming into its full political maturity and potential—and that, ultimately, it would play a key position in recalibrating America in a extra progressive path. However, with the approaching of a second Trump presidency, this one buttressed by the likes of Musk and his oligarchical henchmen, it’s time to refocus. And so, come the brand new yr, I shall be delving again into all issues Trumpworld.

My new column, “Hiding in Plain Sight,” will kick off in time for the inauguration of America’s first felony-convicted, insurrection-inspiring president. If, as so many people anticipate, this does certainly develop into a smash-and-grab presidency—an traditionally unprecedented train in grift, corruption, and cruelty, in addition to in spectacularly antidemocratic and authoritarian praxis—the media may have a very important position to play. My hope is that “Hiding in Plain Sight” will shine a lightweight on the darkish locations and ugly political realities that too many People, in casting their lot with Trump, are selecting to show a blind eye to. My intent is that, when horrible insurance policies and oligarchic offers kick in, when weak individuals are left much more weak by the Trumpian assault on the edifices of civil society, I can assist readers perceive the stakes and navigate the way in which ahead.

Two and a half centuries in the past, Thomas Paine wrote, in Frequent Sense, “Authorities, like costume, is the badge of misplaced innocence; the palaces of kings are constructed on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”

America’s new oligarchs are quick at work constructing their very own citadels atop the wreckage, not of paradise however of a vibrant albeit flawed American democracy. For years now, Trump has held our democracy captive, his supporters threatening bloody mayhem if he didn’t get his method. For years, his enablers have conspired in his assault on the very idea of reality and on the establishments that make potential a pluralist society and the peaceable switch of energy.

Now, regardless of his voluminous legal justice résumé, Trump is heading again to the White Home. He’ll, on January 20, increase his hand and swear a solemn oath to uphold the very Structure, and the very rules-based system of governance, that he desecrated 4 years in the past. Within the lengthy saga of America, it will, most absolutely, rank among the many most hypocritical of moments.

Cry, the beloved nation, the South African author Alan Paton as soon as wrote. It’s a very apropos phrase for our second. Sure, I shall cry. I shall weep for all the harm accomplished by these new would-be pharaohs. However then, I’ll get writing, as a result of that’s what I do.