America’s democracy has long been offered to the highest bidder. The difference at this moment is the impudence with which the president-elect calculates everything in terms of transaction
Zuckerberg eliminates fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram for a model like Elon Musk’s at X
Reader, I was wrong. Terribly wrong. It pains me to admit it, but in the distant past (last year) I wrote very unpleasant things about Donald Trump and his family. But now that I’m older and wiser I realize how wrong I was. Let me set the record straight: the incoming president is an exceptionally attractive man with an incredibly high IQ. We can all count ourselves lucky that this stable genius took time out of his busy golf schedule to lead the free world to prosperity.
How do you see it? Have I been flattering enough or do I still need to be more? I ask this because, as you have no doubt noticed, the genuflections to the great merchant Trump are intensifying as the inauguration approaches. Business leaders are breaking records with the money they are investing in the Republican magnate’s endowment fund.
“EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote in December on his social network Truth Social. It’s clear that Mark Zuckerberg wants to. Not only has he praised the incoming president as a “bad guy,” but he has readjusted Meta’s leadership to make it closer to Trump, naming Dana White, a martial arts entrepreneur and ally of the president-elect, as a member of the council. The former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom Nick Clegg leaves the position of president of global affairs at Meta (with several million in his pocket) to be replaced by Joel Kaplan, the most prominent conservative voice at the social media company, known for supporting the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he faced sexual abuse allegations.
Meta is also removing people in charge of checking the veracity of what is published and getting rid of restrictions on what can be said on topics such as gender and immigration. So I guess Meta won’t have a problem if Trump wants to keep spreading hoaxes about immigrants eating cats in Ohio.
But in the submission Olympics, Jeff Bezos isn’t letting Zuck win easily. Ann Telnaes has recently resigned from her job as a cartoonist for the Washington Post in response to the Bezos-owned newspaper’s refusal to publish a satirical cartoon in which the Amazon founder and other tech titans knelt before Trump. The opinion leader argued that the only reason for removing the vignette was that the Washington Post He had already published a column on the subject. Telnaes did not seem to agree. In an article posted on the newsletter portal Substack, he said the newspaper’s decision is “dangerous for a free press.” He Washington Post It also made the news last year, after the editorial team was vetoed from expressing its support for Kamala Harris.
Bezos isn’t just sucking up to Trump. The division of streaming Amazon, its other creature, announced this Sunday the launch of a documentary about Melania Trump with unprecedented access to the “behind the scenes” of the next first lady. Filmmaker Brett Ratner is the director of the documentary, his first major project after at least six women accused him of sexual misconduct in 2017. It is not known if the Trump family charges to participate in the film, but the general consensus is that It is less of a documentary than an advertorial. Melania has become known for how extremely private she is. Unless she’s the one making the rules, you can’t imagine her allowing anyone behind the scenes.
What other projects does Amazon have in hand to seduce Trump? Would it be possible to have a program with Ivanka Trump that emulates that of the Duchess of Sussex, giving fashion and beauty advice? Another possibility is that Tiffany Trump could finally make her dream of being a pop star a reality (her father-in-law is Trump’s new Middle East advisor). It is not possible to know yet, but one thing does seem terribly certain: the rush of the economic elites to get on Trump’s good side demonstrates that the Republican billionaire’s conquest of the United States is comprehensive. We live in the era of oligarchy.
Of course, this is not (only) Trump’s doing. That the Republican has reached a second presidency is a symptom of a system that does not work, not its cause. The United States has long offered itself to the highest bidder, with power consolidating for decades around a dwindling number of people. A process promoted in 2010 by the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, which cleared the way for politics to receive practically unlimited monetary donations.
But the difference now is the impudence with which Trump calculates everything in terms of a transaction. If there is a silver lining, perhaps it is in the transparency with which everything is done. The United States has long considered itself an exception, a beacon of democracy nothing like oligarchic Russia. But this illusion of American exceptionalism becomes more difficult to maintain with the crude modus operandi of Trump.
That’s a good thing. You can’t change what you don’t see. It is time to recognize that democracy does not die alone in darkness [como reza el eslogan del Washington Post]. He has been dying for years in front of everyone.
Translation by Francisco de Zárate.
#flattery #open #doors #Trump #Billionaires #set #find
