Henry Giroux: Trillionaire Politics Is the End Point of a Politics Inhabited By the Walking Dead

 As always, Henry Giroux is spot on!

 Blessed be the truth-tellers, the wisdom-keepers,

and all who empower us to be informed, wake up, 

and act together in solidary for a higher good!

― Molly

Elon Musk is less an aberration than the grotesque byproduct of a capitalist order that converts inequality into virtue and exploitation into spectacle.

The hyped-news of Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire is not a triumph of human progress and individual initiative but a symptom of a deeper social and political crisis. It is about the power of class privilege, and the corrupting forces that give life to gangster capitalism. Musk is symptomatic of the rot of a capitalist system that generates staggering inequalities while concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a tiny elite whose fortunes depend not only on markets, but on public subsidies, collective labor, social institutions, and shared resources ― not to mention an ideology filled with the mobilizing passions of authoritarianism and white supremacy ― at least in the age of Trump.

Yet this development also exposes the power of a culture and public pedagogy that normalizes and celebrates massive and staggering inequities in wealth and power. In a society saturated by the myths of entrepreneurial genius and limitless success, extreme concentrations of wealth are legitimated as objects of admiration rather than outrage. The scandal is not simply that one person possesses more wealth than entire nations while millions struggle to survive; it is that people are taught to view this grotesque form of imbalance as natural, inevitable, and even desirable.

Under these conditions, inequality becomes a spectacle sustained by a lethal public pedagogy in which exploitation is rebranded as achievement, and democracy itself is endangered as economic power increasingly shapes politics, public discourse, and everyday life. Trillionaire politics is the end point of a politics inhabited by the walking dead. The first trillionaire is not a monument to individual greatness but an indictment of a corrupt social order that mistakes unchecked power and toxic masculinity for success and falsely educates citizens to applaud their own dispossession, misery, loneliness, and suffering.

My extended article on Musk will be published Friday in CounterPunch.

― Henry Giroux

https://www.counterpunch.org/author/giroux-henry/