Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 01:43 pm
Elon Musk is Time’s Person of the Year and, conveniently, the richest man on Earth, with a fortune worth over $300 billion (depending on what day one counts and how one counts it). Time opens its article by immediately demonstrating one of its deepest flaws:
Despite shattering records this year with a net worth above $300 billion, Elon Musk demurs at being described as the richest person in the history of the world. “Excluding sovereigns,” Musk says wryly, adding that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is likely richer than he. “I can’t invade countries and stuff.”
Correct on any number of levels and let’s not get carried away. Rome once controlled everything from Ireland to Eastern Turkey. The British Empire once encompassed Canada, the Eastern American Coast, India, Pakistan, Australia, and the best deep water port in Southern China, the King at any given point was fairly wealthy. Let’s not get carried away.
But on this one, even Musk is wrong; “I can’t invade countries.”
Why not? With that much wealth, Musk has more money than a lot of countries on earth, and is someone really going to try to convince us that Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, and Musk’s companies don’t act like nation’s unto themselves? Can any single nation control these companies? We have already seen what the next wars will look like with Russian interference in our elections. Any of these companies could “invade” countries in a similar fashion. The point is less about how one defines sovereignty and more about who could stop these titans.
There is only one entity on earth that could, the United States government.
But not just any “United States” government. We are talking about the old school United States government, the one that followed laws and – for the most part – used its power to level the playing field domestically, and increase human rights around the world (that is a generalization), In other words, to varying degrees, the pre-Trump United States government.
The “United States” government, the one that was the democratic model for the world, is the same one that came to a hair width away from being tossed into history’s bin. We are still fighting for our democracy fully a year later and that’s what makes Time’s choice so ridiculous, so typical of modern media, so enamored with its own sophistication and nuance, instead of focusing on what’s happening in front of its face, the stuff that will have the most immediate impact on their lives.
Time has, in the past, named groups as “Persons of the Year,” and this year, the choice was quite obviously the people that preserved American democracy, Mike Pence is Time’s “Man of the Year” if they feel compelled to name one person. But the honor should expand outward to include Brad Raffensperger, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, Acting A.G. Jeffery Rosen, and some of the judges, the small, select group of people that actually preserved democracy in the United States, for now, and they did it at great danger to themselves, a danger that isn’t gone, by the way.
It has been clear since at least last March or April, especially after the publishing of I Alone Can Fix It, by Phil Rucker and Carole Leonnig, that there was an intentional, widespread, and complex plan to overthrow a fair American presidential election. Though the news breaking last week regarding the PowerPoint about militarizing the election was hot and a surprise, it is not a surprise that such plans were laid out so clearly and brazenly. It was not a surprise to hear they were prepared to do damned near anything and did. They simply didn’t do it well enough and it’s only because people like Pence, Raffensberger, etc. refused to follow Trump’s orders and did their duty under the Constitution, old school American government.
One didn’t need the PowerPoint to know that our government hinged upon Mike Pence, one needed only to have read the Washington Post article that included excerpts from “I Alone Can Fix It,” in which Pence refused to get into a Secret Service SUV for fear of a conspiracy to get him out and away from the Capitol. Obviously, had Pence refused to recognize electoral college votes (as Trump demanded) we’d have lost our democracy, but less obviously, had Pence gotten into that SUV we would have lost our democracy because that SUV wasn’t coming back to the Capitol that day and thus we’re outside the Constitution, which is all Trump wanted.
When your Vice President doesn’t trust your Secret Service because he senses a conspiracy to go against him, your country is in the midst of a coup. Pence, and a lot of others, stood up and didn’t let it happen. Joe Biden should get some credit also.
Time Magazine had a chance to highlight the obvious People of the Year, the heroes that saved democracy in the United States, there were less than one-hundred, total. They could have symbolically given it to Mike Pence alone and mentioned everyone else and they could have done it at a critical point in time, just as we’re beginning to learn the real details, just as executive privilege is falling away.
Instead, Time did what modern media does. It played it safe. It didn’t offend anyone. It focused on the sexiness of stardom, of money, of power, and not the boring mechanics of government. And again, ironically enough, we’re talking about the only government that is capable of standing up against Facebook, Twitter, and sovereigns like Musk, the United States government – the real one, the democratic one, the one whose power flows from the people united together, the one that was almost lost.
If the United States had fallen to Trump, we would be Russia, Trump could be bought, just like Putin is purchased. Musk could pay Trump $50 billion to put troops in Taiwan to keep the Chinese occupied (just a stupid example). See how that works? The American government is the only institution that keeps Musk, Zuck, Bezos, from being sovereigns, and we almost lost it. This call was obvious. So obvious, only a terrified modern American media company could screw it up.
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