Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s most turgid and unrealistic novel. An LA Times critic wrote at the time of its publication:
It is probably the worst piece of large fiction written since Miss Rand’s equally weighty “The Fountainhead.” Miss Rand writes in the breathless hyperbole of soap opera. Her characters are of billboard size; her situations incredible and illogical; her story is feverishly imaginative. It would be hard to find such a display of grotesque eccentricity outside an asylum. Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’: What the critics had to say in 1957
Now a new article in The Atlantic by Franklin Foer suggests Musk may be thinking he is the fulfillment of Rand’s dystopian fantasy: What Elon Musk Really Wants
Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the one poised to live out the ultimate techno-authoritarian fantasy. With his influence, he stands to capture the state, not just to enrich himself. His entanglement with Trump will be an Ayn Rand novel sprung to life, because Trump has explicitly invited Musk into the government to play the role of the master engineer, who redesigns the American state—and therefore American life—in his own image.
(Foer never mentions John Galt by name, but it’s clear who he means.) Musk, like all of Rand’s heroes, is a committed libertarian — no government interference (except when it benefits him; he has, in Foer’s estimate, over $15 billion dollars in federal contracts). Musk is working the voters for Trump’s benefit — or trying to, reports such as Exclusive: Pro-Trump group funded by Musk struggles with outreach targets (Reuters), "Plagued by Disarray"- Musk's PAC struggles with outreach targets, faked numbers, hiring workers (dKos), and Republicans Tell Trump That Elon Musk’s Super PAC Is Blowing It (Rolling Stone) show he’s not doing as good a job as he claims. But if Trump somehow wins, Musk will claim that he helped, and he expects to be rewarded for it:
Trump has already announced that he will place [Musk] in charge of a government-efficiency commission. Or, in the Trumpian vernacular, Musk will be the “secretary of cost-cutting.” SpaceX is the implied template: Musk will advocate for privatizing the government, outsourcing the affairs of state to nimble entrepreneurs and adroit technologists. That means there will be even more opportunities for his companies to score gargantuan contracts. . . . It is exactly the kind of sweeping change that suits Musk’s grandiose sense of his own place in human history.
However, I slightly disagree with Foer’s conclusion:
In an administration that brashly disrespects its critics, [Musk] wouldn’t need to fear congressional oversight and could brush aside any American who dares to question his role. Of all the risks posed by a second Trump term, this might be one of the most terrifying.
Here’s why: Musk has competition for the title, starting with Trump’s pick for VP, JD Vance. Vance has made no secret of his ambition to turn the US into a theocracy, and he could try to seize power through the 25th Amendment or simply wait for Trump to drop dead from rage or from one too many hamberders™. Vance’s version of theocracy is a radical Catholic version — “post-liberal Catholicism” — while other Trump backers have a Protestant plan for the theocracy — the New Apostolic Reformation (among others). In a Canadian interview with André Gagné, author of American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times (Routledge), the author makes this point:
Some of the evangelicals who support Trump believe that he was chosen by God to restore America to its Christian roots. . . .
The Christian right leaders I discuss in my book adhere to a political theology that is called “Dominion,” or what is referred to “Dominionism.” This is the theocratic idea that Christians are called by to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.
I have written any number of times of my concern that a Trump victory would be followed by open (and quite likely violent) conflict among the various would-be theocrats who each see Trump as their pathway to power and who each will not abide sharing power with the other. (There are evangelical Protestants who openly despise Catholics; radical Catholic views are more complicated theologically ; see J.D. Vance and the Rise of the ‘Postliberal’ Catholics for a sample.)
Let me make clear, as I have before, that I am not referring to all Catholics and Protestants, or even to the vast majority; my concern is over the extremists in each group who are hoping to seize political power so as to enshrine their extremism into policy and law.
Now add to this already volatile and combustible mixture Libertarians of the Musk persuasion, whose power, while individual rather than group, is nonetheless considerable (an inevitability, given the way we have pretty much always allowed the wealthy to play an outsized role in our politics). We may be seeing the approach of a multi-front battle over the carcass of America.
Which is all the more reason to GET OUT THE VOTE!!!!
