Sing Siri of the Mania of a Psychopath,

That cost the Americans incalculable pain 

Begin with the bond between The Tech Tycoon

And The Very Stable Genius  

Which of the immortals brought these two men

Into one another’s laps?

Classicists might see a Homeric style epic unfolding across the pond. Two male egos. Each vying for who will get the most attention. Except these two seem to be in each other’s pockets, for now at least. Everyone watching knows we are just at the beginning and no-one can quite bear to watch without putting their hands in front of their face. 

If there is one thing which our American friends possess in bucket-loads to inspire us with, it is their enthusiasm and optimism, even in the most difficult of situations. But this is not just a difficult situation. We all knew that the results in November were just the start and couldn’t present as the greatest nadir for their country, but they’ve barely had time to recover from the physical fires of January, before the psychological ones of the past week have been fanned too.

Is there a tinge of Schadenfreude mixed in with our horror, as the world watches the onslaught of calamities? The Nazi salutes not yet happening here, the firing of political dissidents in both the secret and foreign intelligence services, the threats to annex another country, the shutting down of aid agencies, to make Ukraine pay reparations and what amounts to a political coup, in the largest former democracy of the world, by an unelected psychopathic narcissist intent on world domination, purely to ensure no regulations can restrict whatever he feels entitled to do?

No-one can afford to be complacent when data is said to be stolen on unprecedented scales whilst Greenland is rebranded ‘Red White and Blue land’ and the Gulf of Mexico is turned into the Gulf of America. Many see these as transparent mechanisms to identify who will oppose the new mob, and who will keep their mouth shut. 

But who can afford to stay silent now? By making big statements about ending vaccines, medical research and DEI hiring and reporting requirements, the authorities are also distracting people from the stealthier measures being taken to disenfranchise women. 

If a US woman adopts her husband’s name, her name on the voting register won’t match the one on her birth certificate, so many women may stop having voting rights. If abortion or using birth control is made a felony charge, they could lose the right to vote on these grounds too.  

People who support Musk and emphasise how intelligent he is forget that no-one is universally intelligent or universally right about everything. Everyone has a weakness. Narcissism and greed might not be enough alone to be the downfall of a despot, but impulsiveness and amorality might be.

Achilles was once considered to be immortal until Paris famously found his weakness, that part of him which was left vulnerable after his mother dipped him in the River Styx as a baby. Whether you are a hero, or a villain, everyone has an Achilles’ heel. Perhaps the greatest legacy of this era will be that it forced people to finally abandon the algorithms of conflict, the forums where vanity, greed and hate commingle, showcasing the very worst sides of human nature, in favour of listening to others, humility, human feeling and nuanced debate. 

Never forget that anger can be the most powerful of all human emotions, one which not even the most sophisticated AI can reproduce. Anger is a fuel for justice. It can create the ideological movements of the future. The time will come when the age of disinformation will be supplanted by an age of fact, reason and empathy. Platforms like Substack are just one part of that movement. I just hope that some of us get to see the tide turn when it finally does.