Here’s a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, “The Great Gatsby,” first published on April 10, 1925.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Tom and Daisy were young, beautiful and fun. Set in the middle of the roaring twenties, it’s still a great read. It reminds you of troubled and famous American couples in the decades since, such as Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Ike and Tina Turner and many more.
And here’s the strangest partnership of our time, a bromance between two billionaire eccentrics, both domineering, vastly talented and epically awful men; Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Both are rapacious and vicious, uninterested in anything that doesn’t involve more money, more power, more damage to their foes or more celebrity. In their view, we humble fools are either enemies or servants. Women are largely irrelevant, mere objects of fleeting desire (Trump) or babymakers (Musk).
In a long and varied life, I’ve never met anyone less representative of ordinary Americans. Yet they’re both insanely successful. Trump is basically a carnival barker, a superb scammer, attention getter and promoter. He’s the P.T. Barnum of his time, one who magnified Barnum’s wry view of the American public (“There’s a sucker born every minute!”) to a powerful creed (“They vote for me because I’m me!”).
In a long and varied life, I’ve never met anyone less representative of ordinary Americans.
Both of them have benefitted by a kind of credulous American optimism, both from naive simpletons (me!) to billionaire tech bros and sophisticated business analysts. Trump’s business history can be seen as inherently criminal, enviably successful or both. Musk’s Tesla makes a superb passenger car and a miserable utility truck (the cybertruck), but there’s one thing that it doesn’t make: money.
Investors seemed to believe that Musk could eventually create a true self-driving vehicle, but that belief has waned and the stock has declined. Its market capitalization is still in the stratosphere, though – $779 billion compared to GM’s $49.55 billion and Ford’s $39.74 billion.
Musk owns 13% of the shares, worth about $126 billion. Institutions own 49.3%, led by Vanguard Group, with 7.56%. Do these numbers make sense, or are they smoke and mirrors? Clearly, a lot of very smart investors think that Tesla is the future and other makers are stuck in the muddy past.
And what about the present? It was great theater when the billionaire bros used the White House as a background for a Tesla sales pitch in a transparent attempt to encourage gas-guzzling right-wingers to go electric. Will it work? That remains to be seen, but it likely infuriated the libs.
But like ‘em or hate ‘em, we’re stuck with Donnie & Elon.
Luckily, I’m not in the market for a new car. Our vehicles: a 2002 Xterra with 200,000 miles, a now paid-off 2020 Nissan Rogue and a 2004 Ford Thunderbird.
I love our T-Bird. It’s a reminder of a different time, of top-down convertibles, snarling exhausts, spacious roads and fun cars. It’s a nod to my past, as a hot-rodder and car buff in the 1950s, when cool cars were the rule, not the exception. Dwight D. Eisenhower was our President, and GM, Ford and Chrysler made our affordable and magnificent cars. My favorite: the ‘57 Chevy Convertible. And as spring comes, it’s time to take the T-Bird out of the garage and head for the open road. Forget politics, forget the Bros, roll down the window and live your life.
And no, my T-Bird isn’t for sale!
