Should You Give a S*** about being a S***?

 

It’s often said that one of the signs of being very rich is the fact that you can show the world that you really don’t care about everyone else. Look at the way some of the world’s billionaires dress. A lot of them are spectacularly shabby, because, well the rules about dressing to impress don’t really apply when you don’t need to impress anyone but everyone else needs to impress you.

The other big perk of being exceedingly wealthy is the fact that the very concept of work takes on a different meaning when you’re not doing it to survive. People like Bill Gates, for example, have moved away from the activity that made them spectacularly wealthy and moved to passion projects like saving the world.

So, in a sense, the ultra-wealthy are a boon to the rest of us. Take Bill Gates as an example. Mr. Gates, for the longest of times, on top of the rich list with a wealth comparable with a few nations and then, he gave it up and poured his fortune into making the world a better place. Whilst Mr. Gates wasn’t always the most popular billionaire (He didn’t push us to use the best software around – just his software), most people would say his contribution to humanity has been a net positive. Mr. Gates made being very wealthy easy (Just go work for Microsoft and get your stock options) and he’s throwing money at things like bringing sanitation to the world and finding a cure for HIV/AIDS. These are things which only the insane would say are bad. Likewise, there’s Mr. George Soros, who made his fortune cashing in on the incompetence of finance ministers, who has used his fortune to do things like promote more open societies.

So, whilst we may not like certain members of the ultra-elite, there are certain members of that circle who do good by putting their brains and fortunes to make the world a better place.

However, happens when members of that part of society decide that they should use their fortune to make society worse? The prime example is the richest man in history, Mr. Elon Musk, whose taken on a passion project of making the world a nastier place by giving credence to the world’s most shameless opportunist who only get potent when bashing up people significantly weaker than themselves.

Mr. Musk is well known for his backing of Mr. Trump, who recaptured the White House on the premise of ending crime by dark skinned people who do work that no one else will do and freeing violent criminals who actually attacked the national capital.

Once his boy got into power, Mr. Musk proceeded to p*** off the rest of the world by giving what looked suspiciously like a Nazi salute.

Mr. Musk would probably be an American farce if kept his focus within the USA. However, he hasn’t. Take his efforts to prove that he had no love for history’s most infamous political party, Mr. Musk proceeded to rally a political party that runs pretty much on a platform similar to the Nazis in the country that the Nazis mobilized to their awful deeds by telling the German people not to carry the guilt of their past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iB9SefG5Ow

 

Sure, nobody is saying that Germans shouldn’t be proud of their country. On the balance of things, Germany post 1945 has been good for the world. Modern Germany anchors Europe, which has moved from a continent where nobody could conceive of being at peace to one that nobody can conceive of being at war within a generation. There is also a case to say that Germany does get trapped in its past when it backs whatever Israel does unconditionally.

However, nobody, including a good many Germans (for the record, I have Germans that I call family) believe that Germany should never forget its past. The so called “guilt” has made it such that Germany has acted on the global stage through Europe and brought up the European continent as a whole.

Let’s think of who else Mr. Musk has befriended. In the UK, he’s decided that Nigel Farage of the Reform Party isn’t extreme enough and is looking for someone who makes Mr. Farage looks like one of life’s better specimens.

Again, let’s remember that Mr. Musk isn’t some troll in a basement. His net worth, which at the time of writing, is estimated by the Bloomberg Billionaire index stands at some US$422 billion. To put this in context, Mr. Musk is worth more than the GDP of Finland, a highly advanced economy. So, when Mr. Musk opens his mouth and makes pronouncements on various topics, he does so with a lot of weight behind him. Let’s not forget we live in an age where we worship wealth. We assume Mr. Musk is “smart” because his net worth is what it is.

The issue here is not that Mr. Musk is rich. He did what he did and got rewarded for it. By all accounts he’s a hard worker. However, the issue here is the fact that he’s gone out of his way to help social scum dominate the rest of us.

So, what can we do to limit someone with that much influence of things without banning wealth or freedom of expression? Yes, we do need more funds going into things like research to fund deadly diseases and lifting people out of poverty. We don’t need people funding the type of people that victimize the people who can’t fight back and do work. How do we encourage the very wealthy to give back rather than to throw s*** against the rest of us? These are questions we need to work on.

They Didn’t Think He’d Go for Them

 

Last night I had the privilege of having dinner with one of my favourite members of the legal community. We talked a bit about family history and mentioned that one of his aunt’s had fled German controlled Czechoslovakia for Shanghai during 40s. He’s Jewish and when mentioned that, I told him that my step grandfather had learnt to speak German from Jews in Shanghai, who had fled Germany and German controlled Europe.

What really struck me about my friend’s recalling of family history is the fact that he mentioned that whilst most of his family got out of Europe before the Nazi’s got serious about exterminating Jews, many of their contemporaries thought Hitler didn’t really mean them. It was a case of “he’s only going to go for the religious Jews,” and “not people like us who happen to be Jewish but aren’t strict about it and we’re so integrated into society, we’re actually like everyone else.”

This really struck me because we’re now living in an age where nations in the places that the rest of us look up to are becoming increasingly isolationist and things that were once considered “xenophobic” or “racist” and therefore “unacceptable” are now being seen as “truthful” and therefore “acceptable.”

I think of the Pork Guzzling Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who got the shock of his life when I told him that I got turned off Donald Trump the day he got onto a podium and talked about “Mexican Rapist.” Yes, I agree, all of us say “racist” things and have racist thoughts and I have to admit that I am guilty of it too. However, whilst I may the odd “racist” thought and say the “odd racist” thing, I am aware that it’s the ugly part of me and I like to think that a lot of people are like that too. Then, there’s the point that I’m a nobody and I’ll never get the levers of state power. So, when I’m at my ugly best, I’m just ugly and most right-thinking people avoid me.

However, it’s a different story when you talk about people with pubic platforms and ambitions for public office. Let’s go back to the fact that Adolf Hitler only succeeded at what he did succeed in because the people gave him the levers of the machinery of the state. That gave him ability to do the horrible things that he did. Had Hitler remained an unknown painter, nobody would have cared about what he said or did.

How did Hitler get to where he got to? The answer is simple, he found an easy target and the targeted them as the source of all problems. Whenever he said anything ugly about the Jews, the mases thought he was “telling it as it is.” The people with power thought he would be a “useful idiot” and so many backed him. The people with a few brain cells gave him lots of license because they didn’t treat him seriously and I’m sure plenty of people said he probably didn’t mean what he was saying and so on. Like it or not, Hitler was given the keys to the machinery of state and the rest is well documented.

For the longest of time, targeting any particular ethnic or religious group was unacceptable in any decent society. I think of the late Jean-Marie Le Penn of the National Front in France who ran for the Presidency five times. He hated every immigrant to France and his solution to all of France’s problems was centred around removing every French person of colour. Sure, he picked up votes but by and large the French voters thought of him as a “crazy old man.”

Unfortunately, we seem to be forgetting the lessons of the 30s. When Trump made his comment about Mexicans, you had lots of people rushing to defend these comments as “he didn’t really mean it,” or “may be, he didn’t say it very well.” Brushing Mexicans as rapist was a wonderful dog whistle for the guys who can’t get laid and let’s just put it this way, guys who can’t get laid tend to take it out on the reason why they can’t get laid.

Ironically, things have evolved and become more sophisticated. In France, Marianne Le Penn has successfully rebranded the “National Front,” and instead of ranting and raving, packages things in a simple but attractive way. It’s gone round the world.

Just look at the difference between Trump 2016 and Trump 2024. This time round things are more sophisticated, even if you have to listen to the rants about “eating dogs” from time to time. Trump has managed to get the “tech-titans” who once shunned him over to his side. This time he’s gotten “Latinos” despite all his rhetoric about mass deportations. Ask enough people of migrant stock as to why they’re voting for him and the answer is inevitably “He means Latinos crossing the border and not people like us who are well integrated into the rest of society.”

It cannot be a good sign when one of Mr. Trump’s big backers appears to give Nazi salutes at the inauguration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2bbb-6Clhs

 

Sure, not all of Mr. Trump’s ideas were bad. As my favourite Young Muslim Politician likes to say “Many Americans I know say he grew the economy.” However, whilst economic growth is important, it cannot come at a certain cost and let’s never forget that Adolf did grow the German economy for a while.

Let’s face it, if economic growth was the be all and end all of how you judge a government, then China’s Communist Party would be the best in human history. To the credit of the CCP, they have brought more people out of absolute poverty in a relatively short time (40 to 50 plus years) and so they must be good, never mind the Tibetans and Uighurs that they’ve gone out of their way to eradicate.

The public targeting of any particular group by anyone seeking office should be a reason why you should NEVER let them have the keys to the machinery of state. When someone, particularly someone seeking power blames every social woe on “Indians/Chinese/Blacks/Muslims/Jews/Christians/Gays etc,” they mean exactly that and not “Indians/Chinese/Blacks/Muslims/Jews/Christians/Gays like us who are part of the mainstream etc. Also remember that if someone target certain groups, they can definitely target yours when they run of excuses.