Dr. Evil

I knew it before it happened. Once the Trump campaign announced a rally at Madison Square Garden, my mind immediately went back to the 1939 Nazi rally, which Trump’s father attended.

Ironically (or maybe not!) there were more cops at the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in Washington Square Park. (Won, by the way, by a Staten Islander.)

I knew that MSG rally was going to be a shitshow of racist, misogynistic proportions. And it was. I mean, thanks for not disappointing? I had already voted the day before. And while I couldn’t bring myself to watch, I was doomscrolling the entire time. Glued to my chair, refreshing my laptop. Watching clip after clip of monstrous, proud bigotry.

Trump is getting his money from somewhere. Obviously if Elon Musk shows up at your rally and is, well, being insufferable, he is probably giving the campaign money. Peter Thiel is delighted to offer support. And Jeff Bezos….

His statement was a ridiculous attempt at self-justification. And, if you’re going to be an evil villain, wholly unnecessary. That’s the weirdest thing about today’s billionaires – they actually want to be liked.

No, dude. You do not get all the money in the universe, lock up basic rights like homeowning and health care, gaslight the people below you by saying “you should have done better,” and get likeability points. No billionaire is the good billionaire – with the single exception of MacKenzie Scott, Jeff’s ex-wife, who is privately donating her entire divorce settlement to organizations that focus on equity and justice, education, health, and a whole hoarde of other initiatives including funding HBCUs and arts programs.

No, you cannot be likeable. Your reasons for wanting to go to space are predicated on the continued trashing of Earth’s environment, with the trucks and puffy envelopes and “let’s get it to you now” which is so fucking addictive, I have yet to find a way to wean myself off of it that doesn’t involve getting in my car (with the attendant pollution) and trawling stores and taking time to seek out a bad facsimile of what I’m actually looking for…I mean, I hate it. I haven’t figured out a way around it, and that’s only part of Bezos’s fortune – it’s the least of it. AWS, Blue Origin, and other government procurement deals make Amazon indispensable to the very fabric of the world’s operations.

And yet Bezos wants to be liked. Have fun with that. Justify yourself to hell and back. You’re supporting Nazis. You’re no better than Hugo Boss, Mercedes, and an absolute host of others. You’re a clown, an appeaser, an obeyer-in-advance. There are plenty of us who loathe you and your kind, and I absolutely hate that there’s no nuance anymore – a vote for the Democratic Party is a vote to move away from oligarchs and their extremely weird attempts to force us all to live within their vision.