Some of us are old enough to remember the regular edgy inquiries 10 years ago as to why this paper was so damned preoccupied by the activities of one Donald Trump when we had plenty of our own problems to reckon with. That free-range anxiety currently hovering in the ether may help explain it.
In previous years images of President Joe Biden awarding the Medal of Freedom to people such as Liz Cheney, George Soros and Bono might have looked like another clatter of wealthy privileged folk slapping each others’ backs. Last week it felt more like Biden’s last desperate message to an apathetic world.
“You’re like a dying wasp you are,” said Dublin criminal Gerard Hutch to RTÉ’s Paul Reynolds in November when the journalist doggedly challenged him at the election count. It was the first and worst insult the crime boss could think of and all the more stinging because it contained a germ of truth. Criminal reputations, corruption and crass ignorance are now badges of pride. That didn’t begin with Trump – we’ve had plenty of our own examples in politics, banking, property and elsewhere – but Trump gave it a public swagger that spawned imitators like flies. His latest notions about annexing Canada, Mexico or Greenland like a pound shop Putin are just what the Maga faithful expect – but only because the notions come wrapped in the flashy power of his wealth. To everyone else they sound psychotic.
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It allows Hutch to own properties around the world while simultaneously basking in the persona of Robin Hood, winning admiration and gratitude for his inner city philanthropy. It enables Conor McGregor to hire expensive legal services for himself and his co-accused, James Lawrence, in a civil rape case and to shrug off the jury’s €250,000 damages award against McGregor as “modest”. The jury found Lawrence had not assaulted Nikita Hand.
[ ‘I know what happened in that room’: the full story of the Conor McGregor caseOpens in new window ]
It empowers Trump to hire legions of lawyers, advisers and PR people to deny and delay the scores of legal actions against his lifelong frauds, bankruptcies, lawbreaking and sexual violations. Above all, it has catapulted Elon Musk to Trump’s right hand. “F u retard”, Musk replied on Monday to a Twitter/X poster who was urging the EU to take action against Musk’s global misinformation rampage.
If that response suggests that all is not well with him, the fact is that he would be gone long ago, were it not for the inoculation of wealth.
McGregor’s dismissal of the civil rape trial as a “kangaroo court” echoed the Trumpian petulance of men unaccustomed to pushback. Rich men will always have helpers like Gabriel Ernesto Rapisarda, an Italian self-described entrepreneur/celebrity agent/professional brand builder who recently declared that sales of McGregor’s Forged Irish Stout were booming in Italy and predicted a further sales “explosion” once the hotel CCTV footage of Hand, McGregor and Lawrence – shared with the parties solely for the trial – is aired this month. Presumably Gruppo CR, an affiliate of the giant Conad consortium of retail co-ops and warm family-first ethos, is aware of Rapisarda’s classy marketing tactics.
But for wealthy men like McGregor, the sales are incidental. It is about vindication.
“One of the biggest risks of wealth/power is no longer having anyone around you who can push back,” the US billionaire investor Chris Sacca wrote about Musk a couple of years ago. “A shrinking worldview combined with intellectual isolation leads to out-of-touch s**t ... I’ve recently watched those around him become increasingly sycophantic and opportunistic ... agreeing with him is easier, and there is more financial and social upside”. He could have been talking about Trump or any wealthy bully with a fragile ego.
It’s 14 years ago since young Occupy Wall Street activists spent 59 days protesting against economic inequality, corporate greed and money in politics. Eleven since the IMF’s Christine Lagarde and others were questioning the sustainability of capitalism itself. Eight since Trump was first elected on the promise of corporate tax cuts and deregulation (and carried it through). Six since Bono argued at a Davos World Economic Forum panel that “capitalism is not immoral – it’s amoral. It requires our instruction ...” It has taken more people out of poverty than any other ‘ism’, he said, but it is a wild beast that if not tamed can chew up a lot of people along the way. Who was listening?
The 13 billionaires tapped for Trump’s Cabinet alone have a combined net worth of €340 billion at least. Five of Silicon Valley’s finest including Google, Amazon, Meta, Tim Cook and Sam Altman have donated one million each to Trump’s inaugural parties. Trump himself will be the richest US president in history.
When the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead (allegedly by the scion of a wealthy family) last month and stunned every boardroom, the New York Times reported that 75,000 of the 80,000 reactions to the company’s sombre death announcement were laughing emojis. “The crisis for [big US] business is that it doesn’t understand quite how hated it is by millions of people,” commented former editor of The Sun turned corporate PR specialist, David Yelland. Mark Zuckerberg already spends about $30 million a year on personal security, according to Yelland.
That anxiety in the ether may be a useful reminder that wealth and its uses are rarely benevolent; that capitalism requires our instruction. And that sucking up to Trump will not leave us on the right side of history.