If Donald is a hero, Elon is the quintessential antihero

In The Apprentice, a biopic, Donald Trump is portrayed as a young man barely out of his father’s shadow but raring to make his independent mark. His father was a patriarch both in the business and the family. Donald wanted to break free from the cudgels of the old man’s legacy and redefine himself as an alpha male in the mold of his vision. Roy Cohn, a shrewd lawyer with flexible principles, soon noticed Donald’s hunger, the fire in his belly to succeed, make profits, and lord over New York’s real estate business. If anyone wants to be fabulously successful, one must not squirm with morality, ethics be damned, and there are only three rules to follow to make the world an oyster. The first rule is “attack, attack, attack,” he mentored Donald. The second rule is “deny, deny, deny” any wrongdoing. The final wisdom is “never accept defeat.”
Donald Trump took these rules to his heart and heartland of business and politics, and since then, he has never looked back. At one point, he litigated against the mayor of New York and grabbed a permit to build the iconic Trump Tower in the city’s restricted zone. If he committed any peccadilloes, he always denied them. Do crimes, but deny them all the time was his motto in theory and practice. He built his business empire on the back of lies, deceit, intimidation and never apologising.
The irony is that Donald Trump applied these rules to his mentor, who taught and gave him counsel and street wisdom during his worst crisis. Roy Cohn toughened Donald to survive and thrive in the world of capitalist sharks. In one poignant scene, when Cohn felt sick and was dying of HIV, the protege felt no empathy or gratitude but instead presented the old master with a fake diamond cufflink to mock him in a sadistic manner. Donald embodied the letter and spirit of his Guru’s belief that “nothing is right or wrong. The concept is all a fiction for the losers.”
Nevertheless, Donald Trump is an archetypal hero and his life follows the narrative arc of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Owing to his birth and fate, he found himself in the hypercompetitive world of the real estate business, faced financial ruin, decided to take on rivals, met a mentor, faced trials and tribulations during the journey, changed course, dived into politics and finally came out victorious despite setbacks. (For those new to this man, Donald Trump is the 47th President-elect of the United States.)
In every Hero’s story, there must be a Trickster. Elon Musk is that person, the mischievous and unorthodox character who immensely helped the hero along the way. While other tech moguls shied away from the presidential election, Elon fired all the cylinders of his space-age companies, particularly the X platform, to support Donald Trump’s campaign. In the run-up to the elections, X became the Facebook of Donald Trump, saturating the social media platform with rhetoric, polemics, and advertisements for the Republican candidate.
In reality, Elon Musk is not a dumb trickster of the conventional mythology. He is an antihero who strongly believes in a future run by technocrats and AI in which men will control outer space and colonise exoplanets. He is the antihero of the James Bond films that came to life. Donald Trump is the Trojan Horse to his sci-fi dreams, which is why we are witnessing the perfect symbiosis between a politician and an inventor, feeding each other’s fantasies. Adapting to form, Elon has quickly donned the role of Donald’s confidante. “Come bro, talk to Volodymy Zelenskyy. He’s on the phone,” Donald pulled Elon’s hands to the hotline to the Ukrainian President. Already, SpaceX is the new NASA and its CEO the defacto Secretary for government efficiency (read Tesla).
Whatever plans these two unlikely partners will hatch, the world is going to change as the United States is the bellwether for all government leaders. Most nations will implant their version of MAGA ideology from Vision 2025 and not from the Statue of Liberty and what it represents. Being ideologically rigid will be cool again. Clip the wings of free-spirited women by banning abortion and enforcing conservative policies. Root out the insubordinate deep state or bring it down to its knees in the open. Immigration will not be a catwalk anymore. Jingoism will be flaunted. Protectionism in trade and commerce will replace globalisation. America will care foremost for itself under Donald Trump and will cut its humanitarian aid to non-Americans. NATO will go nuts when Donald treats it like a waste paper. Gaza may be flattened and deleted from the face of Earth. Who knows?
The critical lesson for democracy is that its power comes from the vast majority of the ordinary people, not from the ideology and preferences of the elites and college-educated pundits. History never ends, and the rise of authoritarian nationalism is proof that the liberal model of political organisation is neither adequate nor final. Liberal media will no longer be the intellectual barrel of political power. It will be subsumed by FOX-type mouthpieces, digested, and reborn in X avatars.
In a stark preview of future discourse, Elon Musk reposted a post proposing that democracy should be exclusively run by T-males, free-thinking people, and aneurotypical (neurodivergent) types, not by consensus or conformity out of fear bred by biological limitations. He added his remark, “Interesting.” This may be labelled X-rated masochism and misogyny.
Talking of gender relations, Donald Trump said his administration would recognise only male and female genders and make all other gender categories illegal.
Men will be men.