GILDED RAGE

Financial reporter Silverman digs deep into why the richest part of wealthy California has swung to the extreme right.

There was a time when Elon Musk threw his money behind progressive candidates, when, supporting LGBTQ+ equality, he said, “People should be free to live their lives where their heart takes them.” That was before Democrats and progressives began talking about taxing the rich, anathema to the rich, of course, and after 2022 Musk threw himself far to the right, “his public persona utterly transformed,” now opposed to transgender people (including one of his children), undocumented immigrants, and wokeness in general. Just so, the less visible David Sacks put money into Gavin Newsom’s gubernatorial race, but then suddenly jolted to the right, funding a recall election. Some of the fascination with the right has to do with Silicon Valley’s commitment to disrupting things, whether moribund industries or government; but then, Silverman writes, Silicon Valley has always had its share of people on the far right, such as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who’s been all in for Trump to the extent that he bought into the movement to overturn the 2020 election results. The rightist movement, Silverman notes in a cogent argument, has been freshly awash in new money from the likes of Peter Thiel and a bunch of Saudi princes; it has used those funds to boost the MAGA movement and Trumpism in various ways, but it has also bought its way into government through defense-industry contracts, DOGE, and outright bribes, all with an eye to deregulating, undoing the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, and liberating supporters from the burden of having to pay their fair share. It makes for an ugly picture altogether, with a decided undercurrent of despair about our “rut of societal stagnation, decline, corruption, and mistrust.”

A book that should trouble your dreams.