“I knew that one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down. What I didn’t expect, and don’t think I could have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be. I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.”
Rachel Shaw of The Guardian is writing, of course, about Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and the like.
I like these sentences a lot.
I also think this sentiment is both accurate and useful.
The worst thing you can do to someone like Musk, Zuckerberg, or Trump is to laugh at them.
Or even better:
Make fun of them in a way that causes others to laugh at them.
Lacking a healthy ego and a true sense of self, these spineless men demand capitulation and sycophancy to procure the love and respect they so desire because they cannot find it within themselves or willingly from the people around them.
This is the problem with the bully, the liar, and the confabulist:
They lack self-love, so they must demand, manipulate, or fabricate it from others, even if it’s incredibly obvious that the love expressed is false, forced, or expressed for self-gain.
Laughing at them is the last thing they want. It’s something that cringy losers like Donald Trump and Elon Musk cannot bear. They can’t make fun of themselves, and they especially really can’t abide others making fun of them.
It reminds them of who they believe themselves to be in the quiet of their hearts.
It’s a signal that their delicate facade is cracked. We see through their patina of bluster and braggadocio.
We also see them for who they truly are.
So keep it up, Rachel Shaw. Let these cringy losers know that we see their true selves with clear eyes and abject disgust.
