There is such unbelievable faith in men who have continually failed to live up to it — an indomitable belief that this much money couldn’t be wrong, and that the people running these companies are anything other than selfish opportunists that will say what they need to as a means of getting what they want, and that they got there not through a combination of privilege, luck and connections, but through some sort of superior intellect and guile.

this is one of the most enduring, widespread and astonishing tendencies I see in people: they need to believe that the famous, wealthy or powerful have positive qualities. they enjoy inhabiting this fantasy; often doing so is an activity, one that can lead into a parasocial connection.

trump and musk obviously benefit from this, but liberals watching the velvet glove of snl or a late night show stroke a celebrity indulge in the fantasy as well. many of the most highly regarded items of liberal media are of this type; see Sorkin’s career, or the ultimately lovable conservative dad figure of 30 rock.

to be honest, I thought Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency would root out this tendency in people, but I was very wrong. tens of millions of people watched this man bleat out his every thought all day on twitter, including almost the entire media class, and nearly none of them seem to have permanently learned what that said about the relationship between success and merit.