It seems to me that the experience of knowingly doing wrong is all-too-common. The coward, the hypocrite, the sell-out, the swindler—these people generally know that they are violating every standard of goodness, including their own.
In recent years, I’ve watched several friends who I once believed to be good, or at least good enough, become ethically grotesque. This has been disconcerting, for many reasons. I’m at a stage in life when one imagines that one better understands, and accepts, human frailty. It is, therefore, startling to realize that the list of people with whom I can no longer safely share a dinner table is growing, rather than shrinking. It says that one shouldn’t worry about the speck in another’s eye when there is a beam in one’s own. I admit that there is some generic wisdom in this, but I can’t pretend to believe that I have less integrity than the people I am now judging—for it simply isn’t so. These former friends are saying and doing things that are unethical. Knowing this, I believe I am right to find their behavior contemptible. It's possible, however, that my friends didn’t change, or didn’t change much, and that I just happen to be a terrible judge of character. If so, I’m not sure what to do with this bit of self-knowledge, apart from becoming slower to decide that I like people—which seems like a depressing lesson to learn. It would be tempting to simply ignore these developments, if it weren’t for the fact that some of these former friends have large public profiles and are actively poisoning our culture with lies. Most have joined the cult of venality and abject loyalty that surrounds President Trump. I won’t name them—though anyone who has followed my work over the years can probably read between these lines—apart from one, as he is now the primary offender on planet Earth: Elon Musk. I have discussed Elon’s unraveling several times already. And I admit that this is getting tedious. However, it is hard to think of a person who is doing more harm to global culture at this moment than he is. Invariably, one encounters in these MAGA cultists a brazen unwillingness or inability to explain themselves. Their poverty of language indicates, in almost every case, a poverty of ideas—of historical knowledge, moral imagination, and much else. Instead of explaining their actions, they grind down their critics with inane boasts and impossible lies. The result is that we are now witnessing a sordid parody of governance that doesn’t so much as nod in the direction of higher principles—neither toward a shared national destiny at home nor toward the defense of common humanity abroad. For these people, and for the America they now rule, nothing exists but leaden self-interest. I’m sure that everyone in Elon’s circle now recognizes that there is something seriously wrong with his ethics. However, I suspect that very few have said anything about this to him directly. Some are cowards, of course, but many probably realize that the man now lives in a digital oblivion, beyond reach of honest feedback. For months, Elon has been prowling the halls of American power like the High Sparrow, striking fear in public servants over whom he should hold no power. While no one is actually against cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse” from the federal budget, Elon and his Faith Militant aren’t nearly as good at detecting these sins as they pretend. They make absurd errors, which they then conceal or lie about. They have also cut many jobs and programs that no sane American would want to lose. And for all their vaunted commitment to efficiency, they may actually be increasing the federal deficit. In the end, it seems likely that DOGE will turn out to be a political and economic sham, an irresistible invitation to espionage, and a colossal act of national self-harm. Consider Elon’s gleeful dismantling of USAID, which may have violated the Constitution. Whether legal or not, there is little question that he and his DOGE minions now have blood on their hands. While they would surely deny this, the claim seems uncontroversial. One cannot suddenly suspend treatment for AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis to millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and not kill many of them as a result. At least a million are expected to die this year alone, if these programs are not reinstated. No doubt streamlining the federal government is hard work, and it would demand agonizing choices even if done with the best of intentions. But then, just think of how easy it would be for Elon to communicate his awareness of the moral complexity of the task. Instead of saying anything remotely sensible or compassionate, the man just vilifies our nation’s civil servants on X. It has become quite clear from all the pointless noise he creates, and from all the lies he tells while doing it, that Elon doesn’t care about the consequences of his actions. And now he has turned his attention to entitlements—which, admittedly, will have to be cut if DOGE is to realize any of its stated goals. Rather than say anything sane on this politically fraught topic, Elon is spreading the vulgar delusion that the Democratic Party has been using Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to “attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants and buy voters.” Someone should tell him that undocumented immigrants can’t vote and that naturalized immigrants represent no more than 10 percent of those eligible to do so. And then someone should remind him that a majority of these immigrants voted Republican in the last election. There’s a long tradition in philosophy, both western and eastern, which holds that virtue is a form of knowledge—and thus that evil can only result from ignorance. In Protagoras, Socrates claims that no one knowingly does what is morally wrong. A similar argument is central to the teachings of the Buddha. If true, we could say that behind every moral error lurks a cognitive one. The opinions of Socrates and the Buddha notwithstanding, it seems to me that the experience of knowingly doing wrong is all-too-common. The coward, the hypocrite, the sell-out, the swindler—these people generally know that they are violating every standard of goodness, including their own. Elon built his companies on federal loans and subsidies, and yet he now pretends that our government is nothing more than a trough of bad incentives. Surely he has caught a whiff of his own hypocrisy? I believe he knows that it is wrong—and, in fact, morally obscene—for the world’s richest man to personally revoke medical aid from the world’s poorest women and children, and to then publicly celebrate the resulting chaos, all the while securing billions of dollars in government contracts for his own businesses. He must know that it is wrong to amplify the delusions white supremacists, antisemites, and conspiracist loons to hundreds of millions of people, poisoning our politics in the process. The man is not a moron. He knows that by battering his way into the inner sanctum of the MAGA cult, he has allied himself with kooks, charlatans, psychopaths, and grifters—and with a president who is nothing if not the very avatar of personal corruption. Elon has now joined the ranks of those who are utterly incapable of self-scrutiny or compunction. These people do not admit their errors, much less apologize for them. And in response to criticism, however sound, they produce vicious absurdities that aren’t fit to be believed by even their most fanatical supporters. Rather, each lie is a test of loyalty. And Elon appears eager to pass them all. I think it is safe to say that Elon’s friends, colleagues, employees, and customers understand how ethically compromised he has become. One can only hope that it will eventually matter to them and that they can help bring the man back to Earth. |
