They successfully management our fates, however deep down, they know they’re sniveling, pathetic, and insufficient, and it eats them up.
Elon Musk and Stephen Miller throughout a gathering within the Oval Workplace on Thursday, February 13, 2025.
(Francis Chung / Politico/ Bloomberg through Getty Photographs)
In philosophy, the Nietzschean Übermensch frees himself from the pedestrian bounds of humanity to turn into a superior being that may rule us mere mortals. In our actuality, the boys who fancy themselves Übermenschen—and who, sadly, are at present accountable for each the US authorities and far of the remainder of the world—are big losers and crybabies, regardless of getting mainly the whole lot they need.
We’re residing via a golden age for losers who don’t appear to appreciate how a lot they maintain telegraphing their loserdom to the remainder of us. They preen and pose as world-conquering superheroes whereas frequently exposing simply how sniveling and pathetic they are surely.
Their impulse to inform on themselves has been on full show within the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Conservatives who usually by no means shut up about cancel tradition immediately shaped a roving cancellation mob, working round to get dozens of educators, authorities staff, and journalists fired for being insufficiently mournful or a bit too trustworthy (among those fired have been MSNBC senior political analyst Matthew Dowd and Washington Submit columnist Karen Attiah). Some notably unhappy sacks even went around hassling native companies to decrease their flags in honor of Kirk.
This campaign reached its apex when Jimmy Kimmel was unceremoniously pulled off the air “indefinitely” for his benign feedback about Kirk’s killing. When Kimmel was let again on the air final week, even President Trump, a confirmed Winner, wasn’t above bellyaching like a loser.
“I feel we’re going to check ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Final time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million {Dollars}. This one sounds much more profitable,” Trump posted on TruthSocial at 10:35 pm on Tuesday, an unbothered, regular time to put up. “A real bunch of losers! Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his dangerous Rankings.”
Bitter grapes! To look at how we received right here, I’d wish to illuminate two Rosetta Stones of Loserdom, taking the mortal types of Stephen Miller and Elon Musk.
Present Challenge
Nothing could possibly be extra illustrative of the tendency I’m speaking about than this video obtained by the Submit of Miller from means again in highschool within the liberal stronghold of Malibu, a key turning level in his origin story. Miller addresses his classmates in remarks reportedly assembled as a part of a type of scholar documentary on the then–excessive schooler, which is how you recognize he was actually well-liked and never already considered a complete freak.
Within the video, Miller says: “Am I the one one who’s sick and bored with being advised to select up my trash when we have now loads of janitors who’re paid to do it for us?” It’s a joke, the paper factors out with seemingly misplaced assurance. But it surely’s telling that Miller’s goal was the janitorial employees, protected folks for a loser, himself low on the social meals chain, to select on.
Years on, Miller is the architect of Trump’s mass detention and deportation coverage, proof that he nonetheless loves demonizing the susceptible. However for one of the vital highly effective males within the White Home and due to this fact the world, he couldn’t even give you his personal unique concepts for Kirk’s eulogy, with Twitter customers pointing out he was mainly aping Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
That alone is deeply sinister, no query. However there’s one thing concerning the blatantness, and Miller’s strongman posturing, that feels, nicely, sweaty—like he’s desperately making an attempt to persuade us that he’s actually a grasp of the universe. This weird offensive additionally just lately roped in his spouse, Katie Miller, the Trump aide turned Musk staffer turned podcaster. Throughout a Tuesday look on Jesse Watters Primetime, the Fox Information host called her “the envy of all ladies” for her marriage to Miller, prompting Katie Miller to name her husband “the sexual matador.”
Certainly, they should be joking. This merely doesn’t move the scent check! Even in the event you set the politics apart—Katie Miller went on to say Mr. Miller greets the morning by telling her, “Let’s begin the day! I’m going to defeat the left!”—there’s not a lady alive who, in her coronary heart of hearts, appears to be like upon that visage with something approaching envy. Non-losers don’t must argue and beg like this; their may is self-evident. Solely bone-deep lame-Os must work this difficult at it.
Maybe the world’s most overt loser, Elon Musk, additionally did not give you an unique considered Kirk, his supposed pal, seemingly cribbing remarks from Miller (or maybe each strains got here from preapproved administration speaking factors). In a clip Musk posted to his Twitter account, he advised a reporter Kirk was killed as a result of “he was displaying folks the sunshine. And he was killed by the darkish.” Profound stuff. (Miller, for his half, pledged in his speech that “the sunshine will defeat the darkish.”)
Musk has set a brand new customary for being washed. Allow us to not overlook that he purchased and tanked a beloved web site as a part of a years-long marketing campaign to get folks to suppose he’s cool and humorous, a shedding battle if I’ve ever seen one. After shopping for Twitter for what many judged to be a wildly inflated valuation, he set about tweaking the algorithm to artificially flood our feeds along with his tweets (er, posts, I assume?), all as a result of a Joe Biden tweet concerning the Tremendous Bowl was performing significantly better than his personal.
One of many Tesla CEO’s first orders of enterprise was to intestine the positioning’s verification system, which beforehand gave the place an air of legitimacy for journalists, public figures, and celebrities. The end result has been vastly profitable for the sorts of losers who beforehand couldn’t get verified, largely as a result of they’re anonymous Nazis who put up from behind the job-preserving security of a Greek statue profile image. (Even with all this algorithmic meddling, valued energy customers like “Catturd” nonetheless regularly complain about being shadow banned. In the meantime, you’ll be able to actually get shadow banned for criticizing god-emperor Elon.)
Additional proof of Musk’s serial cringiness abounds, and to doc it in full would require a e book deal. (Name me!!) However permit me to level to the sheer variety of occasions he’s tweeted the word “epic.” One current, terribly embarrassing instance was a reply to Jeff Bezos, through which Musk earnestly tweeted, “It’s good to know that epic occasions are occurring someplace on this planet, even when one isn’t current” and wishing the Amazon founder “an epic wedding ceremony.” (Musk was reportedly not invited to the June carbon-burning-palooza/nuptials in Venice.) The South African businessman, who might turn into the world’s first trillionaire, additionally tweeted a meme about Harambe, the gorilla, just a year and a half ago. It might be tough to look at if he weren’t so hell-bent on world domination.
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Loserdom is innate to the folks at present working our lives and shaping the way forward for humanity. I’d be remiss to not point out Ted Cruz’s entire being, or Vice President JD Vance’s making the workplace appear much more ineffective by largely utilizing it to defend his boss on-line whereas appearing like he’s in on the joke, or the recent story in Semafor that included the element {that a} Trump appointee mentioned his “radicalizing expertise” was being banned from the Gawker remark part.
What’s so galling is that these utter losers are, essentially, getting away with it: They management the Supreme Court docket, have all however totally legalized government corruption, and are routinely circumventing due process in immigration courts. Daily, they trample over one other of our supposedly sacrosanct civil rights, and largely, they’re allowed to proceed. And nonetheless, it’s not sufficient, as a result of they know nobody actually likes them or thinks they’re cool. They successfully personal our our bodies and our freedoms, however deep down, they know they’re not successful any new hearts and minds, and it eats them up. Take a look at how the complete conservative equipment whirred into unified movement to clamp down on the concept perhaps, simply perhaps, Charlie Kirk’s legacy is open for debate.
These losers aren’t hemmed in by the legal guidelines of the land or human decency, however they’ll by no means be MacArthur or Truman, and we’re by no means going to purchase the powerful man act they’re working so exhausting to fabricate and impose on us. It needs to be sufficient to easily rule the world of their picture, however that may demand a shred of confidence—and faces that didn’t all seem like that.
Don’t let JD Vance silence our impartial journalism
On September 15, Vice President JD Vance attacked The Nation whereas internet hosting The Charlie Kirk Present.
In a clip seen tens of millions of occasions, Vance singled out The Nation in a canine whistle to his far-right followers. Predictably, a torrent of abuse adopted.
All through our 160 years of publishing fierce, impartial journalism, we’ve operated with the idea that dissent is the very best type of patriotism. We’ve been criticized by each Democratic and Republican officeholders—and we’re happy that the White Home is studying The Nation. So long as Vance is free to criticize us and we’re free to criticize him, the American experiment will proceed because it ought to.
To appropriate the report on Vance’s false claims concerning the supply of our funding: The Nation is proudly reader-supported by progressives such as you who assist impartial journalism and gained’t be intimidated by these in energy.
Vance and Trump administration officers additionally laid out their plans for widespread repression towards progressive teams. As a substitute of calling for nationwide therapeutic, the administration is utilizing Kirk’s demise as pretext for a concerted assault on Trump’s enemies on the left.
Now we all know The Nation is entrance and middle on their minds.
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Bhaskar Sunkara
President, The Nation
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