The Roar of Two Dead Ends Clashing: The Musk-Bannon bust-up showed US elites are missing the point

To paraphrase the American film classic, ‘The Big Lebowski’, say what you will about Trumpism but at least it’s neither united nor dull.

US uber-oligarch Elon Musk, recently promoted to President-elect Donald Trump’s“first buddy,” has used his very own X platform to tell other Trump supporters to “take a big step back and F**K YOURSELF in the face” (fully spelled out in the original). The designated co-leader of a new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk also threatened to “go to war” with a ferocity beyond what we, mere mortals, can comprehend.

Using a rival social media platform, American far-right nationalist guru as well as former Trump first buddy Stephen Bannon reacted by calling Musk a “man-child” and “toddler” in need of “child services.” For good measure, he also denounced him as, in effect, a coward who “punches down” instead of fighting guys his own size or bigger.

On his own podcast show – ‘The War Room’ (of course) – Bannon, too, trumpeted his joy at not backing down but going for “victory” with a “fixed-bayonet advance.” Clearly, it’s hard for middle-aged-plus American alpha males not to fantasize their keyboard tussles into heroic live shootouts at the Online Corral. As of 2022, the US has been at war for 231 of the 248 years of its hyperactive existence. Militarism has mental consequences.

And, in the background of that clash of the ego titans, X was so abuzz with posts accusing Musk of massively censoring those disagreeing with him that the platform’s own Grok AI picked up on the quarrel, under the headline “X’s Free Speech Debate: Musk’s Moves Questioned.” Grok came to the oddly academic conclusion that some users were “suggesting a nuanced view where free speech is selectively applied.” And they say AI doesn’t have a sense of humor.

All of the above, please note, was just the tip of the big Trumpist strife-berg. The reason for so much rough play escalating so quickly in MAGA-Land? US visas. To be precise, the fairly small-scale yet important H-1B program, about which more below. In essence, Musk and his crowd are for H-1B; Bannon and company are against.

But, as in every proper stormy marriage bust-up, the occasion of the screaming match was far from all that it was really about. Instead, H-1B was just a trigger for an explosion of pent-up tension in the Trumpism 2.0 camp. And it’s been such a loud, big bang because the underlying issues range so wide, from class (as in Karl Marx, not school) issues at home to geopolitics abroad and even the real meaning of the professed Trumpist core aims, namely making America great again and putting it first.