It has been a very weird month to be an American male billionaire.
We all knew Elon Musk was more of an ideas guy than an execution guy, and nobody could possibly defend his brilliance equalling his net worth. Yet we chose to idolize him anyways. We told him time and time again that he was the God of Innovation, and eventually he believed it. So last month, he bought Twitter, and now the entire world is watching the platform seemingly burn in a blinding pit of crypto bots and hate speech.
We all knew Kanye West was a complete jagoff, and nobody could look at his resume of misdeeds and honestly say, "This is someone who deserves to keep his place in the limelight." Yet we chose to idolize him anyways. We told him time and time again that he was the God of Free Expression, and eventually he believed it. So last month, he started aimlessly spewing antisemitic language across social media thinking he was invincible if he spoke in the name of free speech, and now he has lost virtually every brand partnership he had and is being culturally shunned.
We all knew Donald Trump was a raging lunatic, and nobody could look at the last few months of his presidency and claim he was anything but one of the largest threats to American democracy since the Confederacy. Yet many chose to continue idolizing him even after he left office. We continued telling him he was the God of Conservatism, and he continued believing it. So last month, he turned his head toward the midterm elections and continued spreading dangerous lies about America's elections and government, and now virtually every candidate he endorsed in the midterm elections lost their race, and the Republican Party appears ready to leave Trump in the dust.
We all thought Sam Bankman-Fried was a con-artist, though nobody really knew it for sure because none of us really understood exactly what a crypto exchange was. Yet we chose to idolize him anyways. We told him time and time again that he was the God of Crypto, and eventually he believed it. And we don't even know yet exactly what happened with FTX, and that'll continue becoming clearer over the coming months, but we do know that it's now a bankrupt company that somehow managed to misplace billions of dollars worth of their customers' assets, and Bankman-Fried better get used to metal beds.
It's fascinating that all of these downfalls occurred so quickly in succession. Last month was a magnifying glass over the entire top 1%, and it's a pretty damning referendum on our idolatry of billionaires. Everyone looks like a genius in a bull market, but bear markets have this way of being truth serum and exposing people for who they really are. Let's just say Elon Musk, Kanye West, Donald Trump, and Sam Bankman-Fried all got exposed.
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