So, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg and Oprah are both reputedly interested in being President. Zuckerberg is supposedly lining up for 2024, and has certainly been acting like it.
George Clooney’s name has been bandied about.
So has a more normal candidate, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a neoliberal’s neoliberal and near-complete asshole.
2016 didn’t just teach aspirants that right-wing authoritarian populism could work, it told celebrities, who know Trump mostly as a celebrity (which is reasonable; he’s not a big time billionaire, nothing compared to Zuckerberg or Bezos and Thiel and so on), that if a second rate celebrity with serious personality issues can make it to the President’s chair, so can they.
I’ve seen some political operatives bemoaning this, but I’ll be frank: I’d take Oprah or Clooney in a heartbeat over Cuomo. I know he’s a right-wing tard who does the very minimal good stuff he has to to stay elected.
(Zuckerberg, on the other hand, I’ll pass on–as he himself said: Anyone who trusts him is an idiot.)
Unlike many, I don’t see this is bad, per se. It is bad that the political class has failed so badly that they are no longer trusted and people are looking outside the political class. It is bad that the US and the world has created so many vastly rich people that they can do this, not needing to have a political party firmly behind them.
But given that we live in an oligarchy and a celebrity state, and given that the politicians have failed and failed and failed, it’s quite reasonable for Americans to try to pull from different pools.
And, as I say, I’d take Oprah or Clooney over any neoliberal in a heartbeat.
This is where we are, it is where the decision of the political class to sell out to money has led us, and there’s little point in bemoaning it, though one should certainly note it.
It is as it is.
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