The Amazon Prime Gala is in honor of the exhibition art: Costume Art. A guerrilla made poster seen in NYC in honor of the Met Gala saying “Democracy is so last season,” makes you wonder what type of dystopian event will unfold. As Mark Fisher wrote in Capitalist Realism, "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." The Gala is starting to feel like a microcosm of that bigger cultural zeitgeist.
In the last decade, the rich feasted on the poor to feed their gluttonous, self-serving lifestyles, and the poor say, “Mother, may I have another?” Technology offered for a few some amazing fortunes. Most found technology to be equal parts diverse and disruption.
In this same period, we saw the apotheosis of Trump as the second coming of prosperity Jesus or Ronald Reagan, but in a decidedly more orange, unctuous guise. He floated in fueled by the hopes of poor people. He promised to elevated them above the people they hate. Many would say their motivations to vote for Trump was that they wanted cheaper eggs or worried about manufacturing.
But, they’re lying, likely to themselves as much as to us. They’d been through this once, and the only change they experienced was the ability to be openly racist. The rest of us experienced the never-ending psychological damage and emotional dysregulation. But, two-thirds of this country sacrificed everyone, literally the whole world, to let Trump back into office. But let’s be clear, if they voted for Trump, or didn’t do everything in their power to stop this, they sided with billionaires.
Most likely, those reading this will never see a billion dollars appear in their bank account. For scale, if you spent $1000 every single day, you would run out of a million in just under 3 years (about 2.7 years). To spend a billion at the same rate, it would take roughly 2,700 years. The US has more than 800 people who couldn’t spend their fortunes in roughly 100 generations.
Many of these people, though, have made their riches off of us. They’ve come up with ways for us to waste time and lose well-being. Sure, they’ve connected people, but in trying to do so, they pushed for more and more addictive systems. In Chaos Machine, Max Fisher demonstrates how, at every turn, technologists worked against human good for personal gain. They could have still made considerable sums without choosing the worst-case scenario in each instance. Greed and hubris, though, drove the men of technology, and it was largely men who chose profit each time. It’s not just our purchase, but they freely took our data. Shoshana Zuboff in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism said, "surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data." We are the raw material of their profits.
Now, many of these people, like Elon Musk, whose fortune is largely based on luck and government contracts, have aligned themselves with MAGA and Trump. Why? Because Trump promises them continued control. Trump has already figured out how easy it is to control uneducated people. The Pew Research Center found that Trump voters are less educated, whiter, and poorer than democratic voters. Social media is more likely to negatively impact people with weaker critical thinking skills, as they’re often prone to being tricked by misinformation. In other words, it will make billionaires richer to keep people in the US dumb enough to be their cash cows.
It’s worth remembering many of these uber wealthy are also planning to get away with unspeakable crimes against women and children. Many are named in the Epstein files and other have their own cases. These are people who made their money off of society while also living without consequences. Hannah Arendt saw this dynamic in The Origins of Totalitarianism: "the temporary alliance between the elite and the mob rested largely on this genuine delight with which the former watched the latter destroy respectability." That is exactly where we are.
The US was particularly susceptible to blind adoration of billionaires. The Protestant work ethic started the national culture with the idea that moral good was associated with unceasing labor. Manifest Destiny turned land theft into divinely ordained exploration, often paired with the lottery-like hope to strike gold or riches. The American Dream, then, promised that merit is the best way to succeed. By the mid-20th century, the US was a potent potion of success myths. Roland Barthes talked about how these myths become naturalized and so justify behaviors: “Myth does not deny things…Simply, it purifies them, makes them innocent, gives them a natural and eternal justification.”
The illusory nature of success in the US, though, became widely clear to white Americans in the second Trump term. Black Americans knew the Protestants who claimed to be morally good and hardworking often owned human beings. Native Americans knew those lands were not empty.
What has changed in America in the second Trump administration is that white Americans are seeing that Trump and technology have been lying to us. They had lapped up his hateful speeches, lived large in their wealth, paid to own the libs. But as it turns out, that doesn’t bring the price of gas down. They’re experiencing the consequences of their actions and not enjoying it.
To borrow from Antonio Gramsci writing in the 1930s, "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear." We are surrounded by morbid symptoms.
Now, a week out from the Met Gala, society is looking very different from even one year ago. The US is at war. Their allies are, rightly, refusing to join. Inflation and prices are up. Trump’s ratings are down.
The uber wealthy, though, seem to be living in their own broken bubble. Companies like Target and Wendy’s are excited to align with Trump, but then are finding they’re not keeping up with profits. Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock reportedly sold their souls to AI, with later stories suggesting their offhand remarks were likely calculated to help them make even more money. Social media commenters have been cutting about these actresses’ alignment with AI. It will be interesting to see whether their box-office sales go down. Other celebrities, like Snoop Dog and Nicki, coming out as Trumpers hasn’t been all roses. TLC’s Chili came out as a Trumper, though she claimed she accidentally donated, and their tour was canceled.
It’s in this bubble that Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams will join Anna Wintour as co-chairs of the Met Gala. This Gala, though, has been widely panned since last year when Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez were announced as sponsors. In addition, this is meant to be a kick-off for the Condé Nast-named galleries.
Thorstein Veblen named the Gala over a century in advance: "conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure." They’re demonstrating wealth for each other. These very wealthy people have cosseted themselves from the realities of the world. Disconnected, they’ve lived in the fantasy that their successes were merit. They’ve forgotten almost every one of their fortunes was based on a poor person liking their product (which might be themselves). They’ve also largely ignored that much of the US cannot afford basic necessities.
Much of the biggest voices in technology is running their mouth about stopping democracy and white supremacy, but if their government contracts get pulled, or the EU is done with their nonsense, they’ll just be a loser who used to be rich. Similarly, many of the stars at the Gala are a couple flops from not mattering. The Met Gala prices are in freefall because fashion occurs in relation to the economy. Many of the people who are part of this someone forgot how capitalism works. They might own the capital, but they need the peons to have enough money to consume goods.
In fact, breaking the economy to create world domination of a very small segment of the world, white men, is pretty much the dumbest way to be a capitalist. Then deciding you’ll celebrate breaking everything by dressing up, after having been panned for your fashion sense, is actually dumber.
History does remind us that bubbles burst and tables turn. The poster in NYC of Jeff Bezos brought up 1939, when Germany and its allies thought let’s become the global leader in hate and destruction. I’d say this could also be the Gilded Age when the uber wealthy had the government bent over so they could amass huge fortunes. But, in both 20th century Germany and the era after the Gilded Age, people tumbled. History has shown being at the top of the world has one guarantee, you’ll likely be toppled.
With so many examples in history, like Marie Antoinette, why would Bezos go ahead with such a foolish event? If the Met Gala shows you anything, it should show how the wealthy are not smarter. In fact, they’re surrounded by sycophants and yes-people, so they’re likely more out of touch with reality. One can hope this Losers Ball is the moment we look back on as the beginning of the era of checking the wealth of the Epstein class.
