The story seemed beautiful at the beginning. The businessman who became president and the visionary of Silicon Valley had been, in an unlikely alliance of industry and politics. Musk, with its billions and technological power, had become one of the main donors of the Trump campaign, injecting nearly $ 300 million into the re -election effort.
Once the power has been reconquered, Trump did not hesitate to entrust him with a key role in his administration, at the head of the department of government efficiency – orwellian title if there is one – responsible for simplifying the federal bureaucracy. We even live, in a scene bordering on the caricature, the American president offer Musk a “Giant White House key”as a child distributes awards.
But these circumstance alliances are as unstable as the Egos which underlie them. On June 5, the rupture broke out publicly, with the customary brutality of American affairs. Musk attacks it violently at “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”qualifying him as “Budget monstrosity” likely to increase the federal debt of an additional $ 1,500 billion.
“” Behind this quarrel of men, it is the portrait of a country in imbalance that appears ”
In the process, he accuses Trump of ingratitude, saying that he owes him his election. Trump replies in his usual style: threats of economic reprisals, cancellation of public contracts, triggering a brutal stock market which has evaporated in a few hours more than $ 150 billion in market capitalization for Musk companies.
Washington fractured
Behind this quarrel of men, it is the portrait of a country in imbalance that appears. Trump, returned to power on an almost messianic program, had promised to reform everything: economic recovery, historical budget cuts, firm and realistic foreign policy. Instead, America sinks into chronic instability.
Budget deficits explode; public debt reaches vertiginous peaks; The announced industrial revolution did not take place, and reindustrialisation remains largely incantatory. On the international scene, conflicts remain dead end: the Middle East remains on fire and blood, Iran continues without hindrance its nuclear flight, the Ukraine War is bogged down, and Asia observes, patient and methodical, the Western decline.
“” Trump and musk America is the post-modern West in its most caricatured form ”
Trump and musk America is the post-modern West in its most caricatured form: media hypertrophy, absolute personalization of power, infantilization of leaders, extreme simplification of public debate. It is no longer the res publica, but the great theater of the ego. State debates are now settled on X with murderous sentences, as if history was written like a digital playground.
We think, by observing this tragic farce, with the intestine struggles of certain declining monarchies. Thus, under the finishing Roman Empire, the emperors succeeded each other in reigns of a few months, dominated by personal whims, palaces trahisons and broken alliances according to the moods of the moment. Nero and Commode governed in a mixture of megalomania and emotional instability which always ended up precipitating the fall of the institutions themselves. Trump and Musk are the modern avatars of these ancient figures: more concerned with their passions than the destiny of the city.
Europe also vacillates
However, in France and in Europe, measuring the warning. Because if our democracy is not exempt from weaknesses, the Fifth Republic still retains some fundamental virtues: a certain solemnity in the exercise of the State, minimal respect for institutions, the separation of media times and time of decision. He remains with us, despite the outrageous, a rest of this state tradition which owes a lot to the wisdom of our Gaullian institutions.
The duel between Trump and Musk is more than a grotesque quarrel. He is a revealing of the Western crisis: that of a political elite which confuses govern and exist, direct and show off, think and indignant. Where politics should be an art of measure, it becomes the scene of narcissism. Where power should be an exercise of gravity, it becomes a joust of capricious adolescents.
May we never lose this simple and deep idea that has gone through European centuries: governing, it is not playing. It is to bring the burden of collective destiny with this ancient gravity that Aristotle called the phronèsisand that our modern times have unfortunately sacrificed on the altar of the great spectacle, that of buzz and clashes.
