If you think America’s political travails don’t also affect us, think again?

“Confused? You won’t be, after this week’s episode of … Soap.”

– Opening lines from the 1980s comedy series, Soap

Years ago I heard a journalist friend tell an audience in London how political journalism was like a cappuccino, all froth and excitement, but signifying little of substance, whereas financial journalism was more espresso, dark, bitter and to the point.

Watching America turn itself inside out over the soap opera that is the office of the 45th President of the United States what strikes me most is just how unperturbed the financial markets are at all the carry, whether it’s tariffs or illegal deportations.

I’ve been watching rather than commenting, not least because I don’t feel qualified to speak authoritatively on US domestic politics (and I try to steer away from what I don’t know). Yet I am intrigued by the opacity this media soap opera has created.

Dave Pell (Hat tip to John Naughton) is not so constrained [go on, tell us what you really think Dave! – Ed].

It took less than a week for our sadly non-fiction state of affairs to bring us an all too real fight between a criminal billionaire president and an evil super billionaire tech bro, each armed with their own social media platforms as they engaged in a flame war that shook governments, moved markets, gripped the media, and enraptured the world. Even though the devolution of the world’s most world-damaging bromance was predictable (spoiler alert: no town is big enough for that much sociopathic malignant narcissism), its actual realization left me nostalgic for the quaint world depicted in parodies and satires, and even more so for the days when the worst thing you saw on social media was someone trying to make their family vacation look a little better than it actually was.

While the flame war was funny, its underlying meaning is anything but. It’s a reflection of where we are in America, with way too much power and wealth in the hands of a few—and the wrong few at that. Does the future of America come down to an evil billionaire vs an evil dictator? Maybe we all need some ketamine. This is a lose-lose fight with the American people coming out as the biggest losers of all. The only interested parties who came out of yesterday’s skirmish unscathed are CyberTruck drivers, and that’s only because they couldn’t look any worse than they already did…

+ “Musk had, it seems, kicked off an attentional spectacle without precedent. You have the world’s richest man, who is terminally online and whose brain has been addled by social media and, reportedly, other substances. He is one of the most prolific and erratic high-profile posters, so much so that he purchased his favorite social network to mold it in his image. He is squaring off against Trump, arguably the most consequential, off-the-cuff poster of all time and, one must note, the current president of the United States.

If it weren’t for the other, both men would be peerless in their ability to troll, outrage, and command news cycles via their fragile, mercurial egos.” Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Super Bowl of Internet Beefs. (Except in this Super Bowl, you’re rooting against both teams, you don’t know when the game will end, and there’s no way to turn it off.)

+ The fight-induced plunge in Tesla’s stock is evidence of the level of corruption that has taken hold in America. The exchange of threats about SpaceX is evidence of the government-like power Elon Musk has amassed. The content of the fight is evidence that these guys don’t really like each other and are both habitual liars and manipulators. And everything about 2025 so far is evidence that Trump and Musk are likely to patch things up and work together toward the common bad once more. After all, that’s the worst possible outcome.

This pretty much covers why I left pre Musk Twitter three years ago, and why I refuse to accept the TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) label. Trump’s a symptom, not the disease. Not everything he does or says is wrong. Nor, indeed, is the US unique.

Yet, as Dave says, there seems no way to turn it off. As Collier and Kay have noted in Greed is Dead:

Typically the collective intelligence of dysfunctional societies is backward looking and divided, with each group wrongly attributing failure to some other group within the society. Discussion is focused on whose fault it is that the dinghy overturned rather than how to turn it the right way up.

Sound familiar? The question is not whether you agree or disagree with Mr Trump but rather how do we skilfully avoid the pitfalls of a hamster mind that appropriates our dreams and ambitions for the future to the tumultuous present of social media?

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty