I was troubled during the second Trump inaugural so few observers were disturbed by the rogue’s gallery of the nation’s richest men seated immediately behind our re-elected president. Additional corporate titans, most prominently the “techbros” from Silicon Valley, were scattered behind the three wealthiest horsemen likely to deliver an economic apocalypse for the rest of us. Once the reality of Trump II began to feel weirder than fiction, the punditocracy alleged no sole private citizen has ever exercised as much influence over a democratic government as Elon Musk has. Not recently, to be sure, but it always pays to glance back at the Roman Empire for a precedent.

In the final years of the Roman Republic a consular triumvirate composed of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Crassus, the empire’s richest man, were elected to rule alongside the increasingly irrelevant Senate. At a time when Roman statesmen were expected to possess military, literary and civic skills, Crassus had previously crushed the slave revolt led by Spartacus, crucifying his captives for miles along the Appian Way. Caesar penned his histories of Sulla’s Civil War and his own Gallic conquests, both still respected for their style if not their accuracy. As Caesar’s military victories won him growing public admiration, Crassus decided to assist the military hero by financing lavish victory games while also paying off his substantial debts. Once in power as emperor and dictator, Caesar dispatched his financier to the eastern reaches of the Roman empire.

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This removed a potential rival from the Roman capital while affording Crassus a chance to plunder these wealthy provinces. As his greed expanded, Crassus decided to attempt an overthrow of the Persians in Parthia, which encompassed much of modern Turkey, Iraq and Iran. This misadventure ended in a defeat for his legions and his personal capture. Legend informs us the Parthians poured a beaker of molten gold down his throat, although this may have occurred following his execution. If Trump offers Elon Musk the chance to serve as American Governor General in Greenland, the DOGE Czar may wish to hesitate. Though the Inuit natives would be hard pressed to melt down digital crypto coins for a fatal cocktail, they could well abandon him on the nation’s ice sheet without a map.

Musk bested the billionaire brigade, however, with his investment of $290 million in 2024 campaign contributions to the Trump campaign — just one-tenth of 1% of his personal  wealth. This purchased him keys to the doors of the federal government, even the Treasury ledgers. Since Election Day, Musk’s fortune has grown by $60 billion — not a bad return on his investment, although it may be in decline again. There are numerous theories for why he decided to first attack the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), labeling it a “criminal organization.” You don’t have to be a foreign service specialist to recognize delivering food to the starving, medicine to the ill and economic support for the poor across the globe likely pays for itself in good will toward America. There are jobs and there are vocations. The clergy, missionaries, teachers, health care as well as humanitarian workers are among those who opt for poorly rewarded vocations. They are neither Marxists nor lunatic leftists.

Especially disturbing is the possibility Musk’s animus stems from the role USAID played in pulling apart South African apartheid and ushering Nelson Mandela into power. Trump’s decision to exempt white South Africans from his immigration jihad only strengthens this suspicion. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has added to his staff a bigot named Darren Beattie who posted on X this past October, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities and demoralizing competent white men.” The Substack writer John Ganz observes, “Musk’s total idiocy is structural: it goes back to the very origin of the Greek term idiotes, a person who cannot understand the shared political life of the city. These people cannot understand that their wealth and power are not their sovereign creations but the shared product of the wider state and society that supports and sustains them.”

It’s critically important to recognize social systems develop in a similar evolutionary pattern observed in biological ecosystems. Though both can be remarkably resilient, they are also inclined to collapse. When you return to the pond you fished in yesterday, it may be glinting with the floating corpses of fish killed off by oxygen deprivation from blue-green algae or chemical pollutants.

Jamelle Bouie noted in the New York Times recently, “It seems very possible that in taking a wrecking ball to the federal bureaucracy and unconstitutionally slashing programs, employees and entire agencies, Trump and Musk may spark a catastrophe that neither they nor their allies can contain.” Whether it was the 19th century’s Gilded Age in America or our present technology inflated prosperity, we frequently mistake wealth as a marker of wisdom. That is a mistake.

James Bennet, brother of Colorado’s own U.S. senator, concluded recently in his Lexington column for the Economist, “What is clear, however, is that Mr. Trump is rapidly spending down American capital — moral, diplomatic and even human — accumulated by previous administrations across decades … the boos now heard from Canadians when the American anthem is played at basketball and hockey games, do not bode well for this spending spree.” We can only hope Mr. Musk finds enough loose change to loot from federal accounts to fund his intended trip to Mars. That should get him out of our hair for years and if we’re lucky, maybe permanently. Perhaps reality does harbor a “liberal bias,” but does anyone really believe the FBI is a hotbed of communist activism? Or, that 96% of USAID workers contributed to Kamala Harris?

Writing in Counterpunch, Ray Acheson, notes another Roman parallel: The Lucretius Problem, “…wherein people can have all the information about what is happening yet fail to understand that it is happening.” In any other country, at any other time, we would acknowledge a coup is underway in America. Each day we allow to pass without objection only makes its success ever more probable.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.