A beautiful longhaired dachshund, rendered in glossy technicolour, every curl a symphony, smiles enigmatically in competition with the neighbouring and equally glossy mahogany and polished brass of a restored classic yacht from the heyday of the Solent’s posh racing fleets of yore.
Rows of eyewatering interior decors and country-house gardens – two of whose editors are probably still grinding their teeth at their remarkably similar front pages for the month – stretch into the distance.
I am, of course, hovering in front of magazine shelves in Oneroa which, given the slaughter of historic titles at the outset of the Covid years, looks remarkably healthy.
My mother was a young navy Wren officer in Algiers during the war years and assuaged her homesickness for English country gardens in 1950s Devonport with a Country Life subscription from the bookshop at the end of the Cheltenham Road. I collected it for her, to earn my modest pocket money, spending it immediately to keep up with Bill and Ben, The Flower Pot Men and the interesting stuff in the crisp children’s magazine that arrived in the shop at the same time.
My moment of nostalgia was quickly followed by the realities of the extraordinary times we now find ourselves in the global news section.
The world’s acknowledged richest person is now also one of the most powerful, and the most troubling.
Elon Musk is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world, Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labour and professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, said in a Guardian article last week.
Like most of us, he is shocked that governments are letting his monopoly activities and scale to grow from what are often taxpayer subsidies.
“Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter, and has publicly endorsed Donald Trump last month. Before that, he helped form a pro-Trump super political action committee. Both he and the former US president have revived both their presence on the X platform and the idea of governing together if Trump wins a second term.
Musk said, in a conversation with Trump streamed on X earlier this month: “I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission. And I’d be happy to help out on such a commission.”
Musk also reposted a faked version of Kamala Harris’s first campaign video with an altered voice track sounding like Harris and saying she doesn’t “know the first thing about running the country” and is the “ultimate diversity hire”.
Musk tagged the video “amazing” and it has had hundreds of millions of views, so far,” said Reich.
“In the UK, far-right thugs burned, looted and terrorised minority communities as Musk’s X spread misinformation about a deadly attack on schoolgirls. Musk allowed instigators of this hate to spread these lies, then retweeted and supported them.”
Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform, with one saying Musk had turned it into “a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups”. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.
Dismayingly, the Guardian reported prime minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson saying the government had no plans to review its use of X. “With all of our communications, it’s important to make sure that we reach the broadest possible audience, and that is one of a number of channels that we use to ensure that we’re doing that.”
The take-out is that governments are ridiculously dependent on X for communication, access and everything space. However, rank and file users have the numbers and can exert a significant pressure, especially if the sour tone on the site itself continues.
The platform lost approximately 30 percent of users in just over a year (to April this year); a Tesla boycott may have already begun and a third of Britons, responding to Musk’s toxic behaviour, say they aren’t likely to buy a Tesla any time soon.
And members of Brazil’s supreme court have unanimously voted to uphold the ban on X, after Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws led to the social network being blocked in one of its biggest markets.
Reich, the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, says that toppling such an empire is doable but will take widespread public insistence on uncoupling the Musk empire from public money.
A coalition of major advertisers has organised such a boycott (Musk, promising war, is suing them under antitrust law) and regulators around the world may already be doing this following a landmark arrest in France of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.
“Why is the US government allowing Musk’s satellites and rocket launchers to become crucial to the nation’s security when he’s shown such utter disregard for the public interest? Why give Musk more economic power when he repeatedly abuses it and demonstrates contempt for the public good?” said Reich. “There is no good reason.”
So did I succumb to the glossy publications? Actually no. A thoroughly satisfactory magazine titled Renew – Technology for a Sustainable Future seemed more useful in the world as it is now.
• Liz Waters
© Waiheke Gulf News Ltd 2024
