Who wasn’t mesmerized by last week’s epic, if profoundly embarrassing, catfight between Elon Musk and Donald Trump? No one, that’s who. I browse a lot of random publications from all over the world, and the online feud between the president of the United States and the richest person on the planet (along with the associated memes: “high-agency males going at it”!) was front-page news in Finland, Italy, Kenya and Argentina, just for starters.
So I’m not here to tell you that the Musk-Trump throwdown was some kind of calculated distraction or, as in the vivid imaginations of some right-wing influencers, a 5D-chess gambit meant to force the “Big Beautiful Bill” through the Senate and compel the release of the so-called Epstein files. Seriously, can you believe the stupidity of the times we live in? I recently read a lengthy book extract about the devastating impact of the asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago, wiping out nearly all life for millions of years after that, and found myself wondering whether that would be such a bad idea.
