Priscilla Chan, her husband Mark Zuckerberg of Meta/Facebook, Lauren Sanchez, her fiance Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet/Google, and Elon Musk of Space X in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, for the 60th Presidential Inauguration. IMAGE/AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Poo/The Hill
Nothing can be more diametric and tragic than an unfolding fascist, joined by some of the world’s most richest men, being sworn-in for the second time on January 20, 2025 on the official Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
On August 28, 1963, in the US capital, Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., addressing a rally at the March On Washington D.C., dreamt:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal.’”
Dr. King’s dream will have to wait until the current system gets destroyed due to its arrogance, terrorism, violence, and overstretch; or, the people in the US revolt to change the over rotten almost two and a half century exploitive capitalist system.
On January 20, 2025, the billionaires, who consider themselves more equal than all other men (women and genders) got their dream for absolute freedom to loot, realized. Martin Luther King Day was turned into Billionaires Maximum Sovereignty Day.
Mind you, the rich have always been in power in the US; it’s just that whatever little facade of restraint there was, is being removed rapidly.
The rich have been running this country since its inception but preferred, mostly, to maintain a thin veneer. However, with Trump, a billionaire, who is more exhibitionist than President Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1901-1909), things were bound to change, and indeed they did. The tech billionaires, Fox News hosts, and big donors were inside the Capitol Rotunda whereas Republican governors such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis, Mississippi’s Tate Reeves, Georgia’s Brian Kemp, Indiana’s Mike Braun, and Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, were dumped in the Emancipation Hall overflow viewing space. In fact, they do belong there. What are most of the governors, mayors, elected officials, and even presidents? They are merely agents of the filthy rich.
The rich were sitting in the front row but the Trump’s cabinet members were in the row behind.
Many individuals and corporations donated more than $170 million to cover the expenses for inauguration and related events.
Billionaires pageant
Jeff Bezos, the 2nd richest person had this banner on his newspaper Washington Post, bought in 2013: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Now he should change it to “Democracy Shines in Orange Glow.” Washington Post, which had been endorsing presidential candidates for almost 40 years, refrained in 2024 from endorsing Kamala Harris under pressure from Bezos. He wanted to play safe and continue to get his government contracts with the new government — whether under Harris or Trump. Bezos is “extraordinarily aggressive” and uses various tactics to get contracts. (200,000 digital subscribers of Post were angered by non-endorsement and cancelled their subscription. It doesn’t make much difference to the second richest person. Boycotting Amazon services could hurt him to some extent.)
Mark Zuckerberg, who once toyed with the idea of running for the US presidency, now concentrates on making money and pleasing President Trump. Once when he was asked about users’ privacy on Facebook, he asserted: “Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear.”
But Zuckerberg himself is fearful of Trump; who knows what he is hiding. The unpaid taxes, his company Facebook registered in Ireland, and so on. He knows how vengeful Trump [1] is. In January 2021, after the then president Trump incited attack on US Capitol, Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Instagram sites removed Trump from both platforms. In 2023, both accounts were reinstated but with “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.” The guardrails were removed in July 2024. Around that period, Trump had threatened to put Zuckerberg behind bars, if re-elected. Zuckerberg also ended third party fact checking program on his sites; now whatever Trump, Musk, and their acolytes say will be treated as fact and so no checking will be needed.
On January 27, 2025, Meta announced it will “allow more free speech by lifting restrictions.” According to Intercept, the training materials include the following racist, anti LQBTQ, anti immigrants, hateful statements: “Black people are more violent than whites,” “Mexican immigrants are trash,” “transpeople are immoral,” “gays are freaks,” “immigrants are grubby filthy pieces of shit,” or the description “look at that tranny [i.e., transgender person],” under the photo of a 17-year-old girl.
Mukesh Ambani, an Indian billionaire who has 250 plus companies, including electronic and print media, under his Reliance Empire, never misses a chance to show off his wealth nor lose an opportunity to put as many people as he can around him to show them he’s the boss. Former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, attended his daughter’s lavish wedding in 2018, which cost $100 million. Ivanka Trump, her husband and daughter, were also guests at Mukesh Ambani’s son’s $600-million extravagant wedding in 2024. [2]
Miriam Adelson, very impressed by what Trump did for Israel, wished in 2019 for a “Book of Trump” in the Bible. Adelson donated $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign. Now perhaps Trump deserves an entire new Bible for his grand plan to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” This heist was first proposed by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law.
Sundar Pichai was there too. Like an obedient billionaire, Pichai didn’t disappoint the Dear Leader. The Dear Leader wanted a name change and Pichai’s Google agreed to change “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America.” If tomorrow, the Dear Leader says the “Planet Earth” should be called “Planet America,” Pichai’s Google will do it. Google has also gone back on its promise to not develop AI (artificial intelligence) weapons “that cause or are likely to cause overall harm.”
Elon Musk, the richest person on earth, is Trump’s non-elected Secretary of Firing — not executions, at least, not yet, but sacking federal employees and throwing them at the mercy of billionaires like him. Musk spent invested almost $300 million dollars of his own on Trump campaign and so will remain busy for quite some time to recover the investment and realize unlimited profit. (Taylor Swift could have saved us from Musk but she didn’t.)
Bill Gates did not attend the inauguration but had kissed His Fascistness‘s ass when he had a three-hour audience with Trump shortly after Christmas. Gates had given $50 million to Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign just three or so months ago. Billionaires, for whom increasing profit without paying taxes is the main goal, are good at changing sides; people evolve, but billionaires evolve extra fast. According to Gates, it was a “long and actually quite intriguing dinner.” Gates was also “impressed” by Trump’s interest in world health problems. How much Trump is interested in world health matters is clear from his announcement that the United States is leaving the WHO (World Health Organization).
Once again, Dr. King on how government’s handing of free money to rich has a different name, then that for the poor.
Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all [too] often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr., February 23, 1968 (truthorfiction.com)
The capitalist system is a disaster for our world as it promotes and creates inequality, pollution, climate change, corruption, rat race, family disintegration, etc.; and maybe, for the universe because the rich are planning to colonize Mars, Moon, etc., which will for sure result in space wars.
Those who wants to see our world a better place should heed economist/activist Kshama Sawant’s advise:
“It’s time to declare war on the rich.
“We need to build an organized, unified movement of working people to systematically take on the rich who run society and to undermine their ability to rule. Our goal must be to both fight for radical change in the present and to bring down the billionaires and their system, capitalism.
“There is no other path to avoid total disaster for human civilization and the planet.”
Endnotes:
[1] Trump, like India’s Narendra Modi, is a very vindictive person. This prompted the outgoing President “Genocide Joe” to take precautionary measure of pardoning many people, including his own relatives. One of the persons, who really deserved freedom was Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Peltier’s sentence, after almost half a century, was commuted to indefinite home confinement. Though it’s not total freedom, but still was good news. Biden should have preemptively pardoned all the Democrats and all anti-Trump people, more than half of the country, this would have saved Trump, a great deal of time, from going after them. Or may be not, Trump almost always finds ways, like the United States, to get people he doesn’t like.
[2] Ambani was invited but Indian Premier Narendra Modi was not, even though he was desperate to attend. Modi’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar did attend the inauguration. During Modi’s last US visit in September 2024, he avoided meeting Kamala Harris or Trump despite Trump’s remark that Modi is coming to meet him. On the other hand, Trump extended an invitation to China’s Xi Jinping, who wisely avoided the Trump spectacle and, instead, sent his Vice President Han Zheng. Modi and company’s efforts for a meeting with Trump have paid off and he’ll be visiting the US in the second week of February.