There Is No "Broligarchy:" What the Musk-Trump Feud Reveals About Authoritarian Trends in Trump's America

 

The Musk-Trump feud isn’t just a clash of egos—it’s a test of whether any elite can resist the gravitational pull of an autocratic presidency.

 

Political scientists call this kind of system “personalism”—where the power and preferences of a single leader override institutions, laws, and even their own party. In a personalist system, loyalty to the individual at the top matters more than rules, ideology, or established norms.

 

The Rise and Fall of the “Broligarchy” Narrative

 

In late 2024, pundits coined the term “broligarchy”—a mashup of “bro” and “oligarchy”—to describe what looked like a new tech-government power bloc. Trump’s return to the White House, paired with the high-profile support of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, seemed to signal a stable alliance between Silicon Valley and Washington. Musk alone poured $300 million into Trump’s campaign and was rewarded with a powerful, quasi-official government role.

 

But as Trump’s second term unfolds, this narrative is falling apart. Trump’s willingness to sideline, punish, or ignore even his wealthiest backer—Elon Musk, who played a pivotal political and operational role in accomplishing (through DOGE and with his own employees) what Project 2025 had only envisioned: the rapid evisceration of federal agencies—reveals a system not of entrenched oligarchs, but of courtiers whose fortunes depend on the whims of a single leader.

 

How Trump’s Personalism Upended Tech Elite Power

 

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), originally created by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and later headed under Trump by Musk as a “special government employee” with quasi-official status, was supposed to bring technocratic discipline to federal agencies. Instead, it became a vehicle for purges and no-bid contracts to loyalists, with Musk’s companies at the center. But this favor was conditional.

 

Though tensions had been mounting for weeks—over tariffs, regulatory moves, and Trump’s abrupt firing of Musk’s handpicked NASA nominee—the feud boiled over when Musk publicly opposed Trump’s signature “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), calling it a “disgusting abomination”. The fallout was so dramatic that Senator Mike Lee, caught between the two, likened the situation to a child forced to choose between divorcing parents: “But … I really like both of them”.

 

The rupture became unmistakable when Musk, in a post on X, openly called for Trump’s impeachment—a move widely reported and seen as a point of no return in the feud. Musk’s “Yes” reply to a call for impeachment was amplified across social media and news outlets.

 

Musk’s Leverage—and Limits

 

This standoff is more than personal drama. It echoes the early 2000s showdown between Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Putin—a moment that defined whether oligarchs could challenge a personalist ruler. Unlike Khodorkovsky, Musk controls assets the U.S. government can’t easily replace: Starlink satellites, SpaceX launches, and a social media megaphone rivaling Trump’s own.

Trump threatened to pull federal contracts; Musk threatened to decommission the Dragon spacecraft, a move that would have immediate consequences for NASA and U.S. space operations. Musk later walked back the threat, but the message was clear: both sides have leverage, and both are willing to use it. As the New York Times put it, Musk’s pushback is “unprecedented in Trumpworld 2.0”.

 

Yet the government’s reliance on Musk is as deep as Musk’s reliance on government contracts. As political analyst Ian Bremmer notes, “Are they really going to [cancel the contracts]? I doubt it, because there aren’t good options.” Bremmer and the latest NYT analysis both point out that while Trump can ramp up regulatory scrutiny or suspend Musk’s security clearance, Musk has already demonstrated his ability to threaten government priorities in return. The result is a precarious mutual dependency, with no easy off-ramp for either side.

 

Why the “Broligarchy” Myth Fails

 

Some commentators, like Evan Osnos, still frame Trump’s America as an oligarchy—rule by billionaires buying access and influence. But the evidence suggests something more volatile: a system where alliances are transactional, outcomes are unpredictable, and even the richest can be discarded for dissent. This is crony capitalism and kleptocracy, yes—but above all, it’s personalism.

Bremmer puts it bluntly: “Rule of law plays no interest. It’s rule of man, rule of one man… That is how you get ahead.” The scale of self-enrichment is staggering, from meme coins to billion-dollar contracts. But as Musk’s experience shows, money alone can’t buy lasting protection in a system ruled by loyalty and personal favor.

 

Institutional Erosion and the Fragility of Power

 

Trump’s personalist style isn’t limited to tech. His administration’s campaign to defund universities and cultural institutions, often by executive fiat, is part of the same pattern. Accusations of “wokeness” or “antisemitism” justify billion-dollar funding freezes, while critics are fired or silenced. The message is clear: autonomy depends on loyalty.

 

Yet, as political science shows, personalist regimes—unlike entrenched oligarchies—are often more fragile. Their power is concentrated but brittle, lacking the deep roots and coalitions that make reversal difficult. Recent reversals in Brazil and Poland suggest that personalist projects, for all their dangers, can be undone if institutions and civil society push back.

 

Conclusion: The Real Stakes

 

The Musk-Trump feud isn’t just about two outsized personalities. It’s a test case for how much power one leader can wield in a system where loyalty trumps law, and whether any elite—no matter how rich or well-connected—can resist.

 

Whether Musk’s challenge sparks a broader elite defection or simply reinforces Trump’s dominance will help determine if America tips further toward personalist rule, or if this era proves reversible. For now, the “broligarchy” looks more like a court of courtiers than a true oligarchy—and the outcome is still very much in play.

 

Endnotes

 

1. Center for a New American Security. “Democracy under Threat: How the Personalization of Political Parties Undermines Democracy.” CNAS Report, June 2023.
2. Broadwater, Luke. “Trump Has Power, a Big Megaphone and Billions to Spend. So Does Musk.” The New York Times, June 6, 2025.
3. Bremmer, Ian. “Elon vs. Trump: Billionaire Fallout Goes Public.” GZERO Media Quick Take, June 6, 2025.
4. Fischer, Sara. “Musk Calls for Trump Impeachment.” Axios, June 5, 2025.
5. “Fact Check: Yes, Musk Shared Post Calling for Trump’s Impeachment.” Yahoo News, June 5, 2025.
6. “Trump’s Former NASA Pick Suggests He Lost Nomination Due to Musk Ties.” Axios, June 4, 2025.
7. “Understanding Personalism in Politics.” Number Analytics, May 24, 2025.
8. Osnos, Evan. “The Billionaires’ Playbook.” The New Yorker, March 3, 2025.
9. “Washington Post Faces Backlash After Bezos’s Editorial Shift.” The Guardian, February 26, 2025.
10. Stelter, Brian. “Mark Zuckerberg’s MAGA Makeover Will Reshape the Internet.” CNN, January 7, 2025.
11. “How Musk Built DOGE: Timeline and Key Takeaways.” New York Times, February 28, 2025.
12. “Tech Giants Secure No-Bid Contracts Under Trump.” Forbes, April 10, 2025.

War spending increases; MAGA builds an American digital deep surveillance state

The Economist reports about global defense spending. The US outspends the next nine largest spenders together.

Budgets totalled $2.7 trillion in 2024, which was up by 9.4% from 2023. That is the biggest jump since at least 1988. But if one does the budget analysis based on military purchasing-power parity (military PPP) instead of raw dollar totals or share of GDP, the US is not so far ahead. A US dollar does not buy as much for the US military as it does for the military in other countries including China, India and Russia. The US gets less bang for its buck compared to other many other countries.

 

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Multiple warnings have been posted here about the rise and power of China's deep surveillance dictatorship, e.g., here and here. The Chinese dictators are aggressively using aggressive digital surveillance to control (i) their population, (ii) what the Chinese people see, and (iii) what they think about what they see, real or illusion. As best I can tell, this represents the most serious long-term threat to democracy and the health of the human condition. MAGA elites are fully aware of what China has done and why it did it. MAGA elites want to duplicate that in the US and are now aggressively starting to build an equivalent here to what Chinese tyrants have done there.

Mashable writes about the MAGA effort now getting seriously underway to build an authoritarian American deep surveillance state to control us, what wee see and how we think about what we see:

What is Palantir? The secretive tech company behind 

Trump's data collection efforts

Last Friday, the New York Times published an explosive report on the Trump administration's work with Palantir, which could result in the creation of a master database with information on every single American. Per the Times, if this type of "master list" was created, it would give the president "untold surveillance power."

President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year enabling the federal government to share data on Americans across U.S. agencies. However, we now know more about how the administration intends to do it.

djt selected the tech firm Palantir to carry out the government's data consolidation plan. Palantir's technology would will compile sensitive information from agencies like the DHS, ICE, IRS, SSA and other agencies Government databases that include information on bank account numbers, medical claims, disabilities, and student debt amounts will be centralized. Palantir was co-founded by Republican, djt megadonor and radical MAGA authoritarian Peter Thiel.

What MAGA elites intend to do is a lot like China's intrusive authoritarian social control systems. The US counterpart effort will integrate sensitive personal data from agencies into a unified AI-powered platform. MAGA elites ignore warnings from civil liberties advocates and political scientists about the erosion of democratic norms and privacy. They claim this is an effort to reduce waste, fraud and abuse. That is by now the standard excuse for essentially all of the damage to democracy and democratic institutions that djt and MAGA elites have caused since taking power last January.

Former Palantir employees and democracy advocates have cautioned that such platforms could surveil, target, and silence anyone the government disagrees with. The use of Palantir's advanced data analytics capabilities, Peter Thiel's explicitly anti-democratic ideology, and the documented authoritarian tendencies within MAGA politics creates conditions that enables the development of a surveillance state comparable to China's mass monitoring infrastructure.

Thiel's authoritarianism is well-documented. He criticized universal suffrage and advocated for "technological means" to bypass democratic processes, knowing that most Americans do not want what Thiel wants, i.e., a kleptocratic tyranny. He acknowledged his minority position in a 2010 speech (YouTube video of the speech):

"The basic idea was that we could never win an election on getting certain things because we were in such a small minority. But maybe you could actually unilaterally change the world without having to constantly convince people and beg people and plead with people who are never going to agree with you through technological means"

That quote aligns with Thiel’s long-documented objection to democracy. In a 2009 essay, he wrote: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." There, he advocated for technological solutions to bypass democratic processes. Make no mistake here, what djt and MAGA elites are doing is building the infrastructure for an authoritarian deep surveillance state just like China has done. This data centralization effort by MAGA elites has nothing to do with cutting waste fraud and abuse. It is only about cutting democracy, rule of law and civil liberties and accumulating wealth and power for chosen elites.

Making a case…

Observe the wonderment of Nature.  It can be an interesting, even educational guidepost to many phenomena we experience in this realm.

Take procreation.  We, in essence, clone a version of ourselves when we procreate.  Granted, the end product is a hybrid of the parent's DNA.  A little from this side, a little from that side, and voila!  You got yourself another person; a physical hybrid variation of yourself.  You could call this a form of reincarnation; to perpetuate, iterate, via procreation.

Many things in Nature "reincarnate/iterate" like that.  Maybe not exactly as before, a total duplicate, but the basics are there.  Organic things beget like organic things; a flower begets a like flower, an animal begets a like animal, etc.

When we humans talk about our definition of reincarnation, we think of a person's "soul" (i.e., who we are) as "moving on" to another version of itself.  Like with procreation, the same, yet different.  Some religions/philosophies believe that if you were a force for good (a human subjective notion) in this life, you ascend in the "hierarchy of existence," to a better "version" of yourself.  If not, you descend in the "chain of existence."  I believe the sages of old have looked to Nature as a guide to the workings of existence and came up with this idea of reincarnation.  IDK, just my suspicion.

We've heard of cases where people under hypnosis have experienced past life regression (PLR).  While "discredited by medical practitioners and experts" (a la Wiki), whether PLR is legit or not, who really knows? (see Copernicus) 😉

All this intro is by way of asking my question:

Question: Assuming the "soul" exists, do you discount reincarnation of the soul?  There are some philosophies that believe it's a real possibility.  Why not?

(by PrimalSoup)

News bits: Russian war toll; Ukraine update; American theocracy update

The Economist reports that Russian military deaths will probably reach 1 million this month, with injuries at ~4 million. The ratio of severely wounded to killed is estimated at about four to one, reflecting both the severity of injuries inflicted in Ukraine and the low priority Russia gives to medical evacuation or the prompt field-hospital treatment that saves lives.

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On May 29, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth notified Congress that he blocked shipment of proximity fuses for AGR-20 rockets to the Ukraine. The fuses are needed by Ukraine to intercept Russian drones. The fuses are essential for Ukraine’s ability to counter drone attacks. This crippling decision shows djt’s ongoing hostility to the Ukraine, its people's suffering and democracy generally.

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The Hill reports that the USSC unanimously voted to greatly expand church access to tax dollars, a cherished, high priority goal of American Christian nationalism. In this case, Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission, the court allowed a secular charity with links to the Catholic church to avoid paying state unemployment taxes. That overturned a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that denied the tax exemption because the organization does not proselytize or restrict services to Catholics, making it secular. 

This decision is very important because it greatly expanded the scope of religious freedom under the First Amendment. The ruling (1) increases the autonomy of religious organizations to define their missions without state interference, and (2) expands the scope tax exemptions for faith-based entities. Wisconsin estimated that a ruling favoring Catholic Charities might lead 1 million workers to lose unemployment benefits if religious employers withdraw from state programs. That is sufficient to destabilize the state's unemployment fund. This holding decreases state authority to regulate entities claiming religious exemptions. It also potentially creates instability in social safety nets as more charities claim to be religious, whether they are or not, to avoid paying state unemployment taxes. 

The Court’s reasoning elevates religious intent over secular intent when evaluating charitable work. Now we have a two-tiered charity system. The exact same charitable act, e.g., feeding the hungry, is now constitutionally and officially “sacred” in a religious context, but merely “secular” in a secular context.** This legal privileging of religious identity, not the moral or social value of the act itself, defines the core of this theocratic ruling. This further erodes already very weak church-state separation. Overall, this is part of a concerted Christian nationalist effort to completely displace secular charity with religious charity, while undermining social safety nets.

** In other words, this decision looks at the claimed motivation behind charitable acts, not the acts themselves. So, feeding the hungry is deemed “sacred” under the First Amendment if done by Catholic Charities because it is claimed to flow from Catholic social teaching. By contrast, a secular food bank performing the exact same work lacks this legal shield from taxation, even if its commitment to alleviating hunger is equally profound. This is tax law favoring theocracy over secularism, pure and simple.

Q: Should all tax advantages for (1) all religions, (2) all religious charities, or (3) all secular and religious charities be withdrawn?