Andrew Miller: Musk, Zuckerberg, Trump and Rogan ‘s misinformation and half-truths pervasive and pernicious

The great author Terry Pratchett expanded the ancient apocryphal curse “may you live in interesting times” into a trilogy of sardonic wishes. I squashed my intrusive thoughts about the “interesting” direction of United States health policy into the back of my mind, behind the coffee, and went to find somewhere to decompress. Kind friends of ours have a farm, three hours from the city — with cows, horses, a wide veranda and trees. A fine place to cogitate. The second part of Pratchett’s curse is “may you come to the attention of those in authority”. Is the strange court of Mar-a-Lago really the new Rome? Are those lining up to kiss the president-elect’s ring insightful, fearful or calculating? Will he follow through with his expansionist puffery about Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Panama? He gushed that “genius” Vladimir Putin’s approach to Ukraine was “very savvy”, so the question is valid. America exists to influence the rest of the world’s culture — including in medicine — but I needed time far away from podcasters lionising Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s performatively masculine endeavours. The road to the farm was sealed most of the way, but the scrabbly gravel of the last few miles — there are no kilometres out there — was suitably corrugated, red-dusty and shifting in sections. The driveway gate wore a hand-painted sign. We went back in time, past old eucalyptus sentries. The bull rested on his ruminating belly in the cool shade, surrounded by his pregnant harem. Zuckerberg would approve, no diversity program there. What the testosterone revivalists really want is monopoly; sharing opportunity irks them. They aspire to be the only bull in the paddock. We drove past outbuildings, open-faced sheds crammed with the accoutrements of agriculture. The previous generations of analogue technology were still there, gently accepting dusty, rusty decay. Along the fence line, past rows of grafted vines, the gravel gave way to hard sand and dry stubble. We stopped in the long, late afternoon shadow of the fruit trees beside the house and opened the car doors, to be greeted by wind in the treetops and a million cicadas. A kookaburra family was cackling its chaotic gossip. In the midst of unprecedented wildfires in California, Musk, pictured, is mounting fallacious attacks on diversity initiatives in fire departments, in order to distract from the hot climate-change storm winds. It’s an echo of his juvenile attack on the serious people who rescued those boys in the Thai caves. Those who crave attention berate actual lifesavers. We watched the sunset from the veranda, as a wedge-tailed eagle circled high above plantation trees. Even in that idyllic purple dusk though, some of the blinking stars were artificial. The final part of Pratchett’s curse is “may the gods give you everything you ask for”. Well above that eagle, shiny satellites were providing the farm’s broadband connection. The internet brings all the knowledge of the world to our pocket, but it is the Trojan horse for all its curated trash as well. Musk’s imperial silencing of dissent on X, formerly Twitter, and his ardent support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party should be sending chills down national spines. The public health ambitions of Robert F Kennedy Jnr are a throwback to the dark ages — if he had been in charge when COVID-19 struck, we might never have got those vaccines that continue to save countless lives. Zuckerberg, remember Cambridge Analytica?, recently told blokey Joe Rogan that there is a “sea change in terms of who are the voices that matter”. No prizes for guessing whose voices those are, as Rogan cheerleads Trump’s absurd line that the US should unilaterally absorb its neighbours. These are sovereign allies of the US, just like us. We slept deeply in the cool country air, but like climate change and pandemics, these global man-boys, their strange plans and half-truths, cannot be ignored. These sure are interesting times.