When the high and mighty of Silicon Valley assumed their privileged perch at the swearing-in of President Trump, it was an ostentatious show of wealth and power unlike any before. "You could go back to the Gilded Age and you could have a similar concentration of capital and power. You know, Rockefeller and Carnegie," said historian Margaret O'Mara, citing two of the richest men who ever bestrode the earth.
"But they weren't on the dais of the inauguration." The moment was open to varied interpretation. Was it Trump, that most status-conscious of alpha males, bringing to heel the formidable likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg? Or were all those billionaire potentates in the Capitol Rotunda – seated in front of Trump's Cabinet picks– asserting their social, economic and cultural hegemony? Maybe both.
Regardless, there is no denying the remarkable ascendance of Silicon Valley and its tech leaders, in a single generation, from a collection of indifferent and often politically naive entrepreneurs into king-making, proximate-to-power lords of the political universe. Only in America. And, yes, that's sarcasm you detect.
The explanation for their propinquity lies not in the creation of some whiz-bang, life-changing, paradigm-bending consumer product, or the shining virtues or particularly fertile minds that grace Silicon Valley's fruited plain. "It's one of the oldest truisms in politics," said Larry Gerston, a San José State political science professor emeritus,.
