How Did We Let It Come to This?

The Sandbox Fight in The White House

Jul 08, 2025

Are you old enough to remember the flaming fallout between Musk and Trump? It happened less than a year ago. But what was the most shocking aspect of that sandbox fight?

That one of the brats is the richest man in the world (next to Putin, perhaps), and the other one is the most powerful man in the free world?

Nope.

The most shocking aspect of that sandbox fight is that no one seemed to ask, “How did we let it come to this?”

These two toddlers have been cheered and crowd-surfed all the way to the top. Still, any sign of soul-searching from all those who participated or enabled it (which is most of us) is totally absent.

So, what if we face some inconvenient truths?

Our TV channels are rife with reality shows where participants dance, bake and copulate for a few hours of fame. And viewers devour. As they did with “The Apprentice,” where the leading star now runs his ultimate docuseries from the White House.

America is the embodiment of consumerism, celebrity culture and anti-intellectualism. But we, here in Europe, can no longer shield behind the “America is much worse” solace.

Voters in our countries also embrace “Only I can fix it” messages from politicians with limited brains and even more limited hearts. Trump might be the worst, but he is surrounded by a set of global, less orange semi-editions—on the left, and on the right.

Many of us felt above all that. We would never have voted for a Trump-like character. We don’t waste our time on reality shows. But Musk? He was different. Musk was our guy — the brilliant, science-minded entrepreneur who was going to save the planet. Our yearning for such a hero was so deep that we brushed off any warning signs.

This fun nerd planning to colonise Mars forces his employees to work themselves to death, calls them f— idiots and fires them at a whim. We didn’t want to listen to that. Musk was the good guy because that is what we wanted him to be.

Likewise, few asked why this person seems to be uninterested in giving back to the world, despite, at some point, amassing more wealth than the GDP of South Africa. Imagine what he could have done for his country of birth? Fixing the electricity crisis. Make children play football with shoes on. No more shanty towns with open sewers.

The peak of this unbridled adoration came from a man who should know better: Richard Dawkins, who tweeted the following after Musk had bounced around on a stage at one of the Orange Man’s rallies.

Two men hugging each other

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“Highly intelligent. The welfare of the world at heart.” My respect for Dawkins collapsed like the dinosaurs under the Yucatán asteroid. And it has far from recovered. How can a scientist, a champion of reason and critical thinking, be so deceived?

My take: Because Musk impressed Dawkins with his knowledge of science and his vision for a fossil-free future. And that is what mattered to Dawkins. Information about Musk’s egregious behaviour was pushed back or ignored. It didn’t fit the narrative.

Dawkins might have been a victim of the halo effect: The tendency to like or dislike everything about a person, even when you don’t know them very well. In Dawkins’ case, “He is intelligent. He knows a lot about science. He must be a good man.”

If this can happen to a famous scientist, who has built his whole career on seeking the truth, — it can happen to any of us. But that is not an excuse. Not for Dawkins. Not for the rest of us.

I don’t have all the answers to “How did we let it come to this?” I can’t imagine anyone has.

One thing I do know:

We, ordinary people, need to take more responsibility for what happens in the world.

We need to acknowledge that this sandbox fight between two of the world’s most mighty men did not happen due to some abstract “system.” It didn’t happen because of some “they” either.

That sandbox fight was the inevitable result of who we chose to admire and what we chose to ignore.

So, the question isn’t “How did this happen?” It’s “How did we let it happen?”

We need to grow up and take much more responsibility for whom we admire, buy from, work for and vote for.