My 2025 Project: Starting a New Column, “Hiding in Plain Sight”

Seven years ago, when we were both speaking at a book fair in Northern California, I met author Leslie Berlin. I picked up a copy of her book, Troublemakers: The Coming of Age of Silicon Valleyand then put it on my bookshelves and (I’m ashamed to admit) instantly forgot about it.

Seven years later, as the tech titans amassed wealth at a maddened trot and increasingly nefariously meddled in the political process, I finally got around to reading it. This is a wonderfully insightful history of the early decades of Silicon Valley’s boom. It tells the story of how the high-tech innovators of the 1960s and 70s and their peers over the course of a generation transformed from iconoclasts, rebellious figures to eventual economic titans. Their companies are some of the largest and most powerful on earth, and they, as individuals, are some of the wealthiest people to ever walk the planet.

I wish I had read Berlin’s book years ago. It gave me a deeper understanding of the cultural and political forces that have recently broken out of Silicon Valley, as well as the self-confidence and arrogance that defines so many of the Valley’s elites. These technology professionals take no prisoners and tend to have a remarkable lack of introspection. They believe they have the right to rule the universe, and to get there they’ve developed an unusual system of bulldozing their way into what they see as the future with little regard for collateral damage.

It’s about how tech billionaires have pushed traditional news organizations in their quest to control the messages and stories users see. And increasingly, it is about the rules and regulations that have historically limited this now strange ideal of informed, participatory democracy.

Want to understand how and why Trump’s address turned out to be so unusual in the November election? Look at Elon Musk’s quarter-billion-dollar meddling and his firm tilt of the X scales in Trump’s favor, especially when it came to advertising for young people. Look at the rumors that spreading like wildfire on Facebookwith no sense of responsibility on the part of corporate owners for the damage they have done to human life or the damage they have done to the body politic. See how Jeff Bezos ritually kissed the ring and how his Washington Post ordered his employees do not support Kamala Harris. Look at Peter Thiel’s right-wing political agenda his patronage of rising political stars such as JD Vance.

And now many of the same billionaires are raking in the money. Bloomberg reported that Musk’s net worth is increased by more than 60 percent since the election; the richest man in the world is now approaching the half trillion dollar mark. Bezos and Zuckerberg are not far behind. Three of them now have $1 trillion in assets. As Bernie Sanders recently pointed out in a scathing tweetit is an absolutely grotesque accumulation of wealth and power, and it seems almost certain to accelerate as Trump’s American oligarchy unfolds.

Even more grotesque is that Musk, America’s most intransigent oligarch, is putting his case on the line as co-head of a newly created “Department of Government Efficiency” charged with spiraling losses federal spending. He went about it with his usual lack of tact and dignity, targeting individual civil servants explosions in social networks; intimidating politicians who may have reservations about the scale of his proposals — or, indeed, the legitimacy of an unelected Musk’s mandate to unilaterally overhaul the entire federal government; disparaging the work habits of civil servants as his own companies face accusations that they have a workplace culture that tolerates everything from sexual harassment to racist messages; and, most recently, demanding that Congress not pass a bipartisan spending bill designed to keep government operations running and federal employees getting much-needed paychecks.

If the sight of the richest man in the world pretending to be the people’s tribune and pushing a complacent GOP-led Congress to shut down the government and strip hundreds of thousands of federal employees of their paychecks just in time for the holiday season doesn’t give you goosebumps, I don’t know what will ruffle your feathers. .

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Musk, with Trump’s full blessing, is treating America the way he treated X; he sees it as his personal prize, as a conquered corporate territory, its assets to be disposed of as he sees fit. And let there be due process.

It’s so much America seems normal with Musk ascribing such extraordinary powers to himself, extraordinary. But then again, much of our current political and cultural moment is completely abnormal.

And that brings me to the point of this column. Since early 2021, I’ve been writing my Left Coast column, exploring political trends and events in the coastal and desert West. By my count, this is number 180. I loved every minute of it.

Writing columns about the West for four years has made me increasingly convinced that this part of the country is just now coming to its full political maturity and potential—and that it will eventually play a key role in recalibrating America in a more progressive direction. But with the arrival of Trump’s second presidency, this time bolstered by the likes of Musk and his oligarchic minions, it’s time to refocus. And so in the new year, I’ll be diving back into all things Trumpworld.

My new Hiding In Plain Sight column will launch in time for the inauguration of America’s first convicted felon and insurgent president. If, as many of us expect, this indeed turns out to be a presidency of smash and grab—a historically unprecedented exercise in fraud, corruption, and brutality, as well as extraordinary anti-democratic and authoritarian practices—the media will have a particularly important role to play. I hope that Hiding in Plain Sight will shine a light on the dark places and ugly political realities that too many Americans have chosen to turn a blind eye to because of Trump. My goal is that when the terrible policies and oligarchic deals begin, when vulnerable people are made even more vulnerable by Trump’s assault on civil society buildings, I can help readers understand the stakes and navigate their way forward.

Two and a half centuries ago, Thomas Paine wrote in Common sense“Government, like clothing, is a sign of lost innocence; the palaces of the kings are built on the ruins of the heavenly arbors.”

America’s new oligarchs are working fast, building their own citadels on the wreckage not of paradise, but of vibrant, if flawed, American democracy. For years, Trump has held our democracy captive, his supporters threatening bloody mayhem if he doesn’t get his way. For years, his supporters have conspired in his assault on the very concept of truth and on the institutions that make pluralistic societies and the peaceful transfer of power possible.

Now, despite an extensive criminal justice resume, Trump is returning to the White House. On January 20, he will raise his hand and take a solemn oath to uphold the very Constitution and rules-based system of government he desecrated four years ago. In the long saga of America, this will surely be one of the most hypocritical moments.

Crying, beloved country– once wrote the South African writer Alan Patton. This is a particularly fitting phrase for our moment. Yes, I will cry. I will weep for all the damage done by these new future pharaohs. But then I’ll write because that’s what I do.