William Henry Harrison and his Evil Dad
The richest man in America in 1877 was the heir to a fortune bequeathed him by his rich dad. William Henry Vanderbilt inherited a fortune from his father Cornelius, aka the ‘Commodore’. Not only did the Commodore have the kind of personality that would earn him the nickname Commodore, Daddy Vanderbilt also had a hundred million dollars ($100,000,000) and notoriety as an evil robber baron. In other words, he was the late 1800s equivalent of a billionaire today.
Daddy Vanderbilt was also an asshole to his son William Henry, taking every opportunity to degrade, berate, belittle, and yank the balls off of the seemingly sissy young railroad scion to be. The Commodore turned his son into a craven Daddy-cowering coward. Then brought him into the robber baron business and eventually plunked a hundred mil on him.
Plus ça change….
He was an ugly mofo, that William Henry Vanderbilt, ‘Colussus’ of Railroads, but he doubled his dad’s money. Vanderbilt Jr. couldn’t win an argument with Daddy Vanderbilt to save his life, but he could carry a chip on his shoulder to the end of his earthly days. He expressed his animus in an interview with the Chicago Daily News. He summarized his feelings about people at large with the phrase: “the public be damned!” He meant he didn’t give a damn about public benefit from his ventures; he wanted to make more and more money!
In keeping with the billionaire handbook for acquiring massive wealth, he bribed officials, discriminated against his customers, and was generally ruthless toward those pesky members of humanity that were, at the time, sadly associated with doubling a fortune.
Vanderbilt also lost money to a Ponzi scheme. Could have used that money to help the railroad workers he, ahem, railroaded into abject poverty. But why do that when you can get taken by a Ponzi scheme, o mighty genius of business?
Mr. Richest Man of the 1880s also had 9 children and died at age 64 of a stroke. The surviving children got, you guessed it, boatloads of money. The American meritocracy at work!
Elon Musk and his Evil Dad
Today’s richest man in America, Elon Musk, was also born to an asshole, Errol Musk. Daddy Errol was abusive, an incestuous pedophile, and, according to Elon, “evil.” E. Musk the elder has not, to date, suffered even the consequences that Jeffrey Epstein did. He was also, like Daddy Vanderbilt, prone to berating his sons. Elon’s classmates seemingly saw Elon as a sissy type, bullying and beating him so badly that Elon ended up in the hospital.
Elon’s Dad did not give him $100 million to buy railroads with. It’s unclear how much Errol Musk may have given Elon, given that both Errol and Elon are known liars and they are apparently the only 2 witnesses to any gifts. (Errol is, unfortunately, still alive.)
What Errol did was raise Elon in a “bubble of entitlement.” A bubble of entitlement is not, to be clear, exactly the same thing as $100 million.
Except that it kind of is. Elon Musk is, of course, far from the only person to be born to an asshole and raised in a bubble of entitlement. Most of them, to their credit, are not billionaires. Individual character goes into the making of a billionaire as well.
But the vibe if you will of being “rich and entitled with the entire society built to sustain him and his ilk” is exactly the vibe that makes billionaires so dismissive of the realities of other people. It’s the vibe that makes Musk not so much inclined to say ‘the public be damned’ but to believe that the public should be damned. To be an actual Nazi sympathizer. To be evil to his employees and others – just like William Henry Harrison.
Because, the rule for these rich folks is that if you cannot beat them, join them. Vanderbilt couldn’t beat the Commodore. Elon cannot beat Errol.
If You Can’t Beat Them, Don’t Join Them
This isn’t a knock against either billionaire. I’ve seen video clips of Errol Musk and I’m fairly certain that no one could beat Errol Musk. He is, as his sons have said, just so pervasively evil in every way that there’s just no humanity there to appeal to. Some people cannot be beaten by their own children.
But some people decide not to join them. They figure out how to not associate with evil, become evil, cower before evil, toady to evil, seek approval from evil, etc. Some people are not still sissies inside, still cowering before their evil dads and taking it out on the rest of humanity.
Some people encounter evil early in their lives and decide to get pretty fed up with it. I’m not saying it’s easy to stand up to an overbearing evil parent. To refuse to adopt the mindset that makes them so destructive to others. I am saying that doing so is a moral imperative – and the only way to save your soul.
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