Unserious People.

In past times a person was considered “unserious” or “not a serious” person if they failed to grasp, behave and speak according to the solemnity of the context in which they were located. For example a serious person does not audibly pass gas at Church, or yell “gun” at a playground, say “sorry, just kidding” at a marriage ceremony, yelling that ” the lid is moving” at a funeral internment, put a whoopee cushion on the Prime Minister’s seat or try to barge into a plane cockpit just for laughs or as a prank. That is for comedians and idiots to do.

“Serious” in this old-fashioned sense means that a person knows the context in which s/he is acting and takes that context, well, seriously when behaving and speaking within it. That includes considerations of decorum, audience impressions, immediate and future consequences, the weight of tradition and importance of standards of comportment. Sometimes are not the time for a piss-take. The gravity of the moment dictates the degree of seriousness that should be taken.

Fast forward to the Oval Office press conference held by Musk and Trump this week. Trump sat hunched over the Resolute Desk while Musk, wearing a MAGA baseball cap and a t-shirt and accompanied by his four year old (and restless) son, pontificated about DOGE finding all sorts of dodgy doings at various government agencies. He lectured on what he thinks democracy is, spoke of mandates and unelected bureaucrats, smeared judges as activists and questioned their independence, asked why spending taxpayer money on foreign aid is considered a good thing, and spouted assorted other rubbish like some pimply-faced high school Ann Rand-inspired debate geek. On the other side of the desk from where Musk stood was a map depicting the “Gulf of America” just in case the media (including foreign press) did not get the point of Trump’s unilateral name change of that particular body of water. For at least 20 minutes the assembled press sat and watched in silence at the spectacle of Musk pontificating and Trump interjecting, perhaps collectively wondering why Musk was giving a joint press conference in the Oval Office in the first place. Everything after that was circus side-show gravy.

His son puttered around and behind the Resolute Desk, including picking his nose and wiping his nose-picking finger on the Resolute Desk, squirmed at his father’s feet and got hoisted onto Musk’s shoulders, where he played with the hat. The kid, whose name is “X,” also told Trump that he was not the president and that he should “shut the f**k up” (this was picked up by a hot mike and has now gone viral). Make of that what you will.

Meanwhile, outside the Oval Office windows it snowed gently on the South Lawn in what was the only concession to seriousness, serenity and reflection in that moment.

This is why Musk and Trump are not serious people. They may be using their respective positions and powers to pursue their overlapping agendas and interests, but even those agendas–annex Greenland and Canada, ethnically cleanse Gaza in order to make it beachfront real estate, re-occupy the Panama Canal, scrub “woke” language and information from government websites, kill off entire agencies and fire thousands of public servants and yes, rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” (seriously?)–are not the acts of truly serious people.

These are the acts of delusional madmen intoxicated by their own egos and unconstrained by what should be the normal checks and balances of a stable and mature democracy, including the protections offered by the rule of law and US Constitution. Instead, if you add in the GOP-controlled two Houses of Congress, what you have is a three-ring political circus masquerading as a federal democratic Republic.

The tragedy may be that although they are not serious in the pure sense of that term, they are all the more dangerous because of it. The analogies about destruction done and chaos legacies left by these criminal bigots write themselves, but the consequences will be worn by serious and unserious people alike in the years, perhaps decades ahead.

Thank goodness my second son will spend his teenage years in Aotearoa, which is a place that, some exceptions and US influences notwithstanding, still takes governance and policy-making pretty darn seriously.