The King and the Vulgarian

The King and the Vulgarian

Many of my South Florida neighbors were riveted this year by the HBO series *The Gilded Age*, devoted to the foundations of America's old-money aristocracy and its competition with the newly monied class of the late 19th century. The loosely knitted history of the Vanderbilts (represented by the fictional Russells) cracking the New York establishment still resonates. The scandalous story of Consuelo Vanderbilt’s divorce—heaven forbid!—rocked New York society. Quelle horreur!

Julian Fellowes, the creator of this high-falutin’ soap opera, won a slew of Emmys for his earlier epic *Downton Abbey*—essentially a Noël Coward play, minus the acerbic wit (with the notable exception of the recently departed Maggie Smith as the Crawley clan’s dowager matriarch). In *The Gilded Age*, that contrarian spirit lives on through a wonderful Christine Baranski, who plays Mrs. Agnes Van Rhijn, a woman whose Mayflower pedigree allows her to look down her nose at the arriviste Russell family.

These programs tap into the American fascination with royalty—or at least our admiration for it, provided it resides across the pond.

But now, we have King Charles III, a real king, entertaining an imposter king: Trump. A vulgar paradigm of American excess—still snickered about in English royal circles—recently found himself seated beside the King of England, Defender of the Faith and titular head of an empire long vanished. There they were, together in a grand dining hall at Windsor Castle: the heir to the Britannia that once ruled the seas, the nation of Gladstone, Nelson, Disraeli, Churchill, and Queen Victoria, Empress of India… now prostrate before a gold-plated, orange-tanned, coiffed American president.

This president’s pedigree? Stiffing creditors, consorting with sexual predators, conducting incoherent foreign policy, taxing citizens through regressive tariffs, waging war on the less fortunate through a cabal of incompetent acolytes, and suggesting that criticism from the press should be subject to government sanction. Oh—and let’s not forget the insurrection and the Big Lie about the 2020 election.

I try to comfort despairing friends and fellow citizens by reminding them that we’ve been through worse: two world wars, the Great Depression, Vietnam, institutional anti-Semitism in the early 20th century, and earlier demagogues—Joseph McCarthy, the Red Scare, Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and the American Nazi Bund. Let’s not forget the original “America First” movement, which would have let England sink into the Nazi abyss. Or Charles Lindbergh, Nazi sympathizer.

But then, we had FDR. Truman. Eisenhower. And others in the Senate and the House who led the way through times that could have been even darker.

Now, however, we face exponential changes in societal structure—changes that demand even greater leadership. Perhaps an AI president and Congress? Does anyone seriously think Trump is smarter than ChatGPT? More literate? More informed?

Just imagine it: no more hot-air politicians on *Meet the Press*. No more Senate windbags. No more overpaid Congresspeople with better health insurance than their constituents. Just robots telling us what’s best. Some Soylent Green for lunch, a little Soma to sleep.

Sound far-fetched? So did AI.