As Elon Musk launches his new America Party, we should all reflect on his concept of "evil" and how hollow it sounds, writesDr. Alex Vickery-Howe.

FORMERAmerican Vice-Presidential candidateTim Walzhas a new hobby. When he needs a pick-me-up, Tim checks onTeslas plummeting stock prices.

Its an innocent activity. Its harmless. Tim isnt out there burning Teslas which, incidentally, are perfectly capable ofburning all by themselvesor vandalising dealerships. Even so, for the gentle sin of schadenfreude, proxy vice-president andjilted "first bro"Elon Musk hasdubbed Walz "evil".

The bromance is over between Donald Trumpand Elon Musk but the real loser of their feud is democracy.

Theres nothing evil about laughing at afascist dork.Impolite? Yes. Vindictive? Maybe. But evil? Hardly comes close.

Musks buffoonish attempt to paint his political enemy in such absolute terms got me thinking about the nature of evil itself and what should qualify for such extreme terminology.

As I write this, the Trump Administration has a plan to rebrand catastrophic climate change a"good thing".

Not merely content with destroying the environment;raping the land ("drill, baby, drill!") andkilling wild animalsdirectly via "hunting"(also known as grown menhiding and shooting carnivoresfrom a cowardly distance);or indirectly via deforestation, pollution and road carnage, President Trump wants to take his tyranny one leap further and pretend...climate change is a net positive!

Droughts, fires, floods and monsoons are now all part of making America great again. Its a lie thatonly the stupidwill embrace, but its also a denial of science, a denial of objective reality and a denial of human accountability. That, I believe, is evil.

Trump is also gleefully deporting immigrants without anything resembling a law-abiding process, including extraditing and then "losing"a Maryland fatherwho was supposedly under the protection of the courts. Kilmar Abrego Garcia hasno criminal recordin the United States. Trump does. In the worldview of the felonious President and his spineless cronies, the courts are no longer legitimate. Military parades are no longer tasteless. Dictatorial power is all the rage.

Americans can now betaken off the streetregardless of their legal status to be black bagged, handcuffed and paraded for the cameras. The footage of terrified people having their heads shaved en route toa maximum-security hellholein El Salvador is a nightmare straight out of Hitlers diary, and it isno longer hyperbolicto make that comparison plain. American residents are being enslaved for news stories.LA is occupied. That, I believe, is evil.

Lord Trumpis also contemplating a third unconstitutional term in office. He actually calls it his "fourth term"because he still claims President Biden "rigged"the 2020Election. That, I believe, is evil. Its alsoa betrayal of America.

As Trump attempts to humiliate his ally, JD Vance waits to play his hand.

It fascinates me that Trumps loyalists will rave about their "constitutional rights" when it comes to the Second Amendment and their precious right to shoot up schools, yet ignore theConstitutionwhen it comes tothe freedom of the pressthats the First Amendment for those playing at home anddownright spit on the Constitution when it comes to respecting the judicial arm of government. Thats Article III, and its essential for the effective functioning ofAmerican democracy.

It dismays me that those same toadying loyalists who love their guns and accuse other nations Australia most regularly of being "slaves" to a "dictatorship"have utterly failed to notice that they have a leader who demands absolute loyalty, imprisons critics without trial and refuses to step down after his term in office expires. That, I believe, is evil.Palpatinedid it withmore subtlety.

The religious trappings surrounding the Far-Right are pretty evil, too. Im not a person of faith but I have met many kind and principled Christians. Distorting a movement based onempathy and generosityto demonise racial and sexual minoritiesand to celebrate their "punishment", is evil wrapped in angelic wings.

And, when it comes to Musk, I believeusing trusting animalsfor cruel and lethal scientific experiments is evil incarnate. His ego isindefensible.

There are many reasons why Trump and Musk ascended to the White House. Musk rants (chainsaw in hand) about"okeism"andthe "elitists".Coming from his mouth, its as hypocritical as a coal executive at a climate summit, orformer-almost PM Peter Duttonkissing babies after cutting childcare funding, but there is a kernel of truth beneath the populist dross. Voter dissatisfaction among working-class people was realand foreseeable, and largely the fault of anelitist and out-of-touch Left.

If we are to move through this terrible moment in history, we must start with introspection, build towards reparation and resolve to heal the social and economic wounds caused by both extremes of politics. A failure toface our flawshonestly is a free kick to fascists. We should be beyondhubris and denialby now.

In an Australian context, this same hubris and denial became fuel for the Coalitions election campaign, where Peter Dutton managed to positionhimself as the"Temu Trump".It didnt work this time, but it may work next time if Labor proves unable to close the wealth gap.

A Left that fails to acknowledge the housing crisis, cost of livingand economic disparity in favour of clickbait "culture war"clout is a Left that will land on the ash heap of irrelevancy beside the fading embers of the Harris-Walz presidential campaign. I hope Australias leaders have learned the hard lesson from Americas collapse. If not, the day may yet arrive where well have to use "Prime Minister Ley"or "Prime Minister Taylor"in a sentence and thats going to come with a little light chunder.

There are even harder lessons to be learned about sloganeering over substance, performative empathy over political action, andthe consequencesof a relatively new and spurious pseudo-leftism untethered from the movementstraditional economic roots.

We have to make amends for our abandonment of working people. We have to examine our ownideological compromiseand our pandering todestructive voicesfrom within. The contemporary Left isnt blameless. We didlet people down.We didlose our way.

But evil? Lets keep our heads straight. Evil has little to do with "the elitist Left"and "the woke mind virus", and nothing whatsoever to do with laughing at stock prices.

Evil is all over our newsfeed...

Musk isoften the byline.

Dr Alex Vickery-Howeis an award-winning playwright and social commentator. He teaches creative writing, screen and drama atFlinders University.

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