That Ultimate Sidekick / Gabby Hayes

Red Clay / Freddy Hubbard

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John Fraim

I had lunch with my nephew the other day. It is always so good to catch up with him in person as we send a lot of links to each other on political stuff off the well beaten track. He talked much about the young people that flocked to Musk. My nephew was considering something like this. A former Marine and graduate of the University of Michigan, he’s at the point assessing his life. Many forks in the old road. But, as Yogi Bear said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

My nephew’s well read from a wide range of materials of Gen Z. For the past few years we’ve both been sending each other links to articles and books. I must say that my nephew had many fascinating sources of information. It was interesting to hear the perspective of his generation of high political figures in the current administration. There was a spectrum from Like to Dislike. So people were not equal across the board. DOGE

We discussed Elon Musk’s entry into the picture. My nephew had a lot of thoughts on this. 

Bringing the greatest inventor and creator of our time into the administration to work right next to the President. Not that the President doesn’t admire and respect the performance his Vice-President. But Musk is somewhat like that houseguest who came and stayed for a few months. But then Mar-a-Lago is a pretty good place to stay for a few months. Musk lived lot down there in 2024 and become “uncle” to kids down there. 

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Later, that night, I thought about our conversation. It seemed like Musk was really the sidekick of Trump. In Musk, President Trump has acquired someone he has truly never had as this type of a male friend in life. I’m sure the friendship is the same for Elon. Melania Trump has been what one might term his female sidekick in life. But he never had a male sidekick in life. Elon Musk fulfills this need for the President. And I’m sure that the President fulfills a need in Elon. Watching the two operate in the Sean Hannity interview was such a course in the relationship between these two men.

Someone the President can hang around with on a daily base. Can be easy, relaxed with. A true sidekick in life. The world’s greatest inventor and wealthiest person. Matched with the populist billionaire leader of the people today. This has perhaps been the greatest dynamic going on during the first part of the Trump administration. How long it will last is anyone’s guess. 

In thinking about the relationship, I thought of the word sidekick. I’ve been writing and researching symbols for many years and I thought it might be interesting to look up the mythology of sidekike. Below is from a well known source.

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Everyone needs a good friend—the person who stands by you through everything and helps you out when you are at your lowest. This certainly holds true for Heroes. They most definitely need a Sidekick.

In archetypal terms, the Sidekick is the faithful and loyal companion to the Hero. What would a classic Hero be without his Sidekick? In fact, there are some Heroes who wouldn’t make it through their adventure without the help of their loyal Sidekick! They’d run out of food or get captured or simply lose hope. Even when a Hero has a group of companions around him (think Frodo and the Fellowship), he often leaves that larger group of companions and sets off with just his Sidekick.

Of course, when it comes to fighting the Ultimate Bad Guy, or the Shadow in archetypal terms, the Hero must leave even his Sidekick behind. However, without the faithful and loyal companion, the Hero would never make it to the Ultimate Bad Guy at all and we wouldn’t have much of a story. Another source notes that a sidekick character is a secondary character who supports the protagonist, offering assistance, companionship, and often comic relief.

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Interesting perspective on the idea of sidekick from the perspective of mythology. My favorite cowboy heroes in early western tv shows had sidekicks. The Lone Ranger and Tonto.

The Lone Ranger & Tonto

One of the most interesting perspectives for viewing the fast changes happening in politics today is to view much of this as a battle between generations. This is what my nephew confirmed to me when I mentioned this. Elon, at 53 (and a member of Generation X) has attracted a huge number of Generation Z to his D.O.G.E. Right now, it stands at 100 coders and programmers and forensic accountants and soon will have a large increase. 

In effect, Elon tells Hannity in his interview with the President that he sees a large part of his job as executing the EOs of Trump. But Elon is so plugged into generation Z, who my nephew is a member of, he attracts many of the great minds today to him. 

In the end, the big invasion of DC is not just about Trump’s ideas. It is also about the ideas of technology. And therefore Musk is his best sidekick. More than anyone, Musk controls access to the leading minds today, as well as the new super AI chip facility in the south.

As Musk said to Larry Kudlow, “We don’t have a democracy. We have a bureaucracy.” He explained it as one of a few layers. “On the top layer, the political appointees come and go over various administrations. Under this top level is the vast area of the bureaucracy. These positions are unbelievably low tech using floppy disk technology in much of it. Storing retirement records inside a mountain.

It is this aging bureaucracy, patched together over so many years, threatened by the young kids of Elon’s who have come to town. Never has this sophistication been brought to analysis of DC departments. 

In so many ways, this invasion needs to be looked not at the assault of Republicans on the Democrats but really as the assault of modern technology on the federal bureaucracy. In this sense, it represents much the attack of Gen Z against the outdated technology of early years of technology with the Baby Boomers. In the dynamics now, three generations brought together via the one from the generation in the middle: Elon Musk of GEN X. He has a connection to Trump in the Baby Boom Generation and his young D.O.G.E. team of Gen Z people he has brought to DC. Musk is the connection source that Trump has for the highest tech people in the world. Musk translates Trump’s orders into tech mandates.

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NOTES

Generations (Wikipedia Links Left In)

The Silent Generation, also known as the “Lucky Few”, is the cohort who came of age in the post–World War II era. They were born from 1928 to 1945. In the U.S., this group includes most of those who may have fought in the Korean War and many of those who may have fought during the Vietnam War.

Baby boomers (often shortened to Boomers) are the people born following World War II from 1946 to 1964. Increased birth rates were observed during the post–World War II baby boom, making them a relatively large demographic cohort. In the U.S., many older boomers may have fought in the Vietnam War or participated in the counterculture of the 1960s, while younger boomers (or Generation Jones) came of age in the “malaise” years of the 1970s. 

Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the cohort following the baby boomers. The generation is generally defined as people born between 1965 and 1980. The term has also been used in different times and places for several different subcultures or countercultures since the 1950s. In the U.S., some called Xers the “baby bust” generation because of a drop in birth rates following the baby boom. 

Millennials, also known as Generation Y (or Gen Y for short), are the generation following Generation X, who grew up around the turn of the 3rd millennium. This cohort is generally defined as the people born from 1981 to 1996. The Pew Research Center defines this generation as those born from 1981 to 1996 and reports that in 2019, millennials outnumbered baby boomers in the United States, amounting to an estimated 71.6 million boomers and 72.1 million millennials. 

Generation Z (or Gen Z for short and colloquially as “Zoomers”), are the people succeeding the Millennials and are generally defined as being born from 1997 to the early 2010s. Pew Research Center describes Generation Z as spanning from 1997 to 2012. The United States Library of Congress and Statistics Canada have cited Pew’s definition of 1997–2012 for Generation Z. In a 2022 report, the U.S. Census designates Generation Z as those born from 1997 to 2013. Generation Zers experienced the onset and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as children or young adults.