The line between simple admiration and sleepwalking through civic fan fiction of your own creation is precisely the point where you let this digital glamour succeed in obscuring its owner's vast power. It's the rhetorical heart of Donald Trump's now-famous meme, with a picture of him pointing at the viewer, surrounded by text. I'm just in the way as Trump is trying to get his fans to see his political misfortunes.
It's almost certain that Ginsburg made her own decision about her time on the Supreme Court; unlike Trump, she had the decency to not actively cultivate this fan base. The constituency of feminists who believed too much in Notorious RBG were dissolving their own power to influence events by burning the mythology of Ginsburg. It's easier to believe in the purity of her entitlement than it is to clamor for her to make a strategic decision. One is more useful to the culture of social media than the other.
Not every episode of civic fan fiction involves overidentification, and many political fandoms are based on myths of godlike strength and power. The myth that they are just like you is used by powerful people, rather than being imposed on them.
The mythology of NotoriousRBG is very similar to the one of venture capitalist marc bensen. One of the most powerful women in the world was just an ordinary professional lawyer, muddling through the day, in a fantasy held by some middle-class white feminists. The billionaire is actually a member of the professional managerial class.
I am a member of the Professional-Managerial Class, and I am also a member of the Category X.
This strange mythology is an effective way of obscuring power. If they ever looked it up, it might cause vomiting revulsion from his 4chan self-regard. To get them to relate to him and see themselves in him, the point is to make them wear a lanyard and work in a cubicle. They have the same job and orientation to power. He has shoveled 400 million dollars into the furnace of Musk, the kind of game that no one will ever have the chance to play.
The man who lacks a personality cult of his own is trying to use Musk's glamour to obscure his wealth and power. By arguing that Musk is not a member of the elite, he grants cover to himself, and for this game he is playing with hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a move that seems heroic for doing things they couldn't do, but also seems unthreatening. The obscene power required to do the latter is obscured by investment in the former. To make his struggles their own, online fans can use their civic fan fiction to over-empathize with figures like Musk, and imagine that it could be them buying a major tech company on a whim. There is a Bifrost between the image and the myth.
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