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By Ross Douthat
Opinion Columnist
Must any pair of would-be great men of history always find a path to conflict? Ask Caesar and Pompey, Octavian and Antony, Lennon and McCartney. But the specific thing they fight about is less predictable. I would not have guessed, six months ago, that Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s version of the Battle of Actium would be fought over the budget deficit.
That’s because six months ago I understood Musk’s interest in politics, his long march away from Obama-era liberalism and his reinvention of himself as the prince of the very online right, as reflecting two key goals: his newfound desire to defeat cultural progressivism, rooted in the experience of his child’s gender transition, and his long-term, career-shaping desire to get human explorers to Mars.
