Bill Ackman’s journey
By Reflecting on the excellent recent profile of Bill Ackman we discussed recently, Max Read notes the parells between his Ackman’s march to the right and Elon Musk’s:
Indeed, beyond the delightful reported color, one thing that struck me about the story of Ackman’s conversion from generic rich Democrat to anti-D.E.I. holy warrior is how structurally familiar it felt. Ackman and Musk are, obviously, not the first highly visible, shallowly liberal members of the business and finance elite to rapidly transform themselves into devoted anti-woke crusaders, and as these stories are told it gets easier to pick out certain correspondences: the complaints about private school syllabuses, the introduction to Chris Rufo or someone similar, the group chat among fellow elites.
Read goes on to note how Ackman’s story can fit neatly into Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” archetype. I strongly recommend the whole very entertaining thing, but it is conveniently summarized in graphic form here:
Our billionaire class being what it is, this story is going to have even more sequels than Star Wars, and the main limiting factor is how many people started at the end in the first place.