“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
Orwell
“So, what was MBS like?” Chris Wallace asked. He was on a mission to find out Jared Kushner’s relationship with the autocrat. “You mean Mohammed bin Salman?” Jared said while getting himself comfortable. He kept looking at the camera to make sure his hair was in order. “MBS was like an old friend—we used to send each other WhatsApp messages all the time! The surprising thing was that we had a lot of things in common.” Chris Wallace dug in, not believing the unlikely bonding. “What did you guys have in common?” Undisturbed, Jared shrugged, “He enjoyed the same movies as I did growing up. He watched the Knicks because he had spent a lot of time in the US, so we bonded.” Jared seemed surprisingly careless with dictatorial leadership—especially given what had just happened in Saudi Arabia. He adjusted his skinny tie again. The tie was in line with his sense of style: he had long believed that he was the heir apparent of the new Kennedy-like clan, so he needed to dress the part. Chris Wallace observed silently, picking up his notes once again to get his second line of questioning ready.
“What do you think went wrong—with his leadership?” At first Jared pouted his lips, suspicious where this was going. Then Jared smiled. “Look, the population got educated, which they did. They had been exposed to the real West, which clearly wasn’t that bad. In the end, it was inevitable—oil was running out, and social media showed people the world as it is. Of course, oil never actually ran out. We started to frack oil seriously. Combined with the battery life extensions, wind and solar energy, fossil fuel was long doomed by 2030. So, the entire society had to change rapidly.”
Chris Wallace tried to steer back to base. “So did you not care about the dictatorial nature of their regime?” Jared skipped the question, saying, “It wasn’t a straightforward dictatorship like Kim Jong Un’s regime. The Saudis had a different approach. Of course, the Saudis were a strong regime with respect to their inhabitants, but they were never as ruthless as other dictatorships. Do not get me wrong, I prefer to live here in New Jersey.” He briefly stared at Chris with a blank look, quickly getting back in focus again. “With MBS, it was interesting. I felt like I was his Dennis Rodman to Kim Jong Un—I gave him a front-row seat into American culture. Of course, MBS did do some bad things, like taking down that journalist in the Ankara Embassy, which was very gutsy.” With that, Chris Wallace nearly choked. “Gutsy?! You mean… it was… utterly gruesome, no?! They chopped that journalist into pieces!”
Taking a moment to reply, Jared sipped his Starbucks skinny latte that he had brought into the late-night talk show. “To be honest, you got to look at it this way… The Saudis have their way of life, and though it was totally outdated, it worked for them.” Chris shifted uncomfortably in his seat, struggling to maintain his professional composure as disbelief and frustration flickered across his face. After Rupert Murdoch’s death, the FOX network had changed. The Murdochs had shifted interests, causing the network to nosedive. Chris had looked for a way out. Luckily, he was offered a late-night show on CBS to rectify the wrongs perpetrated in that period. This was ultimately why he was interviewing Jared. “You mean, for the leadership, it worked, but for the rest of the population, no?” Chris Wallace balked.
“What do you think? I grew up with the choice and variety that America has on offer. Supermarkets in most countries do not have thirty types of toothpaste on offer. We do!” Jared took another sip of his latte. “In a poli-sci class at Harvard, I learned from Machiavelli that there is no real way to satisfy everyone in a population. There are proofs that say making everyone happy given a large variety of choices is impossible. I believe it was called social choice theory.
So, to my mind, you may as well have a dictatorship if you cannot please everyone. At least, if you ‘run the show,’ you can direct things in the right direction. After all, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Also, you can see it in the data. We are the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world… Still. So, our capitalist system works.” Chris, ready and eager to get his rebuttal, moved to the tip of his chair. “But you are a data guy; surely you know that averages are misleading. Many other, apparently less affluent societies have greater happiness and output per capita across many metrics. Do you not agree that is surely a superior system?” Never intending to address the point directly, Jared seemed engaged—yet bored. “Well, it does not really matter. We have a great life here for a reason.”
“But, but…” Chris was stupefied with Jared’s moral relativity theory. “So, you are saying that a liberal capitalist democracy is superior as a system, but then you are also fine with dictators deciding all sorts of things for their population?” Jared looked past Chris into the air, shifting the conversation. “MBS and I stayed in touch long after my father-in-law left office. Funnily enough, I never thought he would have.” Grinning. “Maybe it’s because of my wife—I get that a lot.” Chris Wallace laughed along, knowing he would not get much empathy for others. With time running out, he changed to the topic du jour: “So, have you been surprised about Saudi’s recent revolution?” Jared expected this question; this was an opportunity to show his political and diplomatic prowess. “Not really, we’ll see where it goes. No regime stays forever. But yes, the kings there are not the autocrats they used to be, partly due to reforms initiated during the Arab Spring. But do not forget, it already started in the Arab Spring, so it was a long time coming. We wish them well. You know, reality is what you make it be, and their reality has changed by now.” Jared smiled and waved at—what looked like a fan—standing behind the cameraman. The man rolled his eyes and turned around. The back of his black t-shirt read: “PRODUCTION CREW.”