Tom Stoppard wrote in “The Real Thing,” his enticing play about infidelity: “To marry one actress is unfortunate. To marry two is simply asking for it.”

汤姆·斯托帕德在他那部关于不忠的动人话剧《真东西》中写道：“娶一个女演员是不幸的。娶两个简直是自讨苦吃。”

Here’s a political corollary: To elect one Emperor of Chaos is unfortunate. To let two run the government is simply asking for it.

这里有一个政治上的类比：选出一个制造混乱的皇帝是不幸的。让两个这样的人管理政府则是自讨苦吃。

Presidents Trump and Musk have merged their cult followings, attention addictions, conspiratorial mind-sets, disinformation artistry, disdain for the Constitution, talent for apocalyptic marketing and jumping-from-thing-to-thing styles.

特朗普总统和马斯克将他们的狂热追随者、对关注的上瘾、阴谋论心态、造谣艺术、对宪法的蔑视、世界末日式营销的天赋，以及朝三暮四的行事风格融为了一体。

With a pitiless and mindless velocity, they are running roughshod over the government — and the globe.

他们以冷酷无情、毫无理智的速度，肆意践踏着政府乃至整个世界。

Queasy D.C. denizens are waiting anxiously to see if judges can save the country from the scofflaws running it.

惴惴不安的华府人士正焦急地等待，想看看法官们是否能拯救这个国家，使其免于这些肆意践踏法律的当权者的破坏。

The two unchecked and unbalanced billionaires are entwined in a heady and earth-shattering relationship.

这两位不受约束、不受制衡的亿万富翁纠缠在一起，展开了一段失去理智、惊天动地的关系。

“I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,” Musk posted on X on Friday.

马斯克周五在X上发帖说：“我对@realDonaldTrump（特朗普的个人帐号）的爱是一个直男对另一个男人最高的爱。”

He may simply be offering affection to ward off any jealousy Trump felt when he saw Time’s new cover illustration: Musk in the Oval behind the Resolute Desk.

他可能只是在表达爱意，以消除特朗普看到《时代》周刊新封面时的嫉妒之情，图中的马斯克坐在总统办公桌后。

Elon Musk is brainy but he’s not your usual presidential brain trust.

埃隆·马斯克很聪明，但他不是常规的总统智囊。

Although everyone in Washington, including some in Trump’s inner circle, expect the two pathological narcissists to barrel into each other, they both seem to be getting what they want from the relationship.

尽管华盛顿的每个人，包括特朗普核心圈子中的一些人，都预期这两个病态的自恋狂会发生正面冲突，但他们似乎都从这段关系中得到了自己想要的东西。

Trump loves to be admired by the elites, and he adores money. Musk has gotten the keys to the American kingdom so he can attack “the woke mind virus,” which Musk says “killed” his “son,” who transitioned as a teenager. Both men are driven by revenge to smash up the government.

特朗普喜欢被精英们崇拜，他也喜欢钱。马斯克已经拿到了美国王国的钥匙，这样他就可以攻击“觉醒思维的病毒”，他表示，这个病毒“杀死”了他的在十几岁时就选择变性的“儿子”。两个人都在复仇的驱使下试图摧毁政府。

The president and the tech lord even have progeny, little Elons: the lost boys of DOGE, a gang of Gen-Zers in jeans with backpacks and bags of Doritos bursting into federal agencies to gut them and force bureaucrats to justify their existence.

总统和这位科技大佬甚至还有徒子徒孙，也就是那些小埃隆：政府效率部(DOGE)的迷失男孩，一帮穿着牛仔裤、背着背包、带着一袋袋多力多滋玉米片的Z世代们冲进联邦机构，大搞破坏，迫使官僚们为自己存在的价值做出辩护。

Their backgrounds and work are shrouded in secrecy, even as they access the government’s most sensitive information.

他们的背景和工作都笼罩在神秘的面纱下，尽管他们接触的是政府最敏感的信息。

“Muskrats,” as the bureaucrats they call “dinosaurs” named them, are rifling the government’s computers. A 19-year-old with the internet pseudonym “Big Balls” lost an earlier internship for leaking company secrets; a 25-year-old was ousted over racist posts. He wrote on X, “I was racist before it was cool,” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” and “Normalize Indian hate.” Even though he is married to an Indian American, Vice President JD Vance rescued the “kid,” as he called him, and helped him get his job back.

这些“麝鼠”正在翻阅政府的电脑，这是被他们称为“恐龙”的官僚给他们起的外号。一个网名为“大球”的19岁年轻人因为泄露公司机密而失去了早前的实习机会；一个25岁的年轻人因为种族主义帖子而被解雇。他在X上写道：“我在种族主义流行之前就是种族主义者”、‘你就是给钱，我也不会和其他种族的人结婚’、“让对印度人的仇恨正常化”。尽管副总统JD·万斯的妻子是印度裔美国人，但他还是救了这个他口中的“孩子”，并帮他找回了工作。

It’s not that we don’t need to rein in spending, including what is spent on risibly P.C. programs. But the disdain for Congress and the rule of law, and the glee at erasing so many jobs and programs, as if there is no human cost, is reprehensible. We are, after all, only carbon-based beings.

我们并不是不需要控制开支，包括花在荒谬的政治正确项目上的开支。但是，对国会和法治的蔑视，以及对大量工作岗位和项目被取消感到窃喜，仿佛这不需要任何人付出任何代价，是应该受到谴责的。毕竟，我们只是碳基生物。

The lost boys of DOGE fit in well with the “Mean Girls” attitude of Trump’s Washington. On Friday, the DOGE X account posted before-and-after pictures of the U.S. Agency for International Development entrance; they had stripped it of all identification. Their post even trolled Kamala Harris, using her viral phrase: “Unburdened by what has been.”

DOGE迷失男孩们与特朗普华盛顿的“刻薄女孩”态度不谋而合。周五，DOGE的X账号发了美国国际开发署入口处的前后对比照片；他们剥去了所有标识。他们甚至在帖子中嘲讽贺锦丽，使用了她的流行语：“放下过去的负担”。

The Silicon Valley digerati don’t care about the old world in Washington, D.C., churning out meddlesome regulations, laws and taxes. They are cocky about creating a new world, shaped by a new species, A.I.

硅谷的数字精英们并不关心华盛顿特区的那个旧世界，那里的官僚们不断推出烦人的法规、法律和税收，他们对创造一个由人工智能这一新物种塑造的新世界自信无比。

Donald and Elon are emotional time bombs, lashing out in the crudest and cruelest ways. Trump’s amoral, puerile, wrecking-ball style is now squared by Musk’s.

特朗普和马斯克都是情绪的定时炸弹，以最原始、最肆意的方式发泄情绪。特朗普那种不考虑道德、幼稚、不顾后果的风格现在与马斯克的风格相得益彰。

It’s rich that the world’s richest man is rooting around trying to wipe out vast numbers of government workers, saying, “Sorry, you can’t have your $85,000 a year job and your health insurance.”

这位世界首富竟然四处奔走，试图砍掉大量政府工作人员，对他们说“对不起，你不能拥有年薪8.5万美元的工作和医疗保险”，这可真是讽刺。

“They don’t care if the government delivers food or comes in and rescues your town from a flood or teaches poor kids in the inner city because they don’t have to live through any of those things themselves,” said the Trump biographer Tim O’Brien. “They’re rich and powerful, so they’re insulated from consequences of their actions.”

“他们不在乎政府是否会送食物，是否会在洪水中拯救你的小镇，是否会为城市贫困区的穷孩子提供教育，因为他们自己不需要经历这些事情，”特朗普传记的作者蒂姆·奥布莱恩说。“他们有钱有势，所以他们的行为不受后果影响。”

Trump cares about being popular and Musk doesn’t. So their relationship will probably remain strong until Elon cuts so many benefits from the Trump faithful that they tell Trump they no longer love him.

特朗普在乎是否受欢迎，而马斯克不在乎。因此，他们的关系可能会一直很牢固，直到马斯克削减太多特朗普忠实拥护者的好处，以至于他们告诉特朗普，他们不再爱他了。

And the bromance may not end with a bang. It could very well end with a bot.

这段兄弟情可能不会以一场爆炸性的冲突结束。它很可能以一个机器人结束。

When Trump turns 80, as a birthday present, Elon and the lost boys could create an A.I.-fueled Trump bot, a real-time video head trained on his news conferences and everything he has ever tweeted.

当特朗普年满80岁时，作为生日礼物，埃隆和迷失男孩们可以创造一个人工智能驱动的特朗普机器人，一个实时视频头，用他的新闻发布会，以及他发布过的所有推文来做训练。

Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality, slyly says that Trump would be “an unusually easy person to plausibly fake.”

虚拟现实之父贾伦·拉尼尔微妙地说，特朗普将是“一个异常容易被伪造得像那么回事的人”。

“Gradually it’ll be normalized,” Lanier told me. “People will get used to it more and more, and then it’ll actually start to be treated as the president. If you look at it on your phone or your computer, it would look just like him. The underlying software could be presented as a hologram onstage. It might even run in the next election. And they’ll go to the Supreme Court and say, ‘We know that the president can only have two terms, but this isn’t really the president. This is the Trump bot and A.I.s are people, too.’ Essentially allowing a continuation of the same administration into a third term.”

“逐渐地，这将被正常化，”拉尼尔对我说。“人们会越来越习惯，然后就会开始真正把它当作总统。如果你在手机或电脑上看它，就会觉得它和总统一模一样。底层软件可以作为全息图在舞台上展示。它甚至可以参加下届大选。他们会对最高法院说，‘我们知道总统只能连任两届，但这不是真正的总统。这是特朗普机器人，人工智能也是人。’从本质上来说，让同一个政府延续到第三个任期。”

All Hail President Trump Bot, engineered by Elon Musk.

向埃隆·马斯克打造的特朗普总统机器人致敬。