they live like miserable gods preoccupied with escaping from reality

It's because they realize something as they age: For all their wealth, they are still mortal, their physical bodies will decline, and their egotistical, narcissistic lifetime will ultimately amount to absolutely nothing as they rot in the ground and cease existing like everyone else.

Mortality puts things into perspective for those people because they're driven by a philosophical imperative that's borderline pathological in nature:

Donald Trump watched the video of himself almost getting headshot on repeat, 9 times a day. Some said it was PTSD, but that's assuming a lot.

Elon Musk is quoted as saying in The Atlantic that he's "rigged for war".

Well, what war? War against who? Against what?

"Escaping from the matrix seems like "a war against reality itself".

We can only be so lucky that none of those fucks will ever attain apotheosis or immortality no matter how hard they try.

Maybe that's why they're so bent on destroying the planet -- if they can't have it, so can't you.