Slouching Through Washington
Soul Sick, Soul Search
Whoa. A whole lot of crap in that exploding DOGE diaper. And Team Elon has really only just begun.
Who knew when DOGE went to work how messy it would get. Choose your adjective - egregious, obscene, grotesque - and multiply by an order of magnitude. (And we have yet to even mention Stacey Abrams’ $2 billion grift.)
It is said that golf is a game that does not test character but reveals it. (The same could be said of other more purposeful pursuits, from raising children to going to war.)
DOGE reveals. Much of it is so unpleasant that we might wish to look away, yet if you are a U.S. taxpayer you might want to know the awful truth, as much as that might test your sanity.
So what exactly has been revealed here in the early innings of Trump’s second go round?
1.) The Democratic Party, by protesting too much on the one hand and its conspicuous silence on the other, is now effectively proclaiming itself the party of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse - or, if they’re looking for something a bit catchier and concise, the party of Corruption. That should win them a few more votes the next time around.
When skullduggery on this scale is uncovered you might make an effort to get on the right side of it. But not the Democrats. They’re in so deep on the other side of the trade, that with their backs to the wall, morally speaking, the only option left is to lash out.
2.) Thirty six trillion dollars doesn’t buy you very much these days. The only positive you can say about that mountain of debt is that it forces a fiscal reckoning, a national soul-searching on how impoverished, unstable and truly undemocratic a future do we want to bequeath to our children and their progeny. As Musk has said, “There really is no choice. The country is going bankrupt.” Annual interest on our shared maxed out credit card now runs to $1 trillion alone.
Reflecting on how all that money has been (mis)spent might help concentrate the mind. Eight hundred dollar hammers for the reliably unaudited Pentagon; homeless vets under bridges. Hurricane victims in tents - or worse, bulldozed into piles of debris; illegals in luxury hotels. A mountain of money spent on education and healthcare; an ever stupider and sicker citizenry. Chronic inflation unleashed on those already living at the margins. Greed is hardly a victimless crime.
3.) The C’s have it. Musk stated the blindingly obvious when he summarized the DOGE effort in two words: Competence and Caring. Ah, common sense. Such a foreign, pesky notion in Washington.
Come to think of it, there’s another pairing that comes to mind.
Conscience and consciousness. They go together, as does their absence. As for lack of conscience, that was on full and bitter display the other evening when the Democrats couldn't be moved to anything close to sympathy for a small boy who had survived/ endured numerous operations for brain cancer.
Ditto for their lack of consciousness, on full display - and full cringe mode - during the confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet picks.
With mouth and mind hardwired to the amygdala, most every question posed was a variant of the “So when exactly did you stop beating your wife?” The primary - if not sole - objective was to generate heat in favor of light. Very little effort was made to discern the nominees’ qualifications because the motive was to produce gotcha moments to fill their absurdist, performative space. Watching these emotionally incontinent “adults,” was, in fact, to witness examples of human behavior in the early - and possibly advancing - stages of mental illness - apart from watching them struggle with issues surrounding anger management.
4.) When the Student is Ready the Teacher Appears: In an earlier post I mentioned that Trump’s election was the product of providence. The man ran a gauntlet that few mortals could survive.
His Cabinet in his mold. Survivors - chosen for a reason.These are outsiders who deliberately break the mold because the mold demands breaking. Their appearance at this time is nothing short of karmic, of a piece with Elon Musk not just spearheading DOGE but buying Twitter and freeing it from the censors’ grasp.
History will look back on these moments as freighted with significance.
We need these mad dogs and shit kickers inside the Deep State to unwind what has been a truly disastrous trade for the American people. Many everyday folk are now just waking up to the depredations of the Democratic Party and the administrative state visited upon them over the past ten to 15 years. All in the name of “hope and change” and the “fundamental transformation” of the country.
It’s amusing to see how the Democrats have labeled Trump’s Cabinet picks as “unqualified” and “not experts.” If the likes of Pete Buttigieg, Jennifer Granholm, and Antony Blinken are considered “qualified and expert,” then dear God bring us more unqualified amateurs.
It’s similarly amusing to see the Democrats’ machine-mind one dimensional criterion for who qualifies as the expert: Credentialism. They have no frame of reference for common sense, gut instinct, intuition, passion, grit, love of country, devotion to service. They are mentally and spiritually impoverished people.
5.) As Above so Below: The Democrats’ motto might as well be; “Put us in Charge and We’ll Ruin Everything We Touch.”
Look at many of our big cities ruled - and run into the ground - by the Democrats for decades. It’s worth noting that in these urban dystopias such everyday items as toothpaste and toilet paper languish behind lock and key at local stores. Meanwhile, Soros-installed politicians and prosecutors have declared that pilfering less than $1,000 worth of merchandise qualifies as a misdemeanor.
To what extent is this license to steal a microcosm for the Smash and Grab occurring on high at the upper reaches of government?
It is ironic that the United States does a lot of moral preening (and regime changing) in other countries it considers lesser, more corrupt, more benighted. But if DOGE is allowed to fulfill its mandate, what is the likelihood that it will reveal - if sheer scale is your metric - that the United States is, in fact, the most corrupt country in the world? After all, we have a massive administrative state, with a $6 trillion annual budget and a printing press, that has obligingly played host to a swarm of parasites for decades now.
6.) As Without so Within: Look around and observe the health of the general population. Some 70% of the adult population is overweight or obese. The use of antidepressants has skyrocketed. Many people seem to be doing their best to escape reality, not embrace it.
Our bloated, indifferent government, composed of people who can’t even bother to show up for work, is a reflection of us. Slimming down and right sizing the government could have a similar effect as when the individual loses a lot of weight. He looks better and feels better. He approaches life with a greater sense of purpose. Streamlining the government is a project we should embrace, not resist, every bit as much as getting ourselves into shape.
7.) Decentralization and the Multi Polar World: J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich was a landmark moment, in keeping with Trump’s election. It signaled the beginning of the end of the old order: Centralized bureaucratized power, rule by expert fiat, and the imposition of a censorship regime to preserve democracy. It doesn’t work; the people can see through it. And they can feel it. The system has not only disempowered them; it has impoverished them in every way possible - draining money, meaning, and agency from their lives.
The way back is clear, inevitable, and ordained. Sometime in the not too distant future the Department of Agriculture will be relocated to Kansas, the Department of Energy to Texas, and the Department of Education to Oblivion. Life in the United States will become more decentralized, emphasizing more local control - as Tocqueville admired it two centuries ago. Members of Congress will meet for half the year and then return home to actually listen to their constituents for the other half and maybe work a regular job.
Similarly, the world will evolve toward multi polarity and greater balance among its constituent parts, reducing opposition and conflict. The European Union will wither away as its heretofore member states take greater responsibility for their own defense and sovereign identities. The ruinous cost of warfare will become apparent to all, especially in a networked world. A new world will emerge in which nations will competently care for and cultivate what they have rather than covet what belongs to their neighbor and take it by force.
This is the golden age that Trump envisions. As distant and ephemeral as it might seem, it is closer to reality than many of us might imagine.