I'm convinced that many people do not understand the historical context in which the DOGE reforms are being discussed - especially the ill-informed Boomers who comprise the majority of JPP's tiny community, who are mainly here to trade insults with one another in the little time they have left to live.
Some folks on the left look at DOGE as if it's a random, chaotic, arbitrary, and cruel measure to punish a devoted civil service that's doing necessary work that we can't live without.
The reality is very different. I'm not even sure that Elon entirely understands this. although he may.
For more than a century, even dating back to 1883, the "civil service" has grown like a cancer. Bloated bureaucracies ballooned from a few to over 400.
The industries that grew fat on tax money and their lobbyists captured every single agency.
How? They threw crumbs as needed to Congressmen eager to gain funding for reelection.
The tradeoff is obvious: Congress ceded its' authority to unelected bureaucrats who rule by regulations and rules that aren't laws, but are nevertheless enforced like laws.
The few reform efforts ever to have made it through Congress ultimately made the administrative state bigger.
Countless elections have come and gone. The cancer keeps growing.
Public sector unions are well-funded and politically powerful, the threat of intimidation from the media (who depend on advertising and tax dollars for their profits) has been overwhelming, and every single president knows that their reputation can be diminished by the intelligence agencies if they don't play ball.
Institutional inertia has blocked serious reform for more than a century.
Most people in politics simply surrendered, no matter how fervent they might have been once. Bernie did.
All this time, the American people were taxed more and more and regulated more and more, spied upon more and more, and browbeaten if they objected.
Voting never made any difference because elected politicians don't control the government. The bureaucracies do.
The bleak braindead Biden years underscored the point. The bureaucrats needed a figurehead pretending to be president. Biden was perfect. The entrenched institutions ran everything, and Biden took the heat.
To his credit, Trump figured it out after his first term ended in obstructionism, lawfare and ultimately, in defeat.
Now, Trump is back again, this time with a mission that's unique in American history, AFAIK.
- He's not worried about getting richer.
- He's not worried about popularity.
- He's not worried about reelection.
- He's not worried about his "legacy".
- He's not even worried about the GOP.
Naturally, many will oppose everything he does or says, not because of what he does or says, but because he's Trump.
It doesn't matter.
- He doesn't need their votes.
- He doesn't need their approval.
- He doesn't need their accolades.
He's got less than four years to clean out the Augean stables. It's a Herculean task.
Lawfare, lying, and obstructionism are expected.
One fact remains: There's no logical reason to oppose reform, because America is a debtor nation to the tune of $34 trillion, and it's unsustainable.
If you doubt or disagree with any of the points I've raised in this post, that's your problem, not mine.
