[Political bias report: I'm a liberal who has read Rand and who does not agree with The Republican Party's views in the vast majority of cases. I have been listening to Musk and Ramaswamy talking about DOGE on X. I also follow conservative meme sites to keep up to date with the way they are thinking about things.]
But that's not what's happening.
It's clear to me their goal is to dismantle as many "leftist" agencies as possible, like environmental protection, labor rights protection, securities laws enforcement, humanitarian aid, etc., and replace them with people who will enrich their friends and families and allow corporations to run roughshod over the rights of regular people.
It is bizarre to me that anyone could lack the critical thinking skills such that they'd accept DOGE's stated goals at face value.
They assume, as rightfully a lot of us do, that this all happened under the watch of these same individuals, and that they're arguably biased (we can't assume they're non-partisan). The problem is that the government is in a state of auto-pilot, and that's what led us here because we're not paying attention. In order to get out of it, we need to try something different and get (arguably) impartial or fresh pairs of eyes on the problem.
Right, because those people are not loyal to them.
> They assume, as rightfully a lot of us do, that this all happened under the watch of these same individuals
All what happened? Environmental protection? Consumer protection? Automatic tax filing systems? Those things happened over decades of fighting for the rights of everyday Americans over the rights of a few rich elites. They're written in the blood, sweat, and tears of the downtrodden and exploited. That's exactly why they're being targeted. If you want to find inefficiency, throw a dart almost anywhere within DoD.
It's not like they're openly corrupt, narcissistic egomaniacs with history of screwing up people for their personal gain or something. Up till now, especially Trump, has made huge strides in bettering the country and wellbeing of the people, let's let him cook.
As an analogy, what's happening feels like this:
* Somebody (let's call them "X") has embarked upon a mission to de-bloat the ancient-but-working family desktop PC. * X's first actions appear to be to desolder various things from the motherboard, while the computer is on. * Anyone who sees what X is doing, is somewhere on a spectrum between "scratching their head" <----> "wow, they're trying their best to destroy the PC".
To those defending this particular way of "fixing" things, would you yourself replace a large, working legacy software system in this manner?
Something I didn’t expect from this was to see the main complainers scramble to define what’s really important to them, thus implicitly justifying many of the cuts made.
Though if you do that with hardware, you might irreversibly break/short a component -- so you unplug, then figure out you actually needed that part, but plugging it back in now won't get the system working again.
I think "running a country" has more hardware-like characteristics than a pure software system.
You do not "do a thorough accounting" by deciding in advance what programs and operations to terminate based on specific ideological viewpoints. I don't doubt for a second that this is "the way they are thinking about things" – but it's hopelessly, irredeemably naive to think that's what's being done.
they don't care about fraud either. Both are fraudsters themselves, both will enrich themselves and their families. They both surround themselves with fraudsters.
What I give to Musk is that the staggering nepotism you see with Trump is not there as much.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-usaid-c0c7799be0b2fa7c...
Does the Republican Party have any humans with brains left, or is it all slime molds now??
https://www.state.gov/emergency-humanitarian-waiver-to-forei...
Hiring a bunch of guys who work at companies he or Thiel owns definitely counts as nepotism.
They might care about other things more than that though...
(I'm not saying that every dollar deployed by USAID succeeds in having a large impact on indirectly helping Americans. But the net effect is surely positive.)
Lets be clear, that is not the goal - that is what they say the goal is and reality shows it is not. The goal is grift and theft adn destruction. Properly naming things is going to continue to matter more and more. Because no matter your bias or perspective, repeating propaganda is an act of propaganda.
> Maybe what goal do they think they're pursuing?
and I was answering that to the best of my ability. I'm not just repeating propaganda, I'm distilling down the intent of the actors to the best of my understanding. No one can ever know someone's true intent, but I've done the best I can with the information I have.
It's fine if you don't want to do this, you're under no obligations here, but I just don't think "I've done the best I can with the information I have" is accurate.
You literally are, though
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=1...
A bold claim. Can I get a list of these nations?
Because last time I checked, if in doubt the US backed who is better for them not for the people of that nation.
And what’s waste is highly political.
In the long run the US will lose lots of its influence in other countries.
