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I always worry whenever I see people telling me how to feel - rage in this case. We are in a political system that is oriented more around getting people to feel rage and hatred as opposed to consensus and deliberation. Elon is the face of that, but it's a much longer and larger problem. Throw in the complete dismisal that anyone not scared of this is ignorant, shuts down discussion.
The problem I have with Elon is that they are wasting a once in a lifetime chance to actually address and fix systematic problems with the US government. Deploying LLMs in the government space doesn't fear me with dread. Continuing the senseless partisan drive of the 20 years does.
I think what the government is going through right now is wrapping up the last political system. The idea that Democrats and Republicans just need to learn how to work together is just wrong. The parties are being destroyed, and I think we should all cheer that. They were built to address the issues of the 20th century, and neither party in the current form is ready to address 21st century issues. I think AI, Climate change, world demographic changes around the world (ie: low birthrates) is going to seriously alter everything about our world from geopolitics, to economy, even social issues.
The democrats are stuck in supporting the new deal bureaucracy and the post ww2 order. That's over, it's crumbling right now, and i'm not going to try and defend any of it personally. It's just obsolete. The old Republican party your dad probably supported is dead too, that died a while ago. The new Republican party seems to be an alliance of people who just really want to cheer the crumbling of the old system (MAGA) and the first emergence of what politics in the 21st century is going to look like (the tech alliance).
Democrats would be smart to understand it's a new century we have new threats, new challenges, and need new institutions.... and this IS NOT a once in a lifetime opportunity to fix our government. This is the first draft of our new political system, and they have a choice to participate in shaping it, but they will need to get votes, and to get votes they need to stop stalking about obsolete ideas.
> The new Republican party seems to be an alliance of people who just really want to cheer the crumbling of the old system
I agree, and I think this is a bizarre flipping of the "Democrat ~= progressive / Republican ~= conservative" dynamic that has been largely assumed throughout my lifetime.
We need both conservative and progressive forces in our society. Someone needs to be saying "here's what's wrong with our system; here's what needs to change", and someone else needs to balance that with "here's what we're doing right; here are the parts that are working well and that we should not get rid of".
It seems to me that now, instead of that tug-of-war discussion happening between the two parties, it is happening in parallel within them. Unfortunately, the sane and responsible version of that discussion is happening entirely within the boundary of the Democratic coalition, in a way that is completely ineffectual because (a) the internal conservative moderating force is relatively strong in a moment when the populace seems to want more progressive action, and (b) to they have so little ability to effectively wield political power.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are dominated by a bizarro "progressive" faction that wants to pull us all in an entirely different (IMHO regressive) direction. And that faction is completely unchecked by any internal "conservative" moderating force within its own party, so it is for the moment able to push us as hard and fast as possible in its preferred direction.
I'm REALLY looking forward to 2028, because I think that potentially will be the first election where we start to see what modern politics will look like. I wouldn't be surprised if there are multiple new parties, and multiples of them have a real chance. If it seems one sided right now, it's just because one side found their way to the start line first... but make no mistake, history shows that over time new political factions will form that offer resistance to bad ideas, and clear a path for the good ideas.
Given the rate of change with AI, We're going to have a real idea on what a world being disrupted by AGI (whether that is true AGI, or something close to it) looks like. At the same time Healthcare is only getting worse, and Trump is NOT going to fundumentally address it. China is going to be rising, and they're a real geopolitical threat. The war in Ukraine has completely changed what warfare looks like, and we're going to have to completely restructure our military (just like we have to restructure our healthcare). I also wouldn't be surprised if Trump's war with the cartel turns out to be far harder than expected because cheap autonomous drones allow a small military to compete against a large traditional military.
All of our prior assumptions on retirement are different too, retired boomers are not the same as the pensioneers from their day. They're not impoverished, instead they're flush with cash. I'm not sure in a world with an aging workforce you're going to be anti-immigrant... and all these benefits we give to retirees may not make sense in a world where retirees are wealthier than the regular workforce supporting them.
The general theme for the next decade is going to be throw out all the old books, 80% of our prior assumptions no longer apply.
And even if you think the rule of law is antiquated, you’re misanthropically cheering the destruction of the largest institution in the world that 330 million people depend on for survival.
I wonder if you could even name what some of these critical problems are? Or have you just been told that there are problems that justify this chaos?
2. Congress as a whole isn’t a single entity —- one party refuses to compromise in any way while the other plays by the rules.
3. Doesn’t matter. Cost reform needs to go through existing legal routes.
4. What constitutes “auditing” the government? Because we had plenty of non partisan positions overseeing and auditing all parts of the government. DOGE fired those people.
5. Again, go through the legal route.
6. A lack of “digital transformation” is the vaguest most unconvincing point in this entire justification.
7. These budget issues need to be decided on through constitutional processes and with oversight, as before.
8. Ditto.
9. Medicare can lower health costs by other means, such as being available universally to all and setting limits on what they pay to providers based on procedure.
10. Do you watch CSPAN?
Breaking all the laws to bypass the government does not "actually address and fix systematic problems with the US government", that is an absurd position. Caesar did not fix the Roman Republic.
And opposition to DOGE is not on the basis that people don't care about government efficiency. It's on the basis that the shit they're doing has nothing to do with government efficiency. There's not even a pretense of trying to calculate the "benefit" part of the cost-benefit equation with the cuts they are doing, they are just slashing and burning without any concern for outcomes as a power play and messaging tool. Elon is famous for doing this at Tesla and Twitter and all evidence points to it being incredibly harmful.
This isn't efficient! https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/15/return-to...
And not everything is about efficiency. Laying off veteran's crisis hotline workers or refusing to pay for the USAID employees you've just abandoned to be extracted (or in one case, medevac'd after a medical emergency) from the places they were sent to is just cruel (and again, illegal).
No one told you to feel rage.
> Throw in the complete dismisal that anyone not scared of this is ignorant, shuts down discussion.
Weird, there are a lot of comments doing discussion in reply to the parent comment. It hasn't been shut down at all! You read those words and disagreed with them, and wrote your own words in response. You're doing the discussion you're claiming is being shut down! What are you even talking about?
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/doge-departme...
The GOP controls both houses and the POTUS. They could absolutely do a top to bottom audit with full transparency and make cuts where needed. But that's not what this is about.
Just poke around a bit: https://doge.gov/savings
And please even try to explain how this sort of thing is even remotely in America's best interest:
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_FA865018C7886_970...
> ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE (ASED) LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION (LSD)
Then there's the basic accounting 101 things like improper categorization, 150 year old people getting social security, etc. Why should the US government be held to a lower standard than a publicly traded company?
I personally would like to see the end of the "find gravy train, keep that gravy flowing at all costs" methodology of capitalism, because it's primary focus is money instead of the service provided. Whether it's pentagon contractors, business subsidies, or the heinous medicare and medical insurance fraud. But I don't want to cut SNAP even if someone buys a goddamn coke once in a while.
The current method seems to be brain surgery with a monkey wrench. Slash and burn with little thought given to the effects upon humans, especially those who don't have other options. Kagi gave me a figure of between 9.2 to 15.2 percent of welfare being fraudulent. Yes that's too high, yes I'd like to fix that, but I want that change to be considered, studied, and planned with caution.
I’d suggest starting with Rick Perlman’s book “Nixonland” if you’re interested.
