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.
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.
Regardless of how justified the rage is or not, being very emotional about things usually have one of two effects on people A) people gets taken aback by someone's strong emotions or B) people get inspired/taking with the emotion, even feeling that emotion stronger themselves. Sometimes also C) they don't really care either way.
What probably isn't helpful, is calling someone is "undereducated" when they're clearly saying that they're person (A), and just because they may or may not agree with you (although parent didn't even clearly say they disagree, just that they're "taken aback" a bit).
Some people are calm regardless of what's going on around them, even if the world would be on fire, they'd try to describe what's going on around them with careful words and consideration. It isn't wrong or right, just like the people who feel rage and very emotional aren't wrong or right, it's just a showcase how we're different.
But we should aim to at least understand each other, not by trying to provoke, instigate or look down on others, but by asking questions to clarify and to better understand.
Has it occurred to you that the people who feel rage fundamentally misunderstand the situation and are completely undereducated in this area, and are only fuelled by sensationalism and Media manipulation? And then I suggest you go read Dirty Politics by Kathleen Hall Jamieson if you're interested, because that's what people who want to sound more intelligent than the other half of the conversation always do.
How does it help anyone?
So try to come up with some sort of future observation that can be made where you think the other person's model would give a different answer to yours about what you would be able to objectively observe.
What do you reckon?
Yes, rage might be the appropriate and response given the situation. But it’s often true that it starts with an emotion, and then people just argue from there. Even while being wrong. Just look at all the people with contradictory opinions in history, both with strong, emotional rage, and and equally certain of their connection. Throwing the fact that people actually has a tendency to want to be angry.
This creates an environment where misinformation and emotional appeals spread faster than facts. When discussing complex, non-trivial topics, logic and reason are the only tools that can cut through the noise. But in a system designed to reward outrage, those tools are often drowned out.
I highly recommend Sam Vaknin's talk about Social Media toxicity.
Sources: Outrage is the most profitable emotion https://www.cityam.com/outrage-most-profitable-emotion-so-ad...
Sam Vaknin: The TRUE Toxicity of Social Media Revealed - Interview by Richard Grannon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o58mFU004hg
I have also been a delegate to both the RNC and the DNC at a state level.
This is not a appeal to authority, but rather a honest response to your request for my education level.
IMHO, The root cause of the "senseless partisan drive" is the fact that he founding fathers could not come up with a way to restrict parties (they called them "interests") and left them unchecked. This is a constant "sin" of the American political system, and is a key reason Slavery survived as long as it did, why separate but equal became the law of the land, why America shot itself in the foot several time with the Banks of America and why we are looking at the wrong side of history now.
The parties now act to destroy each other as their prime directive, rather then to better the country. I liken this to Wiemar Germany, where the increasing radicalization of both the Nazis and the Communists led to political instability and eventual violence that destroyed the government. That erosion of democratic norms, as well as the "other side must be destroyed for us to survive" messaging is the true threat, IMHO.
I would strongly suggest Richard Evan's three part history on Nazi history to understand Fascism. Don't worry, you can still hate and worry about Trump and think he is the next coming of Hitler afterwords - it will just be for better reasons.
