I tried to reproduce last Sunday’s Doonesbury cartoon in lieu of today’s post, but my digital skills weren’t up to the task, so I will have to describe and discuss it instead.
The comic strip’s radio personality, Mark, gets a call from Al Gore. The conversation focuses on what Mark says was Gore’s “jam”–government efficiency. Gore explains that it had indeed been his “job one” as Vice President, and that in the space of seven years that effort had reduced the federal workforce by 426,000 workers, consolidated 800 agencies and eliminated 640,000 pages of rules.
When Mark says “Wait. Why didn’t I know any of that,” Gore responds “You didn’t notice because the process was carefully planned and responsibly executed. It never disrupted essential public services. Compare that to now.”
As I read that comic strip, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. (Okay, I did both.)
In just a few panels, Gary Trudeau made an essential point: if your intent was really to improve service delivery, to root out fraud and waste (and in most bureaucracies, very much including government, waste is a far more prevalent problem than intentional fraud), you would go about that task carefully. Responsibly. You wouldn’t approach it with what Paul Krugman has aptly called a group of Dunning-Kruger interns and a meat-ax.
You would take the time to determine what each agency did, and take care not to lose valuable institutional knowledge with your layoffs and firings–especially when that knowledge was essential to the management of things like atomic weaponry. You would learn the vagaries of government’s (frequently antiquated) digital systems, and avoid jumping to incorrect conclusions, avoiding ludicrous and easily debunked assertions that millions of dead Americans are receiving Social Security checks.
It has become abundantly clear that Musk’s manic exhibit with a chain-saw was a perfect representation of his real motive: to destroy the federal government–what the Rightwing crazies call their war against “the administrative state.”
I think there are two distinct reasons for pursuing that destruction, although they are not mutually exclusive. (Musk rather obviously falls into both categories.)
One motivation for the chain-saw approach is the naive and increasingly divorced from reality belief that we don’t really need government, except perhaps to maintain law and order. All those regulations that–among other things– keep your groceries safe to eat, prevent your bank from ripping you off and keep your airplane from crashing, and all those silly programs that do things like feed schoolchildren and support cancer research–and especially all those intrusive rules that prevent you from discriminating against people who have different skin colors, genders or religions–all of that activity is an unnecessary intrusion on your individual rights.
Once Musk bought Twitter and turned it into the cesspool of bigotry and ignorance that is now called X, his belief that government should operate minimally– and only for the benefit of rich White men– became clear. (As if we’d failed to notice..)
The second motivation is greed. We’ve seen the billionaires “bend the knee” to an administration that is hell-bent on destroying the economic system that facilitated their acquisition of wealth, evidently in the belief that when markets crash and they are free of regulations and that pesky rule of law, they will be in a position to buy low. (Their accompanying belief that they will be able to sell high after a time, however, is fatally flawed–stock values are unlikely to rebound in the absence of a stable democratic society, just as America’s reputation as a reliable ally is unlikely to recover in our lifetimes, if ever.)
Sometimes, uncomfortable truths are better conveyed by humor than by the efforts of would-be pundits writing blogs like this one. People of a certain age still quote a very famous Pogo strip for an essential insight: We have met the enemy and he is us.
The question we are now facing is: how many of us are willing to confront that particular insight? How many of us are willing to accept the unavoidable inefficiencies and annoyances that come with a government able to serve us all–and to fight for its preservation?
I guess we’ll find out…..
“How many of us are willing to accept the unavoidable inefficiencies and annoyances that come with a government able to serve us all–and to fight for its preservation?”
Inefficiencies can be found everywhere and annoyances are part of everyday life; check your daily and weekly routines in your own homes and in your workplace if you are still working. We pay taxes and elect lawmakers to see to the protection that our rights are protected from deliberate removal of laws, rules and ordinances in place to protect the majority of citizens, not to cater to the whims and increase the profits of the few which we are living with at this time.
Doonesbury was correct and said it best many years ago when Pogo so wisely stated “We have met the enemy and it is us.” We were lulled into complacency by believing democracy would always be our standard of living and our foundation, even with its faults; we fought a Civil War and then fought for Civil Rights and believed the war was won. We are back to step one and now in another Revolutionary War to free ourselves from our own current government body.
Somehow, this slash and burn method of reducing government inefficiency seems to reflect how an out-of-control psychopath might run a business acquisition … like a casino, for example. Add in a greedy maniac with the IQ of a turnip and we have what we have today.
Other cartoon makers also make the point of the insanity in the executive branch. They know and understand the disaster in the making and have to find a way to poke fun at it or be acerbic. Hard to laugh.
I often think of Krystallnacht. Everyday something shattered.
The billionaires, now our lawmakers, can’t possibly relate to why the loss of a few hundred or barely over $1,000 per month can be of importance. That is pocket change to them; Musk is seeing the loss of billions and continues his attacks on the less fortunate because this country and China are still paying him billions for his services to both governments. Recent news of Musk meeting with the Pentagon to talk of sailing ships and sealing wax and U.S. classified information regarding war on China may be the beginning of our salvation due to the “loose lips” sinking Trump’s Ship of Fools. That Musk/China cat is out of the bag; maybe we will hear of the bat meat in those Chinese markets suspected as a possible cause of the Covid-19 Pandemic will escape next.
There is no “honor among thieves” due to their inflated egos; speaking of their actions to trusted friends who have other trusted friends who have other trusted friends will hit social media sooner or later. Doonesbury strikes again!
If I had been tasked with writing the Constitution, I, like Muskrat, would have been very efficient instead of collaborative and written:
To build a country that maximizes its resident’s personal freedom, safety, and comfort through a mixed, balanced economy of
1) socialism to provide infrastructure, afforded by taxation of a share of the wealth produced, maintaining one order of magnitude distribution of the wealth generated, and
2) capitalism which allows individuals to produce and consume by efficiently using the resources of the country (like infrastructure, compensated labor, natural resources), global trade;
all regulated to insure personal, national, and global longevity overall times.
Voila, the country built over the last 250 years, would have emerged.
Now, we are losing it to unrestrained greed.
If you didn’t think this would be a dumpster fire, you set your expectations too high!
The media is now trying to break down Project 2025 and who was behind it. Sorry, it’s a little too late for that examination. Oh wait, they believed Trump when he said he knew nothing about it. #Fools
The DoD is THEE most bloated government department by far. Any rational person with a chainsaw would start chopping away right there. The Pentagon has never passed an audit. They’ve lost trillions. According to Zelenskyy, he said they are missing hundreds of billions of dollars. Where did it go? Why isn’t the “free press” tracking it down? LOL
I saw that Scott Bessent took a young DOGE techie to explain that our federal government used antiquated software – like the 90s version. I’ve mentioned that on this blog. Upgrading our ancient code is a great idea and should have been done years ago, but wasn’t done by either political party. [hint, hint]
When I worked for the Indiana welfare dept, it was the exact same concoction of piecemeal software. Our county government has the same problem but neither party will order upgrades.
If you look closely at the web of money (slush fund) within the USAID program, you’ll find both a republican and democrat-run NGO where politicians serve on the board and distribute money. They’ve financed all kinds of “pet projects” globally. They vote to give themselves money to distribute! Where is the “free press?”
I captured a post yesterday by Trump lamenting all the “radical-left activist judges” interfering in his Making America Great Again plans. He thinks the judges want to be president and calls on the Supreme Court to fix it. He is clueless about how checks and balances work in the federal government. They’d work even better if we had a free press. There wouldn’t be a talk show for every flavor since they’d all say the same thing—preferably the truth.
The lawsuit just over the hasty deportation of Venezuelans and the video of their inhumane treatment, once they got to El Salvador, is going to be huge! Trump sent innocent people that ICE collected based on tattoos. These people hadn’t even been convicted of a crime yet.
You would think a man involved in over four thousand court cases would have a minimal understanding of how the judicial system works. Nope!
A final reminder – these are US billionaires who comprise our oligarchy. And this oligarchy controls the media and both political parties. Forget about greed; the level of ignorance displayed is beyond belief. It’s jaw-dropping!
Perhaps, Todd, it’s the greed that helps to keep them so ignorant and thinking that since they’ve amassed fortunes they need know nothing beyond how to enter their counting houses.
In Trump # 1 there was a meme going around to the effect that “Walls won’t help when the enemy is inside!” This is much like the famous Pogo line.
Trump is looking for a way to either silence the judiciary, or remove any semblance of its being a valid branch of government, just as an infant would throw a fit if its favorite thingy was taken away. And then he calls yesterday’s original Musk meeting “Fake news,” which is precisely what pours out of his mouth anytime the news media asks a legitimate question.
As Kurt Vonnegut might say, “And so it goes.”
As I just saw on HCR’s blog, this morning, apropos to our subject today:
These days, I keep coming back to the quotation recorded by journalist Ron Suskind in a New York Times Magazine article in 2004. A senior advisor to President George W. Bush told Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community”: they believed people could find solutions based on their observations and careful study of discernible reality. But, the aide continued, such a worldview was obsolete. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore…. We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
In 2004 that quotation seemed a reflection on how members of an administration hoped to shape the globe and public perceptions of their actions. Twenty-one years later, it seems we are seeing what happens when members of an administration believe they can shape not just perceptions but reality itself, and discover that reality is stubborn.
After news broke last night that the Pentagon was preparing a top-secret presentation for billionaire Elon Musk on plans for fighting a potential war with China, members of the administration denied that Musk’s visit to the Pentagon would include such a meeting. This morning, Musk posted on social media that the “leakers” “will be found.” “I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT,” he posted.
Aside from appearing to confirm the story—one can’t “leak” a false story—Sophia Cai, Danny Nguyen, Daniel Payne, Amy MacKinnon, and Eli Stokols of Politico suggest that Musk’s threat has backfired. “We are public servants, not Elon’s servants,” one Food and Drug Administration employee told the reporters, adding, “[t]he public deserves to know how dysfunctional, destructive, and deceptive all of this has been and continues to be.”
A senior Federal Aviation Administration official said, referring to Musk, “He IS A LEAKER. When you put hard drives on data systems at government agencies you are creating the biggest security breaches we have seen in years and years. Possibly ever.” A Department of Agriculture staffer said: “If the Biden administration or Obama had acted like this, no one would have tolerated it. The Trump administration doesn’t get a pass.”
Bravo, Mitch!
I would like to take a minute to speak to the bankruptcy issue. My theory is that bankruptcy is NOT a sign of inability for Orange Jesus (OJ). It is a business strategy that makes his objective easier. What is his objective? It is simply to rip off his contractors.
He builds a new hotel or casino, hires contractors, receives invoices, and proceeds to ignore the invoices. After a few reminders from the invoices of skilled tradesmen, he offers to pay half. If it’s a small business with few resources, they will eventually cave and take the offer. Bigger contractors won’t cave. For those companies they will find themselves in a long line of creditors after assets have been moved from the debtor company to another of the family’s companies.
The fact is that those bankruptcies have zero impact on the other companies in the family’s fold. They are used to either drastically reduce or possibly eliminate the amount each creditor receives. This strategy is beyond the capability of OJ. It should be attributed, IMHO, to Roy Cohn
Just for the record, Pogo was a comic strip drawn by Walt Kelly in the 1950’s / 1960’s. Doonesbury is a comic strip drawn by Gary Trudeu 1980’s to current. If I remember correctly, Gary is a Canadian, so look for some really good stuff coming up. He is also married to Indianapolis own Jane Pauley.
Do the Trumpers still believe anything he says? I have said since he came on the political scene that if he’s speaking, he’s lying. I confess to being a left-leaning Democrat, but his lies are so unconvincing one assumes that no sane person would believe them.
musk buys open AI, minions serve to add and demolish people to answer,and judge appropriate questions,and serve public. new musk gov, after hes paid to redo any gov agency as the billionaires see fit for profits,musk and trump get royalties for life, they orwell the goverment to act as the law and rule is wrote,no compromise. goverment cut and dry thanks to a app that is cut and dry. what we feed into it allows us the billionaires to control everything/one in swoop. and if that doesnt suit ya, free speech is not allowed,and we have a private warehouse for those who,,,think,, otherwise.see that screen on your wall, big billionaire, go to work,clock in via a tracking app,(yep,this is already allowed by employers) work,shut up,clock out ,then do report on your value today. we get the picture. did i leave something out for 2026? yea, voting is such a hassle, vote for me and you.ll never vote again,d trump,from,one of his rallies.. ya might wanna watch G lucas film, THX1138 Robert Duvall and see where were headed., it was Lucas first movie..
It’s significant that even though many military veterans and farmers have been among Trumps biggest supporters, they are currently being punished in the cruelest ways. The MAGA true believers may yet wake up to the fact that their loyalty buys them neither respect nor protection. The Democratic Party has an opportunity to drive this point home, but will they take it? Not if they follow the advice of James Carvell and sit on their hands assuming Republicans will destroy themselves. Instead, they are destroying the Constitution. By the time Democrats get organized, agree on common goals and rally behind a leader, there may not be a functioning Constitution to defend.
Peggy,
spot on.. I lived in newark,N.J. every day my grandad came home with a news paper rolled up after he read it on the commuter train home from work. Grandma and me would read what was the topics and some other stuff she was interested in. I learned to read between the lines. the buisness world is a corrupt enity and screws anyone who doesnt fall in line in the NJ/NY metro area.boston too. . those contractors for trump remained in court for years because of trump, many never had a chance to write off a lose to the IRS. they just failed trying to own a small buisness. when trump said the vets were suckers and loosers, he said that about his contractors who tried to take him to court. he hates unions, because the bulding trades in the NE are unionized. when he conned Atlantic city for property for his casino and beach front by eminate domain,he was told it would never work,reason, fox hills casino in Cn, was the biggest draw and ya didnt have to kill yourself to get there..it was a scam to rip off property owners who had beach front. many were WW2 war vets who actully developed that area and left the beach for public access. trumps demon seeds made sure it was gonna be theres..
CGH; thank you for the correction, if I remember correctly now, “I Go Pogo” was the title of the Kelly cartoon?
Sharon Miller; I have had more than my fill of James Carville, his condescending approach to sharing his views appear to keep too many people in his thrall. They should be speaking out rather than just accepting Carville as the source of all things political.
Elon Musk is the pilch They let out of the crate to create havoc. He is the shiny object everyone focuses on, while the real criminality, those that give the pilch his power, loot everything. That’s exactly what Steve Bannon said was going to happen. And it’s the oldest grift in the world!
As with much of what Gary Trudeau tells us, indirectly, through his comic strip, this one, with you, Sheila, made me laugh and weep. It’s almost axiomatic; when comic strip writers take on a subject, we know how serious it is.
As much as I feel a huge vacuum is being created like a cold wind blowing through government and making a gaping wound. I have hope for who will stop the bleeding, mend it, and bring back some warmth and comfort. As Americans we’ve been slow or cautious to react too swiftly out of fear and despair but however slow we are I don’t believe MAGA is going to win this fight. There are more people against MAGA than for it. And as Trump and Vance continue to stumble around in the dark because they don’t know how to run things more people will grow tired of the circus act that stinks of rotten fish and will seek fresh new leadership. Our job as citizens that care is to encourage and facilitate fresh options that are more palatable to everyone.
There was a teacher that just got in trouble for her classroom sign that said “Everyone is welcome here.” The students rallied around the teacher and a beautiful statement was said by a young girl “Kindness is not political.”
That type of insight coming from a young woman gives me hope for the future!
Here’s the real reason. It’s the same one that motivated Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Putin. POWER. That’s it. Trump wants power over you and me and every other American. Only fools can’t see that.