What's Going On: The Chainsaw Massacre

 

There's three branches of government. . .and then this guy

Elon Musk occupies a strange and unique position in the Trump regime. One of my friends who is a strong Trump supporter recently posted a lengthy apologetic on Facebook defending the actions of the Trump/Musk team.  "How can all the Leftists be crying about Elon cutting waste, fraud, and abuse?" he asked. "This is a good thing!"  He's saving your money, my friend suggested.  And doing it for free!

I have a number of concerns about what's going on with Elon Musk and they fall under three categories:

The Man

To be clear, it's not that I object so much to Musk himself (thought I admit I'm not a fan) but simply that he is just one man. One man (and his team) acting without accountability. Every American should be concerned about an unelected individual having such sweeping power.  Sure there are whole departments within the executive branch--whole agencies--full of unelected officials.  But none of those civil servants have the kind of singular authority granted to Elon Musk.  They can't fire hundreds or even thousands of federal workers with a single command.  They can't make executive decisions about federal spending, or of their own accord enter the payment systems of the government and make unilateral decisions.  And each of these government departments typically have a head who has to be vetted and approved by the Senate.  Granted the current Senate is pretty much ready to rubber stamp just about anyone the president places before them.  But even they have standards--which is how Matt Gaetz ended up not making the cut.  But the point is that right now, even if they wanted to stop DOGE they cannot. 

Right now we are entirely dependent on Elon Musk's good will, the purity of his motives, and depth of his wisdom and knowledge. We just have to trust that he's a good man who knows what he's doing.  And many in the Trump camp do have extraordinary faith in this guy.  But to me it's not about whether he's a good guy or not--it's that history has shown time and time again that giving too much unbridled authority to one person, no matter how "good" is always a bad idea. You know the saying.  Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The Method

The cutting of waste, fraud, and abuse is clumsy and poorly thought out and stems from a belief that the mere existence of a government agency or federal worker is itself fraud, waste, and abuse.  Musk's use of  the chain saw is apt, but not in the way he thinks.  He's using a chain saw to excise tumors in the body politic, when he should be using a scalpel.   There's no doubt that there is waste, fraud, and abuse, and streamlining the federal government is a serious task that's long overdue.  And of course any cuts are going to hurt some ordinary, hard-working civil servants.  Hard choices should be made, but that's not what happening right now.  Shutting down whole departments of the federal government in one fell swoop is not "making tough decisions."  It's quite easy in fact, if you're not terribly informed or interested in becoming informed about what's actually going on in the federal departments you want to wipe out.  This is a theme we are going to come back to by the way.  Pay attention and you'll notice that Trump consistently takes the easy way.  His tendency is to pick easy battles and weaker adversaries where he knows he can win.

The Results

Finally, the Trump/Musk campaign to tighten the budget is mostly performative.  While gutting USAID and other departments is devasting to those who work there and the people they serve, the savings are marginal.  The only real way to deal with the budget deficit is to tackle the massive and massively popular entitlement programs that suck up most of our budget.  We've always known this but politicians have been too afraid to do the difficult work of figuring out how to cut our spending in these areas.  Trump's team is no different.  And it's understandable. The American public would be outraged if there were significant cuts to social security or Medicare (those two, along with defense make up 50% of the federal budget).  If we got rid of all expenditures except for those big three and the 13% of the budget that goes to paying interest on our debt, we could erase the budget deficit and have some surplus.  That would mean zero spending on health unrelated to Medicare, income security, veterans benefits and services, education, training, employment, and social services, transportation, natural resources and environment, and everything else (USAID falls under "everything else." That last category altogether amounts to a measly 3% of the federal budget).   I'm not at all sure it's realistic to reduce the federal budget to two entitlements, defense and servicing interest.  And even then there's still the matter of 36 trillion dollars in debt the U.S. government owes.  

Chainsaws are not going to fix theses problems. The practical--and much more difficult--solution is the same as it always has been.  Make hard cuts to social security and Medicare and raise taxes.  It's the only way. The conservative passion for tax cuts (a passion I share every year around April 15) has always been the flaw in their supposed fiscal "responsibility".  Can you imagine sitting at the kitchen table trying to balance the family budget and suggesting that what we really need to do is cut back on our income. A true fiscally conservative position is tax and cut.  That's a hard conversation that no one wants to have, so instead we get a showy pretense of being responsible.  As is common with Trump, it gives the appearance that "things are getting done" when in fact very little of it has a meaningful impact on the stated goal.

When all is said in done, especially if this latest round of tax cuts (which I hear are really only going to to benefit the wealthy. I'm pretty annoyed about that. If you're going to be stupid at least let regular people like me benefit from the stupidity too!) makes it to Trump's desk, whole sections of the government will be hollowed out by Musk's chainsaw, millions will pay the price in lost services, and we'll still be running a federal deficit. What a mess.

What's Going On: In The Time of the King (Not Like Us)

 But the people refused to listen to Samuel's warning.  "Even so we still want a king," they said.  "We want to be like the nations around us.  Our king will judge us and lead us into battle."  So Samuel repeated to the Lord what the people had said, and the Lord replied, "Do as they say, and give them a king."

                                                                                                       1 Samuel 8:11-22

As you read this post you may think that I'm engaging in hyperbole.  But keep in mind that this image wasn't disseminated by the president's detractors, but by Trump himself.

This is the third time that I've witnessed an event never before seen in my lifetime.  The first was the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  The second was the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.  And now, we have the reign of Trump. No matter where you stand when it comes to Trumpism, I think we can all agree that his actions are without precedent in the history of our country.  In terms of impact, I really do believe that history will judge Donald Trump as America's most consequential president, with really only Lincoln providing any real competition.  In an occasional series of posts, I'd like to document this remarkable moment, just as I did for the pandemic (Dispatches from Coronaville) and the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd's murder (Angry).  My posts will fall under the title, "What's Going On."  And my goal will be to cut through the noise--and there is a lot of noise--and get to the essence of what is actually going on in this country.  

One thing is clear.  The United States of America is undergoing rapid and far-reaching change.  What does it all mean?  And what lies ahead?  Some say a new American Golden Age. Others worry that a second American Civil War looms on the horizon. And still others suggest we are witnessing the rise of a Fourth Reich, an American one.  I'm highly skeptical of the first.  I have my doubts about the second--in a sense, I think that maybe that Civil War is already over, without a shot being fired.  I probably lean more closely towards the third possibility, though there are some key elements lacking in Trumpism that were present in the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.  I'm also reminded of the end of the Roman Republic (though, again, without the civil wars).   Just as the Roman senate continued to exist as ancient Rome shifted from republic to empire, I believe our three branches of government will continue to exist.  However, all meaningful power will be in hands of the executive branch going forward.  President Trump is our Julius Caesar, seizing the reigns of government solely for himself.  What I'm really curious about is who will be our Augustus, the second Roman emperor who solidified and made permanent what Julius had begun. 

What Trump's election, and the continued support of his faithful, reveal is the myth of American exceptionalism.  We've allowed ourselves to believe the flattery of our politicians over the years--that somehow, we, the American people are just different from the rest of the world. We believed that they're not like us, to borrow a phrase.   We were told we were a freedom-loving people that fought to overthrow a tyrannical king and would never stand for another one.  I believe The United States of America was exceptional, yes, in its form of government--in its novel pursuit of a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.  It was the American idea, the American experiment, as flawed and as hypocritical as it often was, that was truly unique. It was an experiment got out of the lab if you will, and expanded in its reach much further than the founders could ever have imagined.  It's an experiment that has come to an end.

Because in the end, the American people are just like people all over the world, throughout history. We wanted a king, just like people always have.  Something in human nature wants to worship.  We want a charismatic, powerful leader we can bow before.  We want a King David, a Caesar, a William the Conqueror, Peter the Great, a Queen Elizabeth I, a Lenin, a Hitler, a Putin, a Bukele, a Trump. We want a strong man who will judge us and lead us into a battle.  We want someone who will "fix it" for us.  We want someone who with one sweep of his sword or stroke of his pen, will wipe out our enemies within and without and lead our country to greatness.

Now granted, there are many of us who don't like this particular king.  But I wonder if even those in the anti-Trump camp are as true to the principles of democratic republic as we would like to believe or if it's mainly the man and the policies we dislike.  What's happened to our siblings on the other side of the political aisle should serve as a cautionary tale.  The American Right has always been more worried about the rise of the tyranny than the Left.  They were ready, with their second amendment rights to fight for freedom and democracy.  But the fact that tyranny came from the Right instead of the Left has caught all of us flat-footed, revealing a hard truth.  That a principled stand for the democratic self-government is only of concern to us if it is our own freedom, our own beliefs, our own way of life that is under threat. The Right (except for a few lone voices crying in the wilderness) finds itself unable to stand up to a tyranny that champions an ascendant and muscular conservativism.  And the Left had no plan for this at all, and is left stymied.

In my view, there is one ray of hope glimmering among the darkening clouds of authoritarian rule in America, and that is our first amendment rights, especially the free press.  For now at least, there is nothing preventing dissenting voices from speaking out.  Whether  via old media or the various tech platforms, including little blogs like like this, the government is not preventing us from protesting vigorously what is going on right now.  When that changes, well, then we are well and truly enveloped in darkness.

I'd like to close this first entry of the What's Going On series by shifting from the political to the spiritual.  What does it mean for us as Christ-followers to live in the time of the king?  What are we to do?  How should we live?  The answer, I think, is simple--and it's the same answer it has always been.  To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. The counsel is the same whether we rejoice at our heroic new king, or mourn the passing of our former republic.  His Kingdom is not of this world and our first allegiance is to that Kingdom.  We are called to do the right thing.  To love everyone and to be a blessing to everyone, even our enemies.  We are to be humble, fearless, and deeply focused on walking with Jesus. 

It will not be easy--it never has been.  Most people when faced with a severe cost to following these simple instructions-to do justly, to love mercy, and to keep walking with God--have chosen to take the broader, easier path.  We all like to think that we would have worked on the Underground Railroad, that we would have hidden the Jews in our homes, that we would have marched with Dr. King.  But the truth is is those are the people that are truly not like most of us.  To be like them in the days ahead will take extraordinary courage, deep conviction, and, for those of us who love Jesus, a total commitment to walking in lockstep with our One True King.