Trump and Musk attacked the bureaucracy without understanding what it actually did, doing much damage.
Musk could have focused on helping upgrade the government’s technology, something badly needed, instead, he just destroyed a bunch of stuff he didn’t understand.
While doing DOGE, Musk repeatedly made false statements. It seems like he had to be lying, but, Musk’s close friends claim that he never lies, meaning, Musk just easily deludes himself into believing a lot of false shit. Being a great businessman and technologist doesn’t mean you aren’t incompetent and massively deluded about other topics.
With the chaos DOGE caused, rather than saving money, DOGE cost the American people.
The bureaucracy is mostly filled with loyal law followers. If you want to break the law, it makes sense to destroy the bureaucracy.
Under Trump, datasets disappear. Rather than the government keeping data to help understand society and help inform decision makers and the American people, Trump has pushed the government to keep and create data for the purpose of making Trump look good.
Many public servants are there out of a sense of public spiritedness, and the Trump administration treats them not simply like employees who need to be cut for good reasons…but like the enemy and some of the administration seems to get enjoyment out of cruelty.
One DOGE guy went into DOGE to fix government, and then he took an interview with a journalist and said that government wasn’t as inefficient as he thought, then he was fired.
On social media, people are most likely to spread sensational bullshit that sparks their emotions. People share a lot of stuff created by bots or foreign troll farms, but bots and troll farms don’t make stuff go viral…average people on social media sharing and liking such content does.
Trump repeatedly screams fraud when there is an election outcome he doesn’t like, even in elections he wasn’t running in. And of course, without even close to decent evidence…
2016 Republican Primaries, 2016 US presidential election, 2018 US midterms, 2020 US presidential election, 2022 US midterms…
He even claims it in elections he won to claim “in reality” he won bigger!
Trump often doesn’t care about actually convicting someone he says is a criminal. He often doesn’t care about passing specific laws. He often doesn’t care if what he is saying is true. He wants something that creates the illusion of truth so he can refer to it, argue its true, and dupes will fall for it. Whether the SAVE bill becomes law or not, Trump can refer to him getting screwed and blame Congressmen and illegals for bad elections. The truth of Obama’s birth certificate didn’t matter, as long as it got a lot of coverage and Trump got it in people’s minds. Trump wanted Zelenskyy to say he was investigating Biden so Trump could point to that and accuse Biden of shit.
“Tariffs don’t conjure consumer demand out of thin air. Americans were buying plenty of washing machines, clothing, and steel before the tariffs. What changes is where some things are made. Production shifts from foreign manufacturers with efficiency or cost advantages to more expensive domestic manufacturers. American producers stand to gain, except when they must pay tariffs to import the materials they need (as is often the case).
But everyone who buys the product pays more. The extra $100 a family spends on a washing machine won’t instead be spent at the restaurant next door, the repair shop, or the shoe store. Real wages—what your paycheck actually buys—fall when the prices of most things rise.
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When Americans buy less from China, it’s true, some of our overseas business competitors lose revenue. But what about the American households losing access to cheaper goods? Or the American producers losing access to cheaper materials and ingredients that make them more competitive?
Both countries take a hit. Serious analysts who favor targeted tariffs for strategic reasons generally acknowledge this tradeoff and argue that the benefits justify the costs. What they don’t claim is that such costs don’t exist.
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Even when firms do absorb some of the hit, the money doesn’t disappear. These companies instead hire fewer people, pay lower wages, invest less or, in industries where profit margins are already thin, hike future prices. The burden just takes a different route to your wallet.”
Ben Shapiro says that Trump is obviously corrupt, but supports him anyways. He admits that Conservatives are willfully blind and hypocritical on the issue because if Biden did this they would be screaming bloody murder. He defends Trump by stating false things about what Trump has done and by stating false things about the Democrats. Shapiro has been critical of Trump compared to other Trump voters, but he’s still amazingly blind about the truth of what Trump has done and what Democrats have done.
Shapiro acknowledges that Trump was immoral and undemocratic in claiming Biden stole the election and for Trump’s role in the Capitol riot, but because the guard rails held, he’s willing to give Trump another chance. Jessiah makes the analogy that if Shapiro’s kids were in a car with a drunk driver, and that driver crashed but no one was hurt because guard rails stopped the car from going over the side, Shapiro would give the keys of a new car to that driver and allow his kids to ride with him. Of course, Shapiro wouldn’t do that, but he’s willing to do it with US democracy.