7 ms·

DOGE is a complete farce, but I think there's an important to not just write this off as a stage show and the people buying into it as idiots. There are a lot o

DOGE is a complete farce, but I think there's an important to not just write this off as a stage show and the people buying into it as idiots. There are a lot of people who feel that government isn't working for them and so when they see things like "8 million dollars spent on condoms for Palestinians" they're already primed to get angry about it. Musk/DOGE's actions may all be for spectacle, but he's tapping into some very real emotions that he wouldn't be able to tap into if people felt the government was working for them. DOGE is a symptom of a larger problem. Even if Musk and DOGE are completely discredited, if we don't figure out a way to make it so the average citizen feels like they're getting their money's worth from the government, it's just a matter of time until someone else steps in to exploit that feeling for their own gain.

carpo 2y ago
"... it's just a matter of time until someone else steps in to exploit that feeling for their own gain." Someone just did ...
- code_runner 2y ago
  > even if DOGE and musk are discredited. The idea being that if common sense prevails and folks realize what a shit show/farce this DOGE thing is.... the underlying issues that allowed DOGE to exist in the first place will be unsolved.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Exactly. That's one thing that disappointed me about the US Democratic party after the first Trump election -- a complete lack of curiosity into why people voted for him. Maybe people were voting for him because they were dumb? Or they were lied to? But neither of those change the importance of understanding what those people wanted. You can't win elections without understanding what most people actually want.
    - Capricorn2481 2y ago
      I think maybe 1 in 20 people I know have any clue about government waste, but they all have a "feeling" it's happening and it's the worst it's ever been. It takes very little these days for people to catch these vibes, and even littler to associate it with Democrats who are for social security. This despite the fact that Musk is mostly firing investigators who were seeing if his company's were a budget waste. I guess we just have to assume agencies that say "black" are bad and what we really need to spend money on is luxury EV vehicles that can play angry birds. Surely not a conflict of interest. There is no arguing with people who don't know what they want. This is all propaganda fueled hysteria.
    - WatchDog 2y ago
      > Maybe people were voting for him because they were dumb? Or they were lied to? I cant tell if this is intentional irony or poe’s law. When democrats that are curious about why people vote for Trump, conclude that the voters are dumb or naive, it’s kind of an unintentional demonstration of the kind of thinking that turns people away from the Democratic Party.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        My point was that if they conclude that Trump voters are dumb or naive (i.e. the most dismissive judgement), even that still doesn't remove the need for Democrats to understand what those same people want. The smug "some people are dumb, so I'm going to ignore them instead of being curious" elitism has lost the Democratic party two recent elections.
  - tokioyoyo 2y ago
    My hot take is, social media alongside with TikTok showed the world to some people who usually wouldn’t venture out of their small bubbles. Eventually they see significant positive things about other countries, and a lot of negative about theirs. This subconsciously brings up “we have it worse for sure!” emotions in some people, that later translated into whatever it is right now when some people started targeting and exploiting these feelings. I have no source, no data, nor examples to defend my point, it’s just the vibes.
    - cutemonster 2y ago
      > TikTok showed the world TikTok, Twitter etc show extremely distorted views of the world, just other bubbles.
      - tokioyoyo 2y ago
        And that's just enough to feel shitty about your direct environment.
gman83 2y ago
Re: this report that USAID was sending condoms to Gaza, that was actually in Gaza, Mozambique (which has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS), not Palestine. Maybe they knew, maybe not. Anyway, I know many people who have been parroting that stat, so it was effective propaganda.
- joshstrange 2y ago
  This is straight from Elon's playbook at Twitter. Cherry-pick some things that sounds bad, find a few real bad things, mix those all together and pretend they are equal, then dribble that out to people while feigning outrage/shock.
  - settsu 2y ago
    And remove any suggestion that there was forethought. It's pure, unfettered trolling. He's desperate for attention from anyone. Fascinating—if unfortunate—to see the world's 2 most powerful men basically functioning as walking test cases for classic outcomes when a child is not given appropriate attention/affection and also zero boundaries for socially-appropriate behavior.
    - tombert 2y ago
      It reminds me of the "treadmills for shrimp" thing that people used to say that research money was being wasted on about 14 years ago. Every intellectually lazy politician acted like we were spending all our research money on making sure that shrimp were exercising. The "treadmills" were used to measure the effects of bacteria on shrimp metabolism. Understanding how bacteria affects metabolism, at least to me, sounds like a perfectly valid thing to research. Most people, if they knew the context around that would probably agree, but people are extremely lazy with this stuff, and are really susceptible to stupid catchphrases, so people thought it was a huge waste of money. ETA: https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmill-the-politics-of-silly-studies https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmi...
- tombert 2y ago
squigz 2y ago
Anyone on "the other side" (problems with that framing aside for now) who doesn't understand and accept this is only serving to make the problem worse. This is the result of people's disillusionment with government from both sides of the aisle reaching a boiling point. Anyone could have seen it coming, and anyone who wants to fix it needs to understand where the other side is coming from, and not just paint them as evil stupid idiots. Compromise. It's essential to peaceful co-existence of a group of humans of any size. At some point along the line, America seems to have lost that quality.
- 2358452 2y ago
  I think not only compromise, but more importantly communication. Like it or not, the other half of the country is also part of the country, and you cannot claim to be in support of the public without covering half of the public. The first line should be consensus, and when consensus isn't possible a carefully balanced compromise should be attempted. If the left or the right disagree on even language and core cultural issues, they both need to find ways to communicate and evolve that allows for a peaceful coexistence. The notion the other party is a stupid or evil adversary incapable of enlightenment is poisonous, it forbids communication. Even if your adversary is indeed stupid and/or evil, it is far better to talk to them and if not change their mind, explain yourself in a language they understand (that includes a language they don't find outrageous or absurd!), leaving open the door to seeing your point of view. Even if they want to destroy you, it is a much better strategy to show you're not all that bad than escalating or just giving up. Of course, there are always voices that profit from discord, and human nature is perhaps attracted to antagonism. But we shouldn't let that go out of control, for the benefit of everyone. If we're wrong about something, it's to our profit to learn from an adversary. This is the main lesson I think we should be taking -- even if being wrong is painful or sometimes isolating. Also logically, don't isolate those who think a little differently from your cultural heterodoxy, for the case they might have good reasons you just don't understand yet. I think the old customs of being, and of course appearing, respectful were in part norms created for this. By behaving respectfully you're showing a willingness to learn and be wrong. By shouting, offending and imposing your opinion you're demonstrating you might be closed to other possibilities even if they are wrong, sometimes for very misguided reasons like ego, pride, or power. It's clearly then particularly important to act respectfully with those who are your adversaries or with whom you disagree (since perhaps you'll be more inclined to hear those who you already mostly agree with). In summary: communication, compromise and respect.
jjulius 2y ago
> ... it's just a matter of time until someone else steps in to exploit that feeling for their own gain. This is quite literally what is happening.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
uticus 2y ago
This strikes a chord with me, perhaps because I'm one of the people who "feel that government isn't working for them." - government spending has been rampant and completely disconnected from available funds - "shutdown" threats, typically a sign that a red line is being crossed, has been treated as political currency - funds going from taxpayer (individual and corporations) to government, to be redistributed for an ever-increasing list of grants, programs, and studies - locked-in mega spending areas of the budget showing plenty of warning signs of unsustainability, with nothing being done to address Even if DOGE is "all for spectacle," I'm having trouble finding the downsides of DOGE's actions for generations coming after us. But maybe someone could help me understand why they feel differently?
- lm28469 2y ago
  I feel like what's happening right now is a double leg amputation while all you had to do was to treat the gangrenous toe. Or two parents discussing one's infidelity in front of their 7 years old kid. Like sure it'll get you somewhere, but what will you break/lose in the process? And what will you gain? It's not "all for show", I don't think Americans understand how they're unraveling decades of soft power, eroding the trust they were already losing on the international stage, &c.
- staunton 2y ago
  It's not just spectacle. It's destroying government agencies with decades of institutional knowledge on how to run the richest and most powerful country in the world. None of us even know most of what these interconnected institutions do, a lot of which does affect our lives in a very real way. Sure, a lot of these agencies are doing wasteful things and there is a lot of room for improvement. Meanwhile, it's a slow and humongous beast that's very difficult to reform. However, thinking that these institutions have no value is a great mistake. So is thinking that a few teenagers can improve things by firing people and dissolving agencies in the course of a few weeks. Needless to say, there is no historical precedent for something like this working. You can take the position that it will just get a lot worse before it gets better: "destroy everything and build it from scratch". It's often tempting but almost never a good idea, even for software will projects. On the level of a government, this idea is actually insane and I have no doubt that people will find out why, unless they stop breaking things.
AJMaxwell 2y ago
Any time the government tries to do something for The People, the wealthy and their mouthpieces get a portion of the population to believe the much needed help is actually evil socialism/communism and will destroy their way of life. America has been propagandized to by the wealthy for a century and this is the end result. The world's richest person reforming the government for profit.
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  It's vibes based FUD around medicine and government spending from people that have done nothing to look into it but talk in a bar with their friends about it. They have no idea how to articulate what is happening, where we're spending the money, how it scales with other things we spend money on. It's just headlines.
BrenBarn 2y ago
It is absolutely possible to have feelings and still be an idiot for acting on them in certain ways. Someone who "feels" that vaccines are a hoax and they should drink bleach instead is still an idiot despite that feeling. There is also a sort of gray area where a person may act irrationally due to intense feeling in a way that's perhaps excusable (e.g., someone's relative dies and they start smashing things in a fit of grief), but it's still a bad idea. We have to hope that more people are the latter category and will wake up and realize what a mess they've made.
tremon 2y ago
if people felt the government was working for them There's two things you need to make people feel the government is working for them: * good social policies * adequate education One of the US parties has been working for decades to sabotage both, and with the help of the media they've successfully managed to deflect all the blame for it. So no, I don't agree that DOGE is a symptom of a larger problem -- unless you mean that the problem is 50 years of consistently undermining the government.
- dmichulke 2y ago
  Since 1993 there were 20 blue years and 12 red years. Why wasn't it fixed?
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Those were mostly purple years; the United States isn't—at least, when functioning approximately according the the Constitutional rules, which has suddenly become an important qualifier—a unitary executive dictatorship.
  - snozolli 2y ago
    Because presidents didn't used to act like kings. It's extremely common for the House and/or Senate to swing opposite the President: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/ https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/... There's also the problem of Democrats being absolutely terrible at organizing and uniting.

carpo 2y ago

"... it's just a matter of time until someone else steps in to exploit that feeling for their own gain." Someone just did ...

code_runner 2y ago
> even if DOGE and musk are discredited. The idea being that if common sense prevails and folks realize what a shit show/farce this DOGE thing is.... the underlying issues that allowed DOGE to exist in the first place will be unsolved.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Exactly. That's one thing that disappointed me about the US Democratic party after the first Trump election -- a complete lack of curiosity into why people voted for him. Maybe people were voting for him because they were dumb? Or they were lied to? But neither of those change the importance of understanding what those people wanted. You can't win elections without understanding what most people actually want.
  - Capricorn2481 2y ago
    I think maybe 1 in 20 people I know have any clue about government waste, but they all have a "feeling" it's happening and it's the worst it's ever been. It takes very little these days for people to catch these vibes, and even littler to associate it with Democrats who are for social security. This despite the fact that Musk is mostly firing investigators who were seeing if his company's were a budget waste. I guess we just have to assume agencies that say "black" are bad and what we really need to spend money on is luxury EV vehicles that can play angry birds. Surely not a conflict of interest. There is no arguing with people who don't know what they want. This is all propaganda fueled hysteria.
  - WatchDog 2y ago
    > Maybe people were voting for him because they were dumb? Or they were lied to? I cant tell if this is intentional irony or poe’s law. When democrats that are curious about why people vote for Trump, conclude that the voters are dumb or naive, it’s kind of an unintentional demonstration of the kind of thinking that turns people away from the Democratic Party.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      My point was that if they conclude that Trump voters are dumb or naive (i.e. the most dismissive judgement), even that still doesn't remove the need for Democrats to understand what those same people want. The smug "some people are dumb, so I'm going to ignore them instead of being curious" elitism has lost the Democratic party two recent elections.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  My hot take is, social media alongside with TikTok showed the world to some people who usually wouldn’t venture out of their small bubbles. Eventually they see significant positive things about other countries, and a lot of negative about theirs. This subconsciously brings up “we have it worse for sure!” emotions in some people, that later translated into whatever it is right now when some people started targeting and exploiting these feelings. I have no source, no data, nor examples to defend my point, it’s just the vibes.
  - cutemonster 2y ago
    > TikTok showed the world TikTok, Twitter etc show extremely distorted views of the world, just other bubbles.
    - tokioyoyo 2y ago
      And that's just enough to feel shitty about your direct environment.

gman83 2y ago

Re: this report that USAID was sending condoms to Gaza, that was actually in Gaza, Mozambique (which has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS), not Palestine. Maybe they knew, maybe not. Anyway, I know many people who have been parroting that stat, so it was effective propaganda.

joshstrange 2y ago
This is straight from Elon's playbook at Twitter. Cherry-pick some things that sounds bad, find a few real bad things, mix those all together and pretend they are equal, then dribble that out to people while feigning outrage/shock.
- settsu 2y ago
  And remove any suggestion that there was forethought. It's pure, unfettered trolling. He's desperate for attention from anyone. Fascinating—if unfortunate—to see the world's 2 most powerful men basically functioning as walking test cases for classic outcomes when a child is not given appropriate attention/affection and also zero boundaries for socially-appropriate behavior.
  - tombert 2y ago
    It reminds me of the "treadmills for shrimp" thing that people used to say that research money was being wasted on about 14 years ago. Every intellectually lazy politician acted like we were spending all our research money on making sure that shrimp were exercising. The "treadmills" were used to measure the effects of bacteria on shrimp metabolism. Understanding how bacteria affects metabolism, at least to me, sounds like a perfectly valid thing to research. Most people, if they knew the context around that would probably agree, but people are extremely lazy with this stuff, and are really susceptible to stupid catchphrases, so people thought it was a huge waste of money. ETA: https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmill-the-politics-of-silly-studies https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmi...
tombert 2y ago

squigz 2y ago

Anyone on "the other side" (problems with that framing aside for now) who doesn't understand and accept this is only serving to make the problem worse. This is the result of people's disillusionment with government from both sides of the aisle reaching a boiling point. Anyone could have seen it coming, and anyone who wants to fix it needs to understand where the other side is coming from, and not just paint them as evil stupid idiots. Compromise. It's essential to peaceful co-existence of a group of humans of any size. At some point along the line, America seems to have lost that quality.

2358452 2y ago
I think not only compromise, but more importantly communication. Like it or not, the other half of the country is also part of the country, and you cannot claim to be in support of the public without covering half of the public. The first line should be consensus, and when consensus isn't possible a carefully balanced compromise should be attempted. If the left or the right disagree on even language and core cultural issues, they both need to find ways to communicate and evolve that allows for a peaceful coexistence. The notion the other party is a stupid or evil adversary incapable of enlightenment is poisonous, it forbids communication. Even if your adversary is indeed stupid and/or evil, it is far better to talk to them and if not change their mind, explain yourself in a language they understand (that includes a language they don't find outrageous or absurd!), leaving open the door to seeing your point of view. Even if they want to destroy you, it is a much better strategy to show you're not all that bad than escalating or just giving up. Of course, there are always voices that profit from discord, and human nature is perhaps attracted to antagonism. But we shouldn't let that go out of control, for the benefit of everyone. If we're wrong about something, it's to our profit to learn from an adversary. This is the main lesson I think we should be taking -- even if being wrong is painful or sometimes isolating. Also logically, don't isolate those who think a little differently from your cultural heterodoxy, for the case they might have good reasons you just don't understand yet. I think the old customs of being, and of course appearing, respectful were in part norms created for this. By behaving respectfully you're showing a willingness to learn and be wrong. By shouting, offending and imposing your opinion you're demonstrating you might be closed to other possibilities even if they are wrong, sometimes for very misguided reasons like ego, pride, or power. It's clearly then particularly important to act respectfully with those who are your adversaries or with whom you disagree (since perhaps you'll be more inclined to hear those who you already mostly agree with). In summary: communication, compromise and respect.

jjulius 2y ago

> ... it's just a matter of time until someone else steps in to exploit that feeling for their own gain. This is quite literally what is happening.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

uticus 2y ago

This strikes a chord with me, perhaps because I'm one of the people who "feel that government isn't working for them." - government spending has been rampant and completely disconnected from available funds - "shutdown" threats, typically a sign that a red line is being crossed, has been treated as political currency - funds going from taxpayer (individual and corporations) to government, to be redistributed for an ever-increasing list of grants, programs, and studies - locked-in mega spending areas of the budget showing plenty of warning signs of unsustainability, with nothing being done to address Even if DOGE is "all for spectacle," I'm having trouble finding the downsides of DOGE's actions for generations coming after us. But maybe someone could help me understand why they feel differently?

lm28469 2y ago
I feel like what's happening right now is a double leg amputation while all you had to do was to treat the gangrenous toe. Or two parents discussing one's infidelity in front of their 7 years old kid. Like sure it'll get you somewhere, but what will you break/lose in the process? And what will you gain? It's not "all for show", I don't think Americans understand how they're unraveling decades of soft power, eroding the trust they were already losing on the international stage, &c.
staunton 2y ago
It's not just spectacle. It's destroying government agencies with decades of institutional knowledge on how to run the richest and most powerful country in the world. None of us even know most of what these interconnected institutions do, a lot of which does affect our lives in a very real way. Sure, a lot of these agencies are doing wasteful things and there is a lot of room for improvement. Meanwhile, it's a slow and humongous beast that's very difficult to reform. However, thinking that these institutions have no value is a great mistake. So is thinking that a few teenagers can improve things by firing people and dissolving agencies in the course of a few weeks. Needless to say, there is no historical precedent for something like this working. You can take the position that it will just get a lot worse before it gets better: "destroy everything and build it from scratch". It's often tempting but almost never a good idea, even for software will projects. On the level of a government, this idea is actually insane and I have no doubt that people will find out why, unless they stop breaking things.

AJMaxwell 2y ago

Any time the government tries to do something for The People, the wealthy and their mouthpieces get a portion of the population to believe the much needed help is actually evil socialism/communism and will destroy their way of life. America has been propagandized to by the wealthy for a century and this is the end result. The world's richest person reforming the government for profit.

Capricorn2481 2y ago
It's vibes based FUD around medicine and government spending from people that have done nothing to look into it but talk in a bar with their friends about it. They have no idea how to articulate what is happening, where we're spending the money, how it scales with other things we spend money on. It's just headlines.

BrenBarn 2y ago

It is absolutely possible to have feelings and still be an idiot for acting on them in certain ways. Someone who "feels" that vaccines are a hoax and they should drink bleach instead is still an idiot despite that feeling. There is also a sort of gray area where a person may act irrationally due to intense feeling in a way that's perhaps excusable (e.g., someone's relative dies and they start smashing things in a fit of grief), but it's still a bad idea. We have to hope that more people are the latter category and will wake up and realize what a mess they've made.

tremon 2y ago

if people felt the government was working for them There's two things you need to make people feel the government is working for them: * good social policies * adequate education One of the US parties has been working for decades to sabotage both, and with the help of the media they've successfully managed to deflect all the blame for it. So no, I don't agree that DOGE is a symptom of a larger problem -- unless you mean that the problem is 50 years of consistently undermining the government.

dmichulke 2y ago
Since 1993 there were 20 blue years and 12 red years. Why wasn't it fixed?
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  Those were mostly purple years; the United States isn't—at least, when functioning approximately according the the Constitutional rules, which has suddenly become an important qualifier—a unitary executive dictatorship.
- snozolli 2y ago
  Because presidents didn't used to act like kings. It's extremely common for the House and/or Senate to swing opposite the President: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/ https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/... There's also the problem of Democrats being absolutely terrible at organizing and uniting.