The Real Purpose of DOGE has Been Revealed

I am hardly alone in following the coverage of the Trump-Musk schism which as of this writing continues to escalate. The media tends to focus on the dynamics of the relationship falling into all the 'bromance' talk of the present generation - a sign of the culture's decadence that has degraded friendship and has a tendency to cast all relationships and interactions into some kind of sexual terms. It's tiresome to say the least.

Others viewed Musk as a kind of eminence grise, a power behind the throne, the one steering the ship. This viewpoint was supported by the vast sums of money Musk had contributed to getting Trump elected. That has never been the case. Musk's interests are personal. The rest of the world has embraced Chinese EV's with gusto and if they're allowed to compete in the United States - it will be end of Tesla. In addition to this Musk does embrace a mix of strange ideas and yet he doesn't really fall into one political camp or the other. Trump certainly likes to 'pal around' with rich people, admiring them and jealous of them at the same time. Others believed Musk is an ideologue on these budgetary issues and his money bought him the position. That may indeed be what Musk actually thought.

And yet now the truth has finally been revealed - Musk was a pawn, a chump, another throw-away in Trump's path to power. He was never there to cut the budget, reduce costs, and get the budget under control on the basis of conservative economic principles. That's not what DOGE was about. That was just the packaging and the narrative. DOGE was about politics and going after people and programmes the Right doesn't like. It was also about the utilisation of chaos - something central to Trumpism. Break things so they can be replaced. Stir the pot. Get people turning against each other.

The GOP is associated with conservative spending and tight budgets but in reality it is Republican administrations that tend to run up the biggest debts. The big tax-and-spend ethos associated with the Democrats was true enough with FDR and certainly Johnson - who spent massive sums on The Great Society while waging the Vietnam War. But since then, one is hard pressed to find a Republican that didn't attempt to cut taxes while increasing spending - leading to massive debt. Some like Dick Cheney, have even argued that debt doesn't matter. In their case its utility is for the media and political attacks against their foes.

And Trump is just getting started. His Golden Dome plan is basically just Star Wars 2.0 and whatever numbers are being thrown around - are certainly woeful underestimates. While the administration is talking billions, experts are speaking in terms of trillions of dollars. And long-term programmes of this nature always escalate. With large-scale military plans, by the time they actually start production they usually have to go back and revise all the numbers because in the years of planning the costs have usually doubled due to under-estimates and inflation.

The story of Trump and Musk is far from over. Like it or not, Musk is going to continue wielding tremendous influence on American society. But this falling out demonstrates something that many suspected all along - DOGE was a distraction, a disingenuous chaos agent that was never about reining in spending and getting things under control. It was meant to destroy and break and even the proposed cuts in the Trump budget are more of the same. The attacks on everything from Medicaid and Medicare to PBS are meant to create disfunction so the public can be informed these systems are broken and the solution is privatisation.

For all the hubbub over the fallout, I think the media is missing the real story which is (to me) every bit as sensational.