Elon Musk is a Dancing Monkey and DOGE is a Mirage
Don’t get fooled again…
Elon Musk is a dancing monkey. Sure, he’s “the richest man in the world” and is the figurehead of some important businesses; but, his role in the forthcoming Trump administration is that of dancing monkey.
Musk and his dancing partner Vivek Ramaswamy are the co-heads of a fictional organization called the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. The organization is the idea of Musk and was named by him, because Musk loves naming things. He thinks he’s good at coming up with clever names like the Boring Company, Techno Mechanicus, and X. Techno Mechanicus is the name of one of his 12 children. X is what he calls Twitter. It’s also the name of one of his kids.
The press reports that Musk took the name DOGE from a cryptocurrency he pimps. That is partially true. DOGE is also a reference to the head of the Republic of Venice, a thousand year government that started in the 700s. The Doge’s power ranged from The Dude to figurehead, depending on the strength of assorted councils, assemblies, and senates, groupings stuffed with aristocrats and commoners, but not slaves. While these groups could be democratic, the Republic was essentially an oligarchy run by the wealthy. The Republic of Venice, along with the Roman Empire and Plato’s fictional Republic, is a model for tech lords like Musk and his pal Peter Thiel.
As I mentioned, right now DOGE is a fiction, a made up agency with no structure, power, or even an address. We know that it is composed of two people, the dancing monkeys, and its mission, says the monkeys, is to eliminate “government waste,” which translates to whatever the “richest man in the world” and his mouthy side piece consider unnecessary, you know, things like the Consumer Protection Bureau, that keeps people like Musk and his soon to be boss Donald Trump from ripping us off. Also, Social Security, Medicare, Environmental Protection Agency, and whatever else billionaires don’t need or want.
Because DOGE has no official mandate and, if it happens, will be a creation of the presidency, it will have no power other than to suggest things. It will be nothing more than an advisory council, much like the many symbolic gaggles Trump created in his first term, none of which did much of anything other than fail.
The dancing monkeys can make a lot of noise about what they want to kill - and they will - but they won’t be able to do more than that. Trump might take their suggestions but there’s a limit to what he can do, which is mostly fuck with funding and staffing, while trying to persuade Congress to whack off whatever the monkeys want gone.
Will Congress follow Musk? Yeah, some will but not most and that’s a problem in a tight House and a Senate where the Republicans don’t have 60 votes to stop a filibuster. Certainly they can kill the filibuster but for people like Murkowski, McConnell and Thune, the filibuster is a great way to oppose Trump (and assert their power) without putting their heads on the chopping block. Plus, they will be looking two years ahead when there’s a good chance that they lose both chambers, something very common in midterms. The last thing they want is a Democratic majority with no filibuster.
Early on in the first Trump administration, they released a blueprint for “reigning in the administrative state.” It was a wishlist not much different than Project 2025 and the hundreds of conservative “shrink government/eliminate waste” con jobs that they flog every couple years. And what results is trimming, if that. The last Trump blueprint came and went with little change.
Will that happen with DOGE and Project 2025? Can’t say, but if past is a guide we know two things: They will try hard to get what they want and others - of all political views - will fight had to keep what they want. That last bit means that both Republicans and Democrats from farm states will oppose anything that fucks with the Department of Agriculture and farm subsidies. Biden’s infrastructure bill, which greatly benefits red states, will keep them from touching Transportation.
Go through agency by agency and see who benefits geographically and monetarily, and then look at who reps where and what pet projects those reps have going on. Look at how many jobs will be lost in what states and districts thanks to Musk’s plans. Red, blue, coral or magenta, none of that matters when green is at stake. Trump and Musk can threaten Republicans who don’t go along but if some Nebraska House member votes to kill farm subsidies at the request of DOGE voters will punish them.
Don’t be distracted by the dancing monkeys, not when there are real players planning real bad things silently behind the scenes. The monkeys will screech and start throwing shit, because that’s what they do. But you don’t have to be part of their zoo.