Two Dimensional Donny
Sunday 2 March 2025
Following the President’s inauguration, my head has not stopped spinning. The blogs I’ve written since couldn’t keep pace with the non-stop news cycle coming from the White House. It’s all too much, too fast, and makes me consider the merits of being disconnected and uninformed.
Let’s be clear. DOGE is no longer the Department of Government Efficiency. A better name is DOGC (the Department of Government Cuts). For many, “cuts” equate to “efficiency,” but this is incorrect. Would you unplug your refrigerator to save on your next electric bill? You may save some money on electricity, but you lose even more in spoiled food. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the President and Musk are doing in the name of efficiency. The joy of seeing mass terminations of civil servants is welcomed by Trump supporters until they learn a contract they had was axed because of those terminations.
While I give President Trump credit for moving quickly and decisively in keeping campaign promises, it’s beginning to feel like we’re on board a train that is traveling at many times its recommended speed. I see bags about to fall from luggage racks and wonder when the train will follow. Radical change is needed in Washington, but what the President and Mr. Musk are doing is reckless and, I believe, will cost us dearly. The stock market’s steady decline and weak GDP numbers are clear signs of the unease caused by the Trump administration’s cut-first-and-ask-questions-later approach.
What Trump and Musk are doing is equivalent to cutting off a leg to get a head start on a new diet. Playing to an enthusiastic base, the President and Mr. Musk have taken a decidedly unnuanced approach to making Washington efficient. This is not a pivoting of Washington but a reshaping of it based on the wants of a single man, Donald Trump, whose mastery of government requires no debate or legislative involvement.
When it came to building a rocket, Musk claims to have read everything he could find on the subject. But he hasn’t adhered to this principle with DOGE and has made the mistake of assuming he knows what he's not taken the time to learn. Musk doesn’t seem to understand that government agencies, and the civil servants within, are like dominos; you knock one over, and many more follow—in and outside the government. Because he hasn’t looked ahead, Musk can’t see that the bridge he’s on is falling out from under him.
Outright fraud should be dealt with as swiftly as possible. But cutting government agencies wholesale—without assessing what an agency does—is to confuse political rhetoric with political reality. This is suicide. It’s hard to comprehend how the genius Musk can be so shortsighted. His cheerful willingness belies the damage he’s doing to the country. This is the United States of America, not Twitter. But it’s hard to tell if Musk sees any difference. I wonder if he realizes that as soon as the economy begins to retreat, he will be the one blamed by the President. Republicans and Democrats alike will pile on. I wonder if he’s given any consideration to the millions of nerves he’s rattled—at home and abroad—to the impact it will have on his businesses, and his personal safety or that of his big family. Musk seems oblivious to the dangerous game he’s playing.
At his recent news conference, standing alongside the seated President, I was impressed by the details Musk offered. He gave specific examples of some of the fraud that’s been found and stopped and talked about getting to the bottom of Treasury’s broken payment system, where the most taxpayer money is lost. But the fact that Musk sees X and Doge.gov—which is a copy-paste of @DOGE on X—as a legitimate means for keeping the public informed, what Musk calls “maximally transparent,” undermines the importance of this work. Maybe a genius can piece together all of DOGE’s threads; however, getting to the essence of what’s being cut, who will be impacted, and the near and long-term savings is nearly impossible.
Meanwhile, the President’s concern for the thousands who died in Ukraine and Russia stands in contrast to his needless ridicule of thousands of civil servants being fired around the country. For Trump, empathy is for losers. He sees his indifference to the suffering of others as an asset. His concern for the peoples of Ukraine and Russia is feigned and part of the President’s showmanship—an effort to be nominated for the Nobel Prize. I believe Macron and/or Starmer have already put this on the table. For a consciousness fueled by fairy dust, it may be the only means for separating Trump from his embrace of Putin. At home, let’s remind the President that without the Nobel Prize, there is no Mount Rushmore.
For anyone who hasn’t read a book on history in the past forty years, grasping the complex and tragic story of Ukraine can be difficult. Deal-making is easier for a person who understands what makes for good TV but whose vision is limited to what matters to him and follows no path beyond his term. Turning lies into facts comes easier, but it’s no future for the country he claims to love. In John 8, Jesus compares lying to the devil. If we want to understand Trump, we should listen to Jesus.
Trump’s worst habits and mind-boggling ignorance were dampened during his first term thanks to a few informed and rational people who got in the way. Now, surrounded by true believers, Trump’s worst instincts are playing in fast-forward due to a highly efficient and morally-deficient entrepreneur named Elon Musk, who has graduated from kick-ass tech leader, to ass, to asshole. Cutting government without regard for mission or people takes an ass. But to enjoy doing it takes an asshole. For this reason, I believe DOGE’s Elon Musk is an asshole. My only defense for Musk is that he suffers from Asperger’s (high-functioning autism). For many with this condition, finding empathy or even understanding it is hard. We should see Musk’s brain as Swiss cheese—dense in parts but otherwise filled with holes. Musk gets rockets. Musk doesn’t get people.
For Trump and Musk, nobody is expected to remember yesterday or care about tomorrow. Of course, this is not the case, as we see the world scrambling to form new alliances. The same cut-first-and-ask-questions-later template applied to streamlining Washington’s bureaucracy is being used on the world stage. But the possible consequences of these actions don’t seem to register with the President. He doesn’t seem to realize that foreigners think differently than his diehard followers. They’re not looking for MAGA greatness, just stability, happiness, and a reason to plan for a future worth living.
The President speaks of wielding the power of the United States to make it great again but seems to have little understanding of the true source of this power. While military and economic strength help, the true source of U.S. greatness is its credibility as an honest broker on the world stage. It has taken the United States 235 years to build this credibility. In the unnuanced mind of President Donald J. Trump, this is on the chopping block too.
So, when does the United States of America stop being the United States of America? This starts, in my humble opinion, when the Constitution and the rule of law are ignored. While Trump is not the first President to cross this line, he’s the first to do so openly and repeatedly. His vision of America is nothing like Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land. But perhaps closer to the State Anthem of the Soviet Union.
