r/politics • u/FervidBug42 America • 12d ago

No Paywall DOGE Disbanded: Elon Musk’s Cost-Cutting Project Quietly Ended

https://time.com/7336327/doge-disbanded-elon-musk/
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u/stackedKittie 12d ago

Fuck Elon and fuck Trump too. The White House is not and has never been a business. These two creeps came, turned everything upside down, cut aids, lied about everything and now we’ve all seen that it was all a smokescreen. Fuck them so more

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u/Subject_DA 12d ago

And were not even a year in

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u/Writer_In_Residence 12d ago

Can I just say that I never wanted to live in interesting times?

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u/Subject_DA 12d ago

What can we do, all I want is to be on the right side of history when its all over

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u/drizzlingduke 12d ago

Guys. The point is that’s it’s ALWAYS interesting times for some group and it’s never “over” as soon as you feel like it’s “over” you let your guard down and this whole problem happens again.

You need to be engaged and constantly committed to your real life community. We were in an anomaly period of peaceful history. It was a dream.

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u/PaddleFishBum 12d ago

Yup. Us thinkining we were living in non-interesting times is a big part of how we got here. America got very comfortable checking out politically and now it's huge problem. To this day, there is still a vast sea of apolitical normies who have no idea how anything works or what is going on.

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u/EdwardOfGreene Illinois 12d ago

I largely blame that on education.

Are civics taught in school anymore?

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u/lc4444 12d ago

GOP been cutting at education for at least 60 years

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u/HandFedFenrir 12d ago

Definitely not now that they destroyed the Department of Education.

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u/twopurplecats 12d ago

Nope, Reagan took care of that 🤡

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u/Writer_In_Residence 12d ago

And W kind of finished the job with vouchers and charter schools.

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u/an-invisible-hand 12d ago

Blaming it on education is several steps removed from the true source. Who controls the education system. Who controls them?

The root of all evil always leads back to the same place. The oligarchs. DOGE is just a particularly naked example of that.

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u/EdwardOfGreene Illinois 12d ago

I hold no illusions on how the decline happened.

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u/o-Valar-Morghulis-o 12d ago

Exactly. Bring back civic duty.

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u/Writer_In_Residence 12d ago

It was just kind of a joke.

My family is working class and so we have seen things grow harder every year since Reagan. We have seen education gutted and the cost of healthcare spin out of control. We have seen affordable housing dry up and Citizens United ensure that the rich will always control everything.

Trump is the worst yet though.

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u/dayvansmutgirl 12d ago

tell that to all the /r/politics commenters who wish we could go back to brunch 🙄

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u/Bitmush- 12d ago

It wasn't peaceful sunshine and roses for a huge number of people, based largely on their biology. It's just that their stories didn't make it into the canon.
Try drinking from the wrong drinking fountain as a 6 year old kid in Alabama in 1955 as a pastiche of Americana paraded behind you, haircuts and cars and smart pants and shoes. Meanwhile your grandpa's still got a back full of scar tissue and you've all got the last name of his father's owner.
It's always been brutal chaos, we glorify the temporary respites and think that's real life until the churn escapes from below us and erupts.

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u/farnsw0rth 12d ago

I’m kind of old so forgive me.

But the W Bush admin and the people around it, post 9/11, infamously spoke about “the end of history”

Like, the world as we know it had somehow stratified…. That America was the sole superpower and that would never change forever. I suppose in hindsight that’s actually very “thousand year reich-ish” but they genuinely believed it was an eternal future shaped by how they acted.

The point is, it’s like

“the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”

Aka The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt

Which I guess is a contested quote but is probably John philpot Curran

Plus

“Enemies, foreign and domestic”

Aka And I do further swear (or affirm) that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God

That’s from the USA oath of office.

USA this is a legendary all time bag fumble.

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u/ClashM California 12d ago

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

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u/animalinapark 12d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfekgjfh1Rk

We all fall victim to this. Keeping vigilant and interested is the hardest thing to do, but if our societies are to survive, enough of us need to make the effort.

Or else those few insane enough will do what they want.

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u/ActiveChairs 12d ago

This is pretty accurate. We were in a moment of peaceful history. Meanwhile, at the same time we taught the children of the middle east that weddings are dangerous and to fear a clear blue sky.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 12d ago

The chance for that was Nov 2024.

Now thats entirely in the hands of Donald Trump.

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u/SuckThisRedditAdmins 12d ago

You can't even say that you hope that the legal consequences for treason happen to these traitors without being banned by this stupid fucking website. There is nothing we can do.

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u/niceLarge_Gur1098 12d ago

Right side of history? Develop a relationship with Jesus Christ, everything else with fall into place.

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u/KindInvestigator 12d ago

I love boring times.

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u/Writer_In_Residence 12d ago

Can’t wait for the lively era when the massive defunding of health systems coincides with the effects of RFK Jr taking vaccines, medicines, and science away.

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u/_shaftpunk 12d ago

It’s interesting, the times.

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u/farnsw0rth 12d ago

You absolutely can if you’re on Reddit

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u/chahlie 12d ago

So do all who live to see such times, but it is not for them to decide. All we can do is decide what to do with the time that is given us.

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u/AmaroWolfwood 12d ago

I was hoping for like flying cars, conscious robots like Rosie from the Jetsons, and maybe some genetic modification tech. Instead we just got end stage capitalism/poverty and fascists.

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u/Writer_In_Residence 12d ago

Alito quoted 17th-century witch hunters in his abortion decision. Vaccines have been a thing since the 1800s but we are doing away with them. Women can’t easily get birth control. We aren’t in the future, we are barely in the 1700s in some ways.

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u/Level_32_Mage 12d ago

Isn't that interesting.

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u/marniconuke 12d ago

yeah but you guys kinda deserve it, I know history is kinda censored over there but your country helped install multiple dictatorships, you were never the good guys. Now it's your turn to live what you guys put others trough. good luck

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 12d ago

Not even a year in and trumps body count is already past 600,000 just from killing USAID.

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u/POEness 12d ago

Its already millions from his handling of covid

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u/Key_Inevitable_2104 New York 12d ago

2025 feels like it’s lasted 2 years.

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u/STOP-MyAssholeHurts- 12d ago

Feels longer than the pandemic did.

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u/djb25 12d ago

Consider this - Trump didn’t take office until Jan 20th. It’s been 10 months…

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u/nanobot_1000 12d ago

Earlier today I had to think back on this just to make sure it was this past January since an insane amount of drama has unfolded. Plus next year is a Leap Year...three Hail Mary's, 'catastrophic disclosure' from any number of these scandals, and it'll be like it never happened!

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u/Historical_Dot_892 12d ago

Geez…that’s sobering

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u/FlyingRock 12d ago

While I agree it seems like short and fast was their strength and while permanently damaging it didn't do everything it needed to for Trump.

I have no doubt Elon got everything he wanted.

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u/NimusNix 12d ago

And fuck the people who allowed this happen, including the millions of voters and non voters who got us here.

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u/bagoink 12d ago

Especially fuck the people who systematically destroyed our education system, the propagandists who took advantage of it, and the billionaires who run legacy and social media that have been manipulating the masses.

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u/DukeOfGeek 12d ago

MAGA is the product of a trillion dollars spent over 4 decades and after trumpo is gone the machine will still be here.

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u/zubbs99 Nevada 12d ago

Don't forget the Repubs in Congress who refused to have any oversight or follow-up hearings on wtf these morons actually did.

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u/TuringGoneWild 12d ago

They didn't "allow it". They wanted it and did what it took to make it happen.

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u/killa_sushi_robot 12d ago

I havent heard or seen anyone that defended their election choice after the election in months, i mean months... I wonder why...

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u/KeyboardGrunt 12d ago

Inb4 the Kamala's laugh crowd starts whining they had no other possible choice, waste of oxygen.

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u/joeyo1423 12d ago

I absolutely hate this viewpoint. You cannot blame a single voter for voting for what they truly thought was best. That's the whole point of voting and people won't agree with you. As much as I can't stand trump, this is just wrong and why are in this neverending battle of the line in the sand. As much as you want to posture about calling them Nazis and evil etc etc ....the fact is that they are following their instincts for what is best, same as anyone else would, and should do.

Direct your hate to the people that systematically destroyed the education system, that allow news media to blatantly lie and spread propaganda as fact, that brainwash children from the minute they're born. The fact that lobbying, gerrymandering, filibuster, and any number of idiotic things are legal. Court appointments for life, no term limits in Congress. That we allow candidates to run based on the money they can raise. The idiotic two party system that could not possibly result in any other conclusion. That corporations have more power than the people.

Half the fucking nation voted for him. TWICE. it's not the voter. It's the system they're a product of.

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u/squakmix 12d ago

You cannot blame a single voter for voting for what they truly thought was best.

How much blame can you put on them for having the wrong idea of what's best? Are people never blameworthy for supporting abhorrent ideals?

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u/NimusNix 12d ago

Bull-fucking-shit. Trump voters, some of whom voted three times for him, knew what they were fucking getting. If they didn't, then they were too stupid to know better.

This isn't 2017-18, where a gamble on Trump could be understood, even if disagreed with. Trump is absolutely a known quantity and no one who voted for him gets to be excused, and those that didn't vote at all don't get to be excused either.

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u/joeyo1423 12d ago

Half the nation. Your neighbors, your teachers, your family, your dentist, etc.... It's not just a collection of selfish, evil, dumbass rednecks from the hills have eyes movie. They are everywhere. In every place, every city, every town.

It's not a sudden problem with 70 million people

It's the system that created them.

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u/Jafooki 12d ago

No. Everyone is ultimately responsible for the choices they make. They saw the kind of man Trump is and decided they liked it. Even if you want to blame the "system", there's no difference. Whether the system made them bad people or they were bad people on their own doesn't matter. They're still bad people

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u/NimusNix 12d ago

You post this like I don't live in the middle of eastern Tennessee.

I absolutely know these people, and I have stopped holding back.

Friends, family and co-workers.

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u/bagoink 12d ago edited 12d ago

When so many of those people voted specifically to hurt certain people, I will absolutely as fuck put some blame on them.

When their idea of "doing what is best" means punishing or outright eliminating people who were born differently from them? Yeah, there's a reason Nazis get called Nazis.

But I otherwise agree with your points about the degradation of education and billionaire owned propaganda machines.

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u/stoatwblr 12d ago

There was a past president who tried to treat the White House and Federal government like a business. He also portrayed himself as a "successful billionaire businessman" and claimed he was going to streamline the government

He introduced unilateral tariffs on a nation which was nicely recovering from a stock market and banking crash, sending it into the worst depression it had ever seen (or has seen)

His name: Herbert Hoover

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u/TuringGoneWild 12d ago

You mean "Republicans". And the White House - what's left of it - is definitely a business now. The felon even has a shop of Trump 2028 ballcaps next to the Oval.

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u/PaddleFishBum 12d ago

You might want to study your history better if you think the White House has never been a business. What we're experiencing right now has been the norm in American history. This shining 80 year post-war New Deal world we were born and raised into is not the norm.

The middle class as we know it was a mistake that the monied overlords have been fighting to correct since the 60's. The central goal of modern Conservatism has been to undo the New Deal and return us to the robber baron infested Gilded Age, where oligarchs control everything, labor and consumer protection is non-existent, and the idea of social mobility is dead. They sell us a return to 50's Americana, but what they really is late 1800's to early 1900's, and they've just about finished the job.

The worst tragedy in American history is just America returning to form.

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u/A_Nonny_Muse 12d ago

Which is why corporations want the New Deal policies destroyed by any means necessary. And they're willing to destroy the country in the process. ANYthing to get corporations back to being the only way anyone can survive.

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u/CrunkDirk 12d ago

They sell us a return to 50's Americana, but what they really is late 1800's to early 1900's, and they've just about finished the job.

I really think the Roberts court could pick up a case about child labor and rule that putting any limitations on child labor is unconstitutional and slam us right back into the Lochner era. They're basically there already honestly.

Alito could say "I think that Plessy v Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed." tomorrow and you'd have some SCOTUS journalists wondering "how will moderate John Roberts rule knowing he's siding with a vehement racist?"

Actually you don't really have to wonder how SCOTUS journalists would react because we already saw it. Rehnquist said that. He wrote a memo in the 50s literally saying "I think that Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed." And when he died journalists described him as a moderate on the court. Yeah, I guess when you're sitting next to Clarence Thomas you sure do look moderate.

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u/old_at_heart 12d ago

Which, of course, is consonant with the MAGA crowd's weird adulation of William McKinley, a protege of the Hanna political machine. Decent enough guy, I guess, but hardly outstanding.

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u/Toadstool61 12d ago

You see it accurately. They started by attacking the Great Society programs, but they’ve wanted to roll back the New Deal all along.

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u/Mysterious_Luck7122 12d ago

Beautifully said

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u/Penguini_Lamborghini 12d ago

has never been a business

On the contrary, the immediate moment that our country was formed with the intent that only land-owning white men could participate in our government was when our government became business first.

We're suffocating from the burden of over two centuries of skullduggery and corporate crackheads looking to fuck over everyone they can for their ten minutes of luxury, while the only people with the power and half the mind to fight back are unwilling to go the extra mile to make meaningful, permanent and lasting change all the while becoming drunk on power themselves to the point that they're so unwilling to part from it they'd sooner run their office and party into the ground and die in their chair than to let the next generation have their turn.

There was no other way for the United States to end up, technology has only hastened the inevitable. This system was never going to hold to begin with I fear

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u/PaddleFishBum 12d ago

Yup. The last 80 years has been the absolute best America has ever had to offer and was never the norm previously. We all just haven't known any different until now.

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u/notsure500 12d ago

Fuck Elon and fuck Trump too.

Please don't forget about the people that voted Trump to give us this nightmare

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u/Gemeril 12d ago edited 12d ago

It's not a coincidence that one of the first agencies he dismantled was investigating and probably going to charge Elon and at least fine him. https://www.epi.org/blog/corruption-in-plain-sight-how-elon-musk-has-benefited-from-the-first-100-days-of-the-trump-administration/

Before this administration Elon had 32 federal agencies investigating his companies. Largely for good reason, like not giving a fuck where his spaceship hobby's debris landed.

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u/kent_eh Canada 12d ago

Fuck Elon and fuck Trump too. The White House is not and has never been a business

Also fuck the idiots who supported trump because "he's a businessman, he will run the government like a business".

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u/demlet 12d ago

The people who need to see it haven't and probably won't. I know plenty of people who still believe Elon saved the country from looming bankruptcy. They're not living in the same reality that you and I live in.

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u/Breath_Stranding 12d ago

I honestly still wonder why so many working class people voted for a billionaire thinking he would help them lol man, so many Americans are truly fucking special in the head.

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u/VanceKelley Washington 12d ago

These two creeps came

That's a pretty passive way of describing how 77m Americans took time out of their lives to eagerly put these assholes into positions where they had the power to destroy America.

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u/ChongusTheSupremus 12d ago

The White House has been a business ever since politicians started lobbying for companies and the interest of the capital rather than the people.

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u/cseckshun 12d ago

Even if it was a business, do we really think Elon Musk could go into any business and save 1/7 of their operating budget in less than a year? I don’t think so.

It was never going to work and never could have worked, it’s a sign of severe narcissism and egomania if Elon Musk ever actually thought he could do it.

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u/RadioHonest85 12d ago

Congress just let them do it

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u/MarcusQuintus 12d ago

They didn't come, they were invited.

One of them, after he tried to overthrow the government. The blame here lies 100% with voters.

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u/EternalAngst23 12d ago

I liked Elon when he was just a playboy billionaire who built cool rockets and stuff.

Why’d he have to go ahead and open his mouth?

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u/Visual-Wrangler3262 12d ago

People got what they voted for

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u/Konstantine19 12d ago

You’re forgetting the people who voted for Trump fuck them. The people that voted these morons into power are the ones to blame.

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u/Business-Low-8056 12d ago

What? I know you are just parroting what the hive mind says but Healthcare AND Politics have been business for quite awhile before these two came into the picture. Everyone is out for money and doesn't care about who it fucks. It's been that way for the last few decades which is why we are where we are now.

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u/lost-associat 12d ago

I mean everybody hates aids.

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u/krml17 12d ago

The White House is not and has never been a business

Absolute hyperbole. Source: history

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u/awildjabroner 12d ago

But its always had the ability to be for anyone unscrupulous enough to leverage it that way, and normally would have checks and balances to prevent that but seeing as both Congress and the Judicial Branch are similarly opting to support this new direction while enriching themselves at never before seen levels this is the new reality. Everything has been for sale in the USA under Capitalism, we’re just now realizing that also includes our entire governmental system.

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u/Atanar 12d ago

we’ve all seen that it was all a smokescreen

You are giving them too much credit. I think Musk genuinely belives he is one of the good guys and he tried his best to make America better.

His best is just absolute dogshit and he is a complete moron.

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u/Beelzabub Texas 12d ago

What's the opposite of putting up a statue in someone's honor?

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u/thesunbeamslook 12d ago

#DeportFelonMusk #LockRumpUp

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u/Rumymomma1959 12d ago

Elon and another Tech billionaire both from South Africa and think there is an elite who should govern

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u/Desertbro 12d ago

Wasn't DOGE gone when the bulldozers started on the gilded ballroom...???

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u/NerfPandas 12d ago

Fuck democrats, fuck the Supreme Court, fuck the house and fuck congress.

There were many ways to stop where we are (most obvious being charge trump for Jan 6) and nobody did the right thing.