The DEI two-step

Trump and Musk are using DEI as an excuse to dismantle the government; they'll blame DEI when everything goes to shit.

In my latest column, I tried to establish the relationship between Trump and Musk’s war on woke and the plundering / enshittification of the federal government. Here’s what I decided: attacking DEI is both excuse and alibi. They’re using DEI to justify a frontal assault on government capacity; when that attack results in systems failing and Americans getting hurt, they will say it happened because incompetent diversity hires were asleep at the wheel — thereby justifying further dismantling of vital programs. Rinse and repeat.

The question is: how long will it work? For the part of Trump’s base that welcomes neoliberalism disguised as anti-wokeness — the tech right and anti-welfare libertarian factions — the party never stops. But for working class Trumpists, many of whom genuinely believe that Trump represents a populist corrective to elite self-dealing… there might be a limit. When will enough be enough? If social security checks stop going out? If veterans’ hospitals are defunded? If the Medicaid portal crashes again (and for longer)? I don’t know. We have to hope that politics is not pure vibes, that people can be made to care and identify the culprits when they get screwed over. It’s a dim hope perhaps, but it’s all we have.

It’s a cliché that Trump cares less about governance than about its performance. For many of his supporters, he offers libidinal satisfactions in place of tangible rewards, and that’s enough. He floats free of reality, buoyed by vibes, with material consequences and politics bewilderingly delinked. The eggs may not be cheaper, but they taste better with a side of Schadenfreude.

The result is that Trump’s sinister maneuvers can seem simultaneously more and less significant than they are; one feels silly for panicking and complacent for assuming the worst won’t happen. But the rubber has not lost all contact with the road. Musk’s campaign against the bureaucracy will have concrete effects on the capacity of the government to do its job, and he knows it. That’s why he, the richest man in the world, has asked Americans to expect “temporary hardship.” Real things do happen. Planes can fall from the sky. The government is a perpetual disappointment machine, except when it’s something worse.

Oh and if you want even more on Trump and Musk from me (and my boys Matt Sitman and John Ganz): check out the latest Know Your Enemy episode on Patreon — it’s behind the paywall, but then, shouldn’t you be subscribed??