Musk and Trump Are Cutting Popular Programs. That's Deliberate.

[Ocelot II]

2. I had considered this possibility, but I don't buy it.

Musk and especially Trump are not long-term strategic thinkers and they don't really care about ideology, although they are happy to follow along with Project 2025 as long as it gets them what they want. And what they want is money and personal dominance. Musk talks like an anti-government ideologue but he acts like the shitty boss of a big corporation who wants to make as much money as possible while not having to pay people. He expects to use AI (developed and owned by him but paid for by us) to operate the government. Of course he doesn't care about clean air and water or feeding poor children; that's just collateral damage - but he'll have his pimply-faced teenaged Muskenjugend create AI systems that operate the government agencies he deems necessary and that he can get paid for running. Trump, on the other hand, doesn't care about any of it as long as he can play golf and grift off his fan base and have parades in his honor and excite his base by hating on immigrants and trans people. If they were serious about getting the masses to hate government over the long term they wouldn't be cutting everything all at once and pissing off millions of people who have suddenly lost their jobs or their farms or their health care or who can't afford groceries or get construction work done or are afraid to fly because there aren't enough air traffic controllers or visit national parks because nobody is maintaining them.