(C) Common Dreams
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DOGE Is the Deep State [1]
['Brian Barrett', 'Jake Lahut', 'Vittoria Elliott', 'Katie Drummond', 'Sheon Han', 'Leah Feiger', 'Dan Gearino', 'Caroline Haskins', 'Eric Morgan', 'Dhruv Mehrotra']
Date: 2025-03-06 19:11:41.251000+00:00
The “deep state” is a top-tier conservative bogeyman, right up there with DEI and George Soros. But it seems fair to ask: If a bunch of shadowy, unelected figures, many with shared business interests and connections, took over government functions at the highest levels and directly contravened the will of Congress, what might you call that? How about … DOGE?
After years of alarm over unelected bureaucrats pulling the strings, what better example can you find than this moment the US government is in? DOGE is the thing it claims to fear the most. Elon Musk is the problem he purportedly wants to solve.
Secretive? The so-called Department of Government Efficiency has never provided an org chart, did not have a publicly documented leader until last week, and refused to reveal the identities of its young staffers in early internal meetings. Check.
Unelected? Self-evidently so. Check.
A web of connected interests outside of government? DOGE is inarguably the Elon Musk extended universe. Current and former employees from X, SpaceX, the Boring Company, and Tesla currently control or are deeply embedded in countless government agencies, including the ones they’re ostensibly regulated by. (How many of them? Hard to say exactly, so score another point for “secretive.”) In fairness, some DOGE staffers appear to have no prior affiliation beyond an apparent zeal for dismantling the US government. But otherwise … Check.
And this is all in service of an agenda set not by Congress but by the world’s richest man. Look no further than DOGE’s deep freeze of the legally mandated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the unilateral canceling of around 10,000 humanitarian aid contracts apportioned by Congress, or the firing of thousands of probationary workers and others—without apparent cause—for evidence that it is executing an agenda outside of any legislative framework. Check, check, check.
It’s true that “deep state” is a tricky term to pin down, largely because it’s so often used as shorthand for “things Glenn Beck doesn’t like.” Let’s look, then, at how Elon Musk defines it.
“If there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have,” Musk said at a recent Oval Office visit. And then, moments later: “We have this unelected, fourth unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has, in a lot of ways, currently more power than any elected representative. This is … This is not something that people want, and it does not match the will of the people.”
Sounds bad. Also sounds like DOGE. This is the same unelected Elon Musk that met yesterday with GOP senators and representatives desperate for a say in where the DOGE wrecking ball heads next. Musk reportedly claimed that agency heads were the ones doing the firing, not DOGE. But who do you think installed most of those leaders? Who told them to cut until they hit bone? It was a bald demonstration of power. Musk has it. Elected representatives do not. DOGE is the bureaucracy it came to destroy.
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[1] Url:
https://www.wired.com/story/doge-is-the-deep-state/
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