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Using Government to Destroy Government – The Idolatry of Efficiency [1]

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Date: 2025-02-16

There is a certain OP-ED writer at the Washington Post who writes the same article with the same themes repeatedly. Today’s article’s subject is a variation on the following themes: government is bad, government is dishonest, government is evil, government is inefficient, government is criminal, and government needs radical “reform.”

The article states that the new President is deploying a “SWAT Team” (Department of Government Efficiency) to attack and “reform” government. This SWAT term relies on the right-wing fantasy that the government and its employees are somehow criminals and need to be arrested military style and fired or perhaps imprisoned.

The goal of increased government efficiency has become much like a right-wing religious quest — a powerful idol and the “ultimate concern” of the right. The following false equivalency is used to help justify this pursuit:

The OP-ED writer claims that Obama’s SWAT Team (a bad choice of terminology) of “change-makers working at the highest levels of the federal government” searching for inefficiencies is the same as the new President’s SWAT Team taking “jackhammer” to destroy large portions of government. He claims that no one complained or sued Obama over this effort but they are unfairly attacking the President now. This is another repeating theme that everyone is “unfair” to the President.

But this fails to acknowledge the vast difference in the approaches of the two efforts.

This is the same false equivalency we see almost everywhere in right-wing “reporting”. Firing tens of thousands of civil service personnel and destroying entire agencies such as the Education Department was never the goal or practice of Obama as it is with the current President.

The falsity of the comparison is glaring enough to seem both calculated and malevolent. But it gives the new President cover for what he is doing and that is the goal of the efficiency idolators and theocrats. Based on this false equivalence, the article accuses the President’s critics of being hypocrites.

The idea is that “Obama did it, so the new President can do it” but the “it” is radically different in the two cases. Destroying an institution does not make it more efficient, though it does then cost a great deal less to run thus potentially bringing taxpayer savings.

Fascists such as Mussolini and Hitler loved the idea of government efficiency but there is conflicting evidence as to whether they made the trains run on time when they came to power.

The fact remains that efficiency was a central goal for fascists and was a big part of their propaganda effort. It is used in a similar way by the President and his tech-savvy, billionaire acolytes.

But with the destruction of government agencies, we will never know if the Department of Government Efficiency changes made things more efficient since the President is also attacking and firing those in the agencies that make such determinations.

This brings us to another feature of right-wing sophistry present in the article – using government to destroy government.

The author states (behind a paywall) that :

“Last March, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in which it estimated that the federal government had spent a whopping $236 billion on “improper payments” during the previous fiscal year, including $175 billion in payments to deceased individuals or those no longer eligible for government programs, and $44.6 billion in “unknown payments” — meaning the government does not know where the money went.”

Now this author has very little trust in the government to do anything right. Why would he trust such a report? His whole point is that the government is corrupt and cannot be trusted. But he mysteriously appears to believe what the government says when it says something critical of the government.

If the government is as corrupt as he claims, such a report would never have been written, or it would have been modified to take out or soften the criticisms in the report.

His new trust in government is admirable though his laser focus is on only what is wrong with government. He appears to have had a temporary revelation about the trustworthiness and fairness of government which quickly disappears in the remainder of the article.

But he is using the credibility of government reports to doubt the trustworthiness of government. This seems either confused or dishonest (the reader can decide which).

His use of government corruption to justify destroying government has another dimension. The new President has fired eight inspector generals. These are the watchdogs who report on government waste and corruption. Not one right-wing commentator that I am aware including this OP-ED author has criticized this action despite their objections to government waste and dishonesty. The act of making the government corrupt by firing inspectors can then be used to later justify cutting government further.

So, those loudly criticizing government fraud are making it all but impossible to root out government fraud. This seems to indicate that they in fact care little about government fraud and waste but are just using it as an excuse to destroy the government and its regulatory bodies from within.

Corporations and their stockholders have complained bitterly about government regulation for decades. This crusade for efficiency is their golden chance to avoid liability and the fear of criminal or civil changes when they break the law or harm the public.

Lastly, the author in his final summation pretends to be the friend of the innocent, over-burdened working person as he states “every dollar the federal government wastes comes from the sweat and toil of hardworking Americans — a waitress, a cop, a sanitation worker, a bus driver…”

This pretense comes with the knowledge that the President’s 2017 Tax Cuts Helped the Super-rich Pay Lower Rates Than the Bottom 50 Percent of Taxpayers. And extending and increasing this tax-giveaway to the wealthy at the end of 2025 is a top priority of the right-wing ruling class. Almost all the savings in efficiency will likely go directly into their pockets as happened in 2017. The author has to know that the poor and middle class will receive few benefits from the savings of downsized government.

The claimed high-minded goals of efficiency when examined closely look more and more like the goals of a kleptocratic regime using the outrage and resentment of the working class towards government to land themselves another huge payday.

Government efficiency is a false idol that is being offered to distract people from the manipulation of the tax system by the wealthy to add to their already overflowing coffers.

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