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Muskism: The Church of DOGE and the Gospel of Done Enough [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-23
Introduction
In a move equal parts strategic retreat and divine ascension, Elon Musk has announced that he is stepping back from political spending and departing from DOGE—the shadow cabinet boondoggle he helped conjure to reform, rewrite, and reimagine the American federal government. To hear him tell it, this is not merely a break from politics. No, it is a metaphysical transition. ‘It’s like Buddhism without Buddha,’ Musk explained, unintentionally casting himself as both a spiritual founder and a cosmic absentee landlord.
Musk’s exit is the ultimate act of Muskism: proclaim omnipotence, spark chaos, and walk away before anyone tallies the cost. It’s a pattern familiar to Tesla boardrooms, SpaceX engineers, and anyone who’s ever bought a Cybertruck expecting doors that work. Now, the federal government has been the latest testbed—and DOGE, his experimental religion of austerity, ego, and unauthorized executive decision-making, becomes the unwitting shrine.
The Sacred Architecture of DOGE
DOGE—officially ‘The Department of Government Efficiency,’ unofficially ‘The Department of Government Extortion’—was Musk’s brainchild. Formed without Congressional authorization, absent statutory legitimacy, and operating outside every clause of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, it has all the makings of a Silicon Valley startup minus the IPO and with way more surveillance.
As chronicled in DOGE: Democracy Optional, Grift Expected, its purpose was clear: privatize public functions, sidestep oversight, and replace bureaucrats with tech bros. Its mission statement was etched somewhere between a spreadsheet and a manifesto: do more with less until less becomes everything.
The Gospel According to MAGAnomics
To understand the gravity of Musk’s retreat, one must revisit the MAGAnomic scripture. In MAGAnomics: Spit-up Economics with a Golden Crib, we witnessed how tariffs, deregulation, and fiscal wizardry turned America into a trickle-down experiment on a national scale. Musk’s DOGE wasn’t a departure from this gospel—it was the apotheosis. He was the high priest of privatization, the technocrat with a messiah complex, preaching that salvation lies not in ballots but in balance sheets.
Under Musk’s influence, DOGE outsourced agency reviews to algorithms, replaced policy staff with procurement bots, and declared that accountability would henceforth be measured in ‘efficiency-adjusted deliverables.’ What this meant in practice was a hiring freeze, followed by a firing festival, followed by a drone-delivered press release about how morale had improved 300%.
Holy Contradictions: Musk’s Revelations
Every great religion needs its paradoxes. For Muskism, it was this: the man who decried government spending on the poor was the same man whose companies floated on federal contracts. While DOGE slashed public housing and gutted consumer protections, Musk’s companies quietly invoiced NASA, the Pentagon, and local municipalities for billions. It was civic cannibalism at its most lucrative.
Like all prophets of contradiction, Musk never explained. He simply tweeted. If DOGE laid off 400 workers at the Department of Education that same day, he’d post a meme of a cyborg holding a Constitution with the caption: ‘Government 2.0. Streamlined. Sanctioned. Sanitized.’
Musk’s Exit Sermon: ‘I’ve Done Enough’
Now, like any cult leader sensing the heat from the FTC or karma, Musk has declared that he’s stepping away. ‘I think I’ve done enough,’ he told Politico. That is precisely what Caesar said after crossing the Rubicon, Napoleon said after taking Moscow, and your uncle says every Thanksgiving after setting the fryer on fire. As always, ‘enough’ depends on whether you’re counting in dollars, disasters, or disillusionment.
His announcement was met with a mix of silence and confusion, and a few DOGE staffers were quietly reassigned to ‘off-budget innovation roles,’ otherwise known as indefinite unpaid leave. The public, meanwhile, did not cheer. They checked their insurance deductibles, gas prices, and prescription costs and noticed nothing had changed, except that the self-proclaimed god had ghosted them.
Moral Inversion as a Spiritual Strategy
Musk’s withdrawal from political life is the equivalent of Nero claiming he’s quitting music. It’s a public statement dressed as humility, designed to obscure the ash piles smoldering in his wake. He didn’t rebuild Rome; he reorganized its ledgers, fired the sanitation workers, and replaced city maps with QR codes linked to a paywall. Then he left.
The Conversion of Congress
As DOGE expanded, the halls of Congress grew quieter. Republican lawmakers, once allergic to federal overreach, embraced Musk’s efficiency crusade like pilgrims at a revival. Committees that once grilled agency heads now deferred to DOGE memos typed in Comic Sans. House Freedom Caucus members even replaced the American eagle on their lapel pins with tiny silver Xs—Elon’s other favorite brand.
In hearings, skeptical Democrats asked why DOGE hadn’t been authorized through regular order. The Republican response was swift: ‘Because Elon knows better.’ Some began referring to the Federal Register as the ‘Muskian Scrolls’ and proposed naming post offices after his tweets. Opposition grew fainter than a Bluetooth signal in a lead-lined basement.
When the Church Reached the Congregation
Meanwhile, the public began noticing—not in grand gestures but in paperwork. Birth certificates took four weeks longer to arrive. Social Security checks developed a three-click verification system managed by a Nevada-based subcontractor, OptimizedPolicy LLC. IRS letters began arriving with typos and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. A woman in Duluth reported that a DOGE portal confused her tax filing with a TikTok video and flagged it for ‘memetic review.’
Those most vulnerable felt the gospel’s reach first. Veterans saw benefits delayed under the guise of ‘blockchain auditing.’ Rural hospitals lost grants after DOGE’s cost-efficiency algorithm deemed life-saving care ’a low-return community investment.’
The Followers Left Behind
After Musk’s departure, DOGE was a church without a preacher, a bureaucracy without an organ grinder. Yet it continued operating—because chaos, like code, doesn’t delete itself. Mid-level appointees who worshipped at the altar of optimization stayed on, evangelizing with PowerPoint decks and zero empathy.
DOGE’s unofficial successor, a former management consultant named Beck, who once suggested replacing the Postal Service with drones disguised as bald eagles, promised reforms. None came. Instead, he launched a brand, EfficienC, selling mugs with the slogan: ‘Don’t ask what government can do for you. Ask how cheaply it can be outsourced.’
The Prophets of Accountability
Eventually, watchdogs stirred. Journalists broke stories. Congressional reports leaked. Civil service unions pushed back. Lawsuits sprouted like mushrooms in a rotting orchard of ‘innovations.’ Federal judges, in robes and showing rising irritation, ruled DOGE’s decisions unlawful, illegitimate, and, in one memorable dissent, ‘the bastard offspring of libertarian fan fiction and a late-stage venture capital pitch deck.’
But these legal victories were reactive, not structural. DOGE had already embedded itself into the operating system of governance, an unauthorized patch corrupting trust byte by byte. This means we’re patching symptoms, not fixing causes. DOGE lives in the legal gray. Until we build guardrails, not just speed bumps, it will continue unchecked.
Conclusion: Faith, Fraud, and the Gospel of Exit
In the end, DOGE didn’t deliver government efficiency. It delivered privatized dysfunction and spiritualized bureaucracy. Musk’s genius wasn’t in fixing the government but in convincing people that the government should be broken and monetizing the mess.
He left as he entered—theatrically. ‘Buddhism without Buddha’ is not humility—it’s abdication dressed as enlightenment. And like all personality cults, Muskism leaves behind only two kinds of followers: the ones still praising the prophet and cleaning up after him.
In the age of Refund Patriotism and MAGAnomic miracles, perhaps the greatest irony is this: the messiah of modernization needed to be saved from his movement. But as DOGE’s gospel spreads—one bad app at a time—we’re left with a nation still waiting for delivery. And no, there’s no tracking number.
~Dunneagin~
P.S. A Word to Readers Who Wonder Why This Isn’t on a Newsstand Near You…
Dear Reader(s),
If you’re wondering why essays like this haven’t shown up in The Atlantic, Newsweek, or The New York Times, the answer isn’t about polish—it’s about pressure—the pressure to keep things civil, corporate, and comfortably controversial. The kind of satire I write under the Dunneagin banner doesn’t just poke fun; it pokes holes in power. And that makes editors nervous.
My brand of satire isn’t sanitized humor for donor galas. It’s a scalpel, not a spoon.
Satire—real satire—doesn’t cuddle the comfortable. It confronts the average clickbait reader. And sometimes, that means doing it without their permission…or on their preferred platforms.
So, if you’re here, reading this, thank you. You’re part of a community that doesn’t flinch from the truth, even when it’s dressed in absurdity.
~ Dunneagin~
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