Who’s Talking? Can We Talk or Not?
A few months into the new administration, I find myself musing on conversation and ways we humans have of either talking with or at each other. Ideas started percolating when I joined a series of community-based conversations. And I wondered what happens when we quit making the effort to try to “read” and understand, mirror, respond to each other?
Conversation vs. Monologue and Performance
Conversation is, by definition, speaking together, talking, listening, engaging, exchanging, sharing, comparing POVs, adjusting to try to find common ground or not. As per Wikipedia, this is a learned skill, not inborn. “Development of conversational skills and etiquette is an important part of socialization.” But right now, we hear more Monologue and Performance. Think the President’s meandering, “weaving,” talks, apparently free-associating whatever pops into his head. Buddhists call “monkey mind” the unfocused inner chatter that fills all our heads with anxieties, daydreams, and tangents. Perhaps, in these unsettled times, devotees recognize and resonate. But every action has a reaction, and enabler Congressmen and Senators have faced pushback at town hall meetings with constituents. Trying to explain and defend the massive and often incoherent cuts, they have been booed and shouted down by angry voters even in very red districts of Georgia, Texas, North Carolina. Rather than listening and trying to understand and engage with swelling dissatisfaction, recipients/targets have called the behavior “rude.” Oh, really?! Isn’t give-and-take the way democracies are supposed to work? And then there are the claims Democrats “infiltrated” meetings. As if these folks only represent “their” voters, who don’t have the capacity to get angry on their own. Advice from GOP leadership: stop holding town hall meetings. So, shut down any attempts at conversation and feedback. This reads like shortsighted denial and avoidance that leaves smoldering anger unaddressed. Whatever happened to “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”?
Hijacking the Country
So, consider the country hijacked. Or in a repetitive slow-motion car crash (as per film director James Cameron, while planning to leave). Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic said on NPR’s Fresh Air (Feb. 19, 2025) that this is how democracies fail these days “through attacks on institutions coming from within.” She identifies what we’re seeing as regime change. That’s “the partly forcible or coercive replacement of one government regime with another… replac[ing] all or part of the state’s most critical leadership system, administrative apparatus, or bureaucracy.” (Wikipedia). Strategies include “chaos censorship,” “overwhelming actual information with disinformation and noise, blurring moral lines and confusing people to the point where it becomes difficult to discern truth from falsehood. Instead of directly suppressing information…[and] those who control the chaos can effectively manipulate public opinion and sow discord.” (AI Summary). George Orwell would recognize “doublespeak,” using “language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words.” (Wikipedia). There is “determination to deprive their citizens of any real influence or public voice, to push back against all forms of transparency or accountability, and to repress anyone, at home or abroad, who challenges them.” (Applebaum. Autocracy, Inc. Doubleday. 2024).
Shadow Play
An old song keeps coming to mind: “It’s only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sky, but it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me.” (Harold Arlen melody. Yip Harburg and Billy Rose lyrics). Popular during WWII, when folks needed to believe/hope they could make it through to a post-war future. These days, MAGA faithful, having guzzled the Kool-Aid, may believe that, with shadow play, they’re finally onto the “real thing.” Tear down “deep state” bureaucracy and the country will rise like a phoenix into a “great” future. Meanwhile, the rest of us stand horrified at the chaos and cruelty, anxious, worried, attuned to the gaps between “alternate truths” presented without adequate or even any explanation and the ongoing destruction/disruption to the nation and our standing in the world. And this all happening with essentially no oversight. And we have few official resources to resist. The Scofflaw administration resists or refuses to comply with federal judicial rulings that don’t go its way and threatens to impeach judges who issue such rulings.
Who’s Talking?
On Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, he and Chris Hayes of MSNBC agreed the country is now being run by trolls. “The two most powerful men in the world are obsessed with attracting attention.” And negative attention, throwing the country into fear and anxiety just because they can, is even better. So, we find ourselves caught in a “folie a deux,” pairing of two showmen, both adept at hyping their brands but with erratic records in running their companies (Paul Klein. Not a Founder, Not a Leader. Forbes. March 8, 2025). They “thrive on disruption and spectacle, and, in Trump’s case, “excel at marketing, with an instinctive ability to tap into cultural and consumer sentiment.” Both have histories of “over promising, but underdelivering.” First day in office, inflation will end, prices will come down. Oh, really?! Trump has “little patience for operational complexity, preferring quick wins over long-term strategic planning, [and] whiplash management, improvising as he goes, rather than data driven decision making, disciplined execution, or talent retention.” Musk seems to operate like a sole proprietor, spreading himself thin across multiple ventures, and pushing fast-track production and development schedules that often fail to materialize. Sci Fi dreams of Mission to Mars by 2030! Fallout: multiple recalls, fatal accidents with self-driving system, explosion of two SpaceX rockets. “Rockets are hard,” he said in an interview. No kidding. And when his split attention wanes, so it seems do his companies. Have to wonder what his investors are thinking in continuing to back him. Seems some are starting to reconsider. (Victor Tangermann. One of Tesla’s Biggest Supporters is Running Out of Patience. Futurism. March 12, 2025; Yasmeen Hamadeh. Big-Shot Tesla Investor Begs Musk to Drop Out as CEO. Ross Gerber, an investor involved with Tesla for over a decade, pleaded for Musk to either step down as CEO or forgo government instead. (Daily Beast. March 18, 2025).
Running Government Like Silicon Valley?
We’ve long heard calls to “run government like a business.” This misses the point that government is not a business; it does things business would not do. And what we’re seeing is a Silicon Valley business model, rather than a regular business model. “The federal government built Silicon Valley, a fact many of its entrepreneurs and legends — basking in the reflection of their self-glorification — choose to ignore, or fail to understand.” (Margaret O’Mara. The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. 2019; Stephen Mihm. How the Department of Defense Bankrolled Silicon Valley. NY Times. July 2019). But don’t try to tell Musk and other tech moguls, who like to view themselves as self-made, though many had the jumpstart of family money.
Whose Opinions Count
Venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who goes way back, says Musk doesn’t value anyone else’s opinion, always thinks he knows better/best, even in unfamiliar territory (Barbara Kollmeyer. LinkedIn co-founder has known Elon Musk for years. Here’s what he says Americans don’t understand about the Tesla CEO. MarketWatch. March 11, 2025). And tech “ignorance or arrogance [comes with a] deeply embedded notion…that because government is not market-driven ‘it is, by definition, stodgy and inefficient and wasteful and corrupt.’ They think that people working in government “aren’t very smart. The smart people all go to work in business.” (Mark Z. Barabak. Commentary: Elon Musk brought a Silicon Valley mindset to Trump’ s Washington. It’s been a disaster. LA Times. March 16, 2025). If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? So much for concepts of public service and the dedicated public servants I have worked with. So, off with their heads, along with their expertise? Projections: this presidency “offers a case study in the risks of founder-style leadership without operational discipline. When this happens even the best businesses aren’t sustainable over time. In politics, it’s safe to say that failure is inevitable—for him and for the country.” (Klein). Recent troubles and investor impatience around Musk’s Tesla brand suggest potential for a similar outcome.
Adolescent Cruelty/No Adult Supervision/Sleeping in the Office
There’s a clueless/heartless/cruel adolescent-boy edge to the entire project. This is exemplified by the boss/non-boss (depending on who’s talking). The DOGE model reads like a larger version of “what he did at Twitter” — an initial step was firing 80% of the workforce— and attempting to port it over to the federal government.” But the federal government “is not a small- to medium-sized, unprofitable social media company. And the jury is still out on whether that was actually an effective way to manage Twitter.” (O’Mara). Yet the young minions have been unleashed to take their cyber hatchets to the system. Don’t call what they’re doing actual audits. “It’s…crack[ing] systems open without full understanding.” (Vittoria Elliott. ‘It’s a Heist’: Real Federal Auditors Are Horrified by DOGE. Wired. March 18, 2025. ). Off hours, these guys sleep in the office. (Noor Al-Sibai. You Can See When Elon Musk Actually Sleeps by Analyzing His Tweets, and It’s Terrifying. Futurism. March 2, 2025; Dylan Scott. Elon Musk is trying to make sleep deprivation cool again. Vox. Feb. 24, 2025). Installation of sleep “pods” (i.e., sofa beds) enables work around the clock. And seems the role model does not exert anything resembling “adult supervision.” Witness his dance with chain saw, posting of poop emojis, and his tasteless, puerile penis, boob and Nazi jokes. And there are the contradictory claims the crew works 120 hours a week, and thus “beats” their opponents, meaning federal workers/public servants who work “only” 40-hour weeks. But then he moved in a TV and video games for the troops, after earlier inflating his own scores. And he himself must take some time for other activities, since he has now reportedly fathered his 14th child. Does this represents a new, revised, definition of “family values”?
Follow the Money
Beyond wear and tear to the nation, society, the world, what price tag are we paying for all this in monetary terms? Before this administration took office, I recall floating of ideas that the reviewers (or whatever they’re called) would be unpaid, voluntary, positions for MBAs and techies. Musk claimed, “compensation would be zero.” But I was always skeptical and started wondering very early how these folks are being paid—and how much. Turns out Some DOGE Staffers Are Drawing Six-Figure Government Salaries (Kate Knibbs. Wired. March 4, 2025). And these “salaries…sometimes [come] from the very agencies they are cutting.” Oh, the irony!
And some DOGers are also double-dipping, working other jobs at the same time, while funding for the DOGE push has now grown to around $40M. Does this include ordering Ikea furniture to furnish the DOGE dorm? Musk himself has, since 2008, been awarded $38B in US government contracts. At any other time, this would be considered conflict of interest. But I guess ethics rules have changed too.
Taking Consequences/Free Speech
Amazing, but it seems possible the perpetrators assumed they could pull off their agenda without themselves suffering any consequences. The President, with his long Teflon history, might just slip by for now. But Musk attracts growing public ire. Tesla Takedown, picketing, vandalizing, sabotaging vehicles, dealerships, and charging stations is ramping up here and in Europe. Could this be a Tea Party moment from the opposite direction? And now, he’s trying to doublespeak/spin the situation: Elon Musk shocked by hatred against him, Tesla. (Theo Burman. Newsweek. March 19, 2025). Speaking with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Musk said he found the backlash against Tesla “shocking,” and added: “I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things.” He continued: “It’s really come as quite a shock to me, this violence from the left. I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring, and yet they’re burning down cars, and firing bullets into dealerships.” But don’t take his empathy comment as positive. He told podcaster Joe Rogan, “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit … [T]hey’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.” (Heather Digby Parton. One question remains: What is the true motivation behind Musk’s DOGE project? Salon. March 3, 2025). Really? And here I consider empathy our greatest superpower, what connects us, allows us to build community. Now, as with the town hall meetings, there are claims “radical left lunatics…illegally and collusively boycott Tesla.” Trump has now bought a brand-new Tesla (or was it two?) and parked it/them in the WH driveway. Can we expect a TV commercial? Question: did Trump use his money or ours? And now, Republicans are trying to sic federal law enforcement on Elon Musk’s critics (Clarissa-Jan Lim. March 13, 2025; Ryan Bort. Trump Cries for Elon, Blames ‘Illegal” Liberal Boycott for Tanking Tesla. Rolling Stone. March 11, 2025). And Musk himself has claimed, without evidence, that “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world” after running a segment on dismantling of USAID, and that “they deserve a long prison sentence.” (David Keating. When free speech champion Elon Musk threatens speech, we should take it seriously | Opinion. USA Today. March 20, 2025). So much for the First Amendment.
The Screaming Absurdity of It All
So, we find ourselves in a doublespeak reality TV show we don’t want to watch. I think of Robert
Burns on the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us. The weak spot in the ongoing scenario is that this show is emceed by two guys incapable of doing that and who, with notoriously thin skins, “can dish it out, but can’t take it.” Remember Musk’s cage-fight challenge to Zuckerberg but then backing out and his offer to go on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart but then backing out. And in the midst of constitutional crisis, “we need a reminder of who we are up against…when you watch Elon Musk brandish a chainsaw…you can be left with only one conclusion: This is deeply, radically, uniquely uncool. Perhaps even the most uncool period of American history there’s ever been.” And “Never before have the forces of cringe wielded such power, never has their shlock been so validated, and never have more people been laughing at their [own] bad jokes.” (Luke Winkie. America Is Under Siege by a Surprising Force: Losers. Slate. March10, 2025. The forces of cringe are strangling this country.). So, comedians and lates-night hosts do great public service in ridiculing and calling out the inane and ridiculous. And who says AI doesn’t has a sense of humor? Musk’s own Grok3 AI crunched the data and says he should die, and the President is a Russian agent. (Kelsey Piper. The AI that apparently wants Elon Musk to die. X wanted Grok to tell it straight. They didn’t like the result. Vox. Feb. 28, 2025). Grok also determined the economy did better under Democrats.
Message of Hope
A French politician, berated for suggesting his country take back the Statue of Liberty (a la making Canada the 51st state), sent a message on Musk’s X (formerly Twitter): Dear Americans, since the White House press secretary is attacking me today, I wanted to tell this: “We all in Europe love this nation to which we know we owe so much. It will rise again. You will rise again. We are counting on you.” Amen.