THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT MAGA VOTED FOR

Quoting a story from Wired, Digby writes:

Is this what MAGA voted for?

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college....

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24 ... —who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project....

Wired has now reported the names and backgrounds of all these young fellows. One has recently graduated from high school, three more were interns at X and SpaceX and another worked for an AI firm and wrote a Substack extolling the virtues of Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth. One of them was a senior at Harvard as of last September and has his own AI startup.

These are the people who’ve been given access to classified materials, social security numbers, health records and banking information of American citizens, businesses and charities with an apparent mandate to decide which ones are waste and fraud.

Why would any of this bother MAGA voters?

I know what you're thinking: Didn't they vote for Trump because of the price of eggs? How does any of this lower egg prices? But that's not why MAGA voters voted for Trump -- it's why non-MAGA swing voters chose Trump, but it wasn't the motivation for Trump's base. The majority of Trump voters are dyed-in-the-wool Trumpers or dyed-in-the-wool Republicans with Fox News brain poisoning, but they weren't enough to give Trump the win. Price-of-eggs swing voters put Trump over the top, but they were a smaller percentage of his electorate.

What did Trump/GOP base voters want? They wanted what they always want: to own the libs. They want us howling in anger and giving up in despair. They want Republicans to smite us and smite any group identified with us (people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, government employees, academics, entertainers, and so on). They want to see evidence that Democrats and liberals will very literally be eliminated from public life -- from all positions of power and influence in government, the media, education, entertainment, and business -- if not from America altogether.

The QAnon fans among them probably believe that this is "the Storm" -- the glorious moment Q promised them, a moment when everyone they hate is crushed.

They want us destroyed despite the fact that they're very happy -- much happier than liberals, as New York Times pundits such as Thomas Edsall and David Brooks frequently remind us. And why shouldn't they be happy? As I wrote in 2023, when Joe Biden was still president:

Deep down, they know that life is pretty sweet for people like them. No one's really coming for their guns -- they have plenty, and it's easy to buy more. No one's really coming for their red meat or their big-ass SUVs. No one's forcing them to be gay or bi or trans. Politically, they run half the states. They run the Supreme Court and will control it for decades. They run the House, and they have an excellent chance of taking the Senate and the White House next year.

MAGA people have boats! That's why they were able to have boat parades in 2020. If you can afford to buy and maintain a boat, why should you care about the price of eggs?

We can't reach these people with economic arguments -- swing voters, yes, but not the MAGA base. The MAGA base just wants us destroyed. Complaining about egg prices seemed like the way to get that done last year. Now Musk and his goons are getting to the real work of turning all non-conservatives into non-citizens.

We need to persuade the people who aren't MAGA voters that this is bad. Maybe price increases will help do the job for us.

Maybe some people who run businesses will become alarmed at the fact that the Trump/Musk team intends to defy the terms of contracts, which is something rich industrialized countries simply don't do. Last night, The Bulwark's Jonathan Last wrote this:

Elon Musk allegedly has control of the system the U.S. government uses to disburse congressionally mandated payments. Further, Musk claims that he, personally, is putting a stop to payments that he does not like.

First: This obviously could not happen unless the FBI had been neutered....

Second: If Musk is personally deciding what money comes out of the Treasury, then it is impossible to predict where economic disruptions will hit. Will Musk stop payments to social services vendors in South Dakota? Or to aerospace contractors in New Jersey? Will he refuse to make interest payments on government debt? Will he ratchet back Social Security disbursements? If you cannot predict government disbursements after laws have mandated them then you cannot predict the future economic environment.

Businesses want stability. This is all massively destabilizing. But do the people who run businesses and who don't have an in with the regime really understand what's going on?

Last said last night that if markets dropped more than 5% in response to everything Trump and Musk are doing, that would be a sign that the financial world knows we're in a crisis. A smaller drop?

Drop is < 5 percent: The markets do not believe that Trump’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada are likely to remain in place. Nor are they especially concerned by the reports of turmoil in Washington over the weekend. They basically believe everything is normal and that Trump will quickly revert to par, allowing the broader economy to continue more or less as normal.

The declines in overseas markets, and in early trading in U.S. markets, have been much smaller. Last said that would be a sign that people don't get how bad everything is:

I am not so sure the markets are capable of understanding the level of risk we currently face. It’s too big and too novel. It’s beyond any of the participants in the markets’ ken....

I suspect that the markets do not quite understand the gravity of our situation because they have never seen anything like it in a first-world country. They have never witnessed a global hegemon attempt suicide.

Last believes the markets will get it sooner or later:

... even if it’s too late to stop the dismantling of the federal government, I’m confident that the markets will understand eventually. Because when the old political and financial orders fall, someone is going to make a killing.

I think Trump's swing voters will understand eventually, when prices skyrocket, Social Security checks don't go out, Medicare reimbursements don't happen, ideologically "incorrect" libraries and health clinics close down, and so on. But curbing the power of Trump, Musk, and Russell Vought will be much more difficult then. And MAGA will still be thrilled.