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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23876 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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I wouldn't call him a "political liability"-- I'd call him the "fall man." Associating elon with the cuts means that as soon as elon is gone low-information voters will think the cuts have "stopped" and will forgive trump (and the republican party) as a consequence. Elon's role is to absorb the reputational hit for carrying out what the republicans already wanted to do.

This is another area where the opposition seems horribly unable to do its job -- most of the grassroots anger I see is directed at Elon Musk personally and not Trump, when all his power comes from Trump and the president has gone on record saying he believes in what Musk is doing at DOGE. Before the tariff debate, it seemed like we were in full Rasputin mode: it's not the tsar, it's his crazy advisor! I recall the "Elon Musk is AN UNELECTED MAN creating a coup against the government" thing from major Democratic politicians even early on in the Trump administration... it made no sense then and makes even less sense now. Everything Trump's opposition seems to say is exactly the opposite of what you'd want to say if you were working hard to stage a strong opposition and put pressure on the executive. It seems like everything the GOP is doing comes straight from Trump's mind, and everything the Democratic party is doing comes straight from grassroots anger and not strategy.

Those are two separate issues.

Musk creates anger because of his perceived or real (or trolling) far right views, because he’s the richest man in the world (naturally evil according to economic leftists) and because he was responsible for firing a lot of federal government workers directly and a lot of NGO types indirectly (by cutting spending), who are a core progressive class.

Trump himself doesn’t seem to care much about government efficiency, he only cares about tariffs.

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