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Notes -
One analogy I heard somewhat recently that I keep thinking about when seeing all this DOGE-related news is that, when you amputate an infected limb, there's almost undoubtedly lots of cells in that limb that are perfectly fine and perfectly functional, but it's just not viable to go in there and surgically (literally) remove only the bad cells and leave the good ones behind. Perhaps it might have been possible earlier on when the infection was small, but at some point, the infection became large enough such that, if we don't remove the limb along with the good cells, the host itself will die.
There are many issues with the analogy, such as the fact that the host in this case probably won't die and the fact that the good cells in the limb are humans with suffering, free will, a voice, and a vote, and the fact that whether the infection has gotten so bad that amputation is the only viable option isn't something we can determine with the same level of confidence as a doctor looking at an infected limb. But I think it's a reasonable enough position to have with respect to the current circumstances.
And I think it points to the fact that, if the "good" cells in a metaphorical infected limb wants to survive, then it's incumbent on them to take control over the infection within and take active steps to credibly signal that it's in control, if not rooted out entirely. I think the past couple decades of escalating DEI (I think the term "DEI" becoming a popular catchall term for this is more recent, but certainly the push for that exact sort of ideology has been around and quite strong at least since the 90s) is one part of this that shows the utter failure of many institutions, both within and out of the government, to make credible signals that they have the infection under control.
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