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Your point, as it could be read from your post, was tethered to the idea that populism was some kind of related problem. I don't see how that can be relevant when so many of the questions you assert to not being asked of Musk can be very similarly leveraged towards the ruling class that sat prior to Musk.
I mean, Musk has seen plenty of open criticism recently. The H1B/Vivek stuff, along with him pretending to be good at video games. Alongside that you have a budding media industry centered around hating Musk 24/7. His companies being subsidized by the government is certainly not an uncriticized element.
I'm not sure to what extent dislike for USAID needs to be astroturfed or to what extent you want to question the media narrative surrounding it. I think there's a sizable population that doesn't like their taxes wasted on trans operas in Ireland or whatever. I find the whole ordeal more similar to something like the 'twitter files'. Just with more meat on the bone. But yes, Musk sure can press his finger on the scale considering his reach on X. And between the reach of him, Trump and Joe Rogan I'm not sure what oddity you are looking to question.
Populism is related in that I think it inherently contains a lack of skepticism. Everybody is just following the narrative with this admin, whereas the prior media trajectory was skepticism often to the point of conspiracy. Its early, but I promote skepticism always. Given that there was comparatively no interest in USAID prior, an about face inside of a few days speaks to mob mentality and blind allegiance to the party line. The media narrative is so far ahead of the details that $50M for condoms in Gaza hallucination was repeated ad nauseum by the admin itself. Of course the vast majority of Americans don't want 50 grand wasted on some trans Irish play, but that's $1 in every $100,000 of an agency that people are acting like needs to obviously be shuttered overnight. I'm not opposed to shutting it down, but relevant and true details matter. The oddities I want to question are manifold. The worlds richest man is personally auditing the entire government with apparent carte balance. Perhaps its for the best, but its worth questioning. The Epstein list was heavily redacted. Whats that about. Why are top lawyers at the DOJ from the Federalist Society resigning en masse claiming they're being asked to do illegal things. Why are Trumps personal lawyers, got appointed to government position, saying they're going to "protect Trump leadership" - which is not their job - vowing to "chase DOGE's critics to the end of the Earth". Seems odds.
How is this a problem particular to populism? Are we supposed to forget the constant swapping of profile pics to show your alignment to the Current Thing? The about face from "Covid is no worse than the flu" to "Covid is the biggest disaster since WW2"? Or from "lab leak is a conspiracy theory" to "Covid did most likely leak from a lab, and we knew about it from the start"?
To USAID in particular, is it really an about-face, or did people react to previously unknown information about it being used for Blue-aligned causes, from spreading transgenderism in the third world to sponsoring the majority of Ukraine's "independent" media?
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