Elon Musk's Twitter harassment of federal employees shows "DOGE" is weaker than he pretends [View all]

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Elon Musk's Twitter harassment of federal employees shows "DOGE" is weaker than he pretends
Musk is leading MAGA into a "cowardly troll" era

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published December 4, 2024 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, he announced, with great fanfare, that billionaire Elon Musk and professional troll Vivek Ramaswamy were being put in charge of a "government efficiency" program. Despite all the hype, however, there were immediate signs that this effort may not be as serious as Musk and Ramaswamy implied with their relentless chest-beating about "cuts" and "deleting" entire agencies. The name — Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — sounds very official, but it's just a reference to a dumb meme that Musk is obsessed with, despite being about four decades too old for it.

More importantly, it's not a real department. It's a "presidential advisory committee," which sounds very official, but isn't compensated and doesn't come with any real power. These committees have a long history of being used to create the appearance of "doing something" while doing nothing — President Joe Biden killed the judicial reform debate with this tactic. Of course, Trump, being an authoritarian who loathes democracy, loves using unofficial advisors and outside powers. It's reasonable to worry that DOGE will have more power than such committees usually have. However, Musk's behavior on Twitter is a strong sign that he, at least, is starting to worry that DOGE is a toothless initiative.

Musk has been harassing individual federal employees, by name, on Twitter. They mostly seem to be women, chosen at random because he appears to find their job titles annoying. As CNN reports, "Several current federal employees told CNN they’re afraid their lives will be forever changed – including physically threatened – as Musk makes behind-the-scenes bureaucrats into personal targets." Musk understands that his fan base of Twitter followers is composed mostly of men like himself, whose arrested development manifests in a toxic combination of cowardice and sadism. Which is to say, the kind of people who think it's fun to randomly harass people online to distract themselves from their own inadequacies. At least one employee was driven to delete her social media accounts.

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But, of course, Musk's hostility to federal workers was never actually about money. Like most things Elon, it's about the narcissistic drama of a man who may be richer than everyone else on earth but seems unable to shake the sense that he's a loser. That much is evident in his accusation that the jobs of his victims are "fake." In reality, these federal employees are doing socially necessary work. One target, for instance, works in climate diversification, which is about making sure transitions to clean energy can be done without people losing jobs or disruptions to the food supply chain. People in jobs like that are often highly educated and talented people who take lower salaries as government employees because they prioritize meaningful work that helps people over money. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/12/04/elon-musks-twitter-harassment-of-employees-shows-doge-is-weaker-than-he-pretends/