Tag: Elon Musk

Historical Lessons on Government Efficiency from Otto von Pulpo

Sometimes, a little historical memory delivered with a healthy dose of satire is exactly what the moment calls for. I recently stumbled upon this memorandum—allegedly issued by Herr Obersekretär Otto von Pulpo, our resident officious German octopus—crafted as a sharp response to The Economist’s editorial, “Is Elon Musk remaking government or breaking it?” Unsatisfied with the notion that “some transgressions” might be acceptable if they bring about efficiency, I was inspired to share this fictional but incisive critique. Enjoy Otto’s take on why the path of destruction is never a shortcut to genuine reform, and join the conversation on how we should remember history in light of today’s political challenges.

Memorandum No. 843.3a-b(krill)
From the Desk of Herr Obersekretär Otto von Pulpo
Former Archivist, Department of Tentacular Oversight (Ret.), Abyssal Branch
Current Observer of Surface-Level Folly, Emeritus

To the editorial board of The Economist,
cc: The Directorate for Dangerous Euphemisms, Baltic Division

RE: Concerning Your Recent Enthusiasm for “Some Transgressions” in the Service of Government Efficiency

Esteemed humans,

It is with a firm grip and furrowed brow (of the metaphorical kind—our brows are subdermal) that I write to express my alarm, tinged as it is with a deep familiarity, at your recent editorial on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Your noble publication—usually known for reasoned analysis and fondness for balanced budgets—has recently dabbled in the genre of historical amnesia.

You write, approvingly if not enthusiastically, that “some transgressions along the way might be worth it” in your editorial “Is Elon Musk remaking government or breaking it?” Permit me, as a creature of long memory and cold water, to remind you: some transgressions are never worth it. History is not made by heroic shortcuts. It is unraveled by them.

When I was a much younger cephalopod, gliding the brackish waters near Wilhelmshaven, I recall hearing the surface-world’s chatter about another figure who spoke boldly of waste and stagnation, who promised national renewal, who performed gestures that were first dismissed as eccentric, and who flirted with “creative destruction” until the destruction ceased to be metaphorical. He too was seen by many as a misunderstood innovator. Until it was too late.

Herr Musk, I understand, now punctuates state occasions with gestures uncannily similar to the Roman salute, and praises parties in your former occupation zone with a fondness that suggests more than economic theory. If these are the traits of a reformer, then perhaps I should consider joining the AfD myself—though I suspect I would not pass their purity tests, being both foreign and soft-bodied.

But it is not Herr Musk who most disturbs me. It is your newsmagazine, with your steady tone and Oxford commas, that murmurs, “Efficiency requires boldness,” and wonders aloud whether the destruction is merely a precursor to some unseen creation. You ask: “Who now remembers the Grace Commission?” And I reply: who now remembers the Enabling Act of 1933, passed under the same logic—that extraordinary conditions justify extralegal actions?

Beware the language of renovation when it requires dismantling the foundation. Beware the hagiography of disruptors who come not to build, but to erase. DOGE does not make government more efficient. It makes obedience more efficient.

If I may say so without rudeness, your editorial reads as if it were penned in a warm bath, insulated from the chill that such reasoning brings to those of us with memory. Down here, in the benthic gloom, we remember what it means when legislative bodies and courts are bypassed, when “wrongthink” is rooted out, when civil servants are mocked as obstacles to destiny.

Do not confuse boldness with wisdom. Do not mistake collapse for reform.

With respectful concern and eight meticulously inked signatures,

Otto von Pulpo
Obersekretär a.D.
Archivist, Rememberer, Cephalopod

P.S. Historical Note from the Abyss:

When tectonic plates shift, they do not ask for parliamentary approval. They simply move—and tsunamis follow. I have observed this firsthand from 4,000 meters below. The surfacelings always call it unprecedented, as if the sea forgets. We do not forget.

Herr von Pulpo’s earlier memoranda (Nos. 842.1–843.1) were dispatched in response to similar enthusiasms for charismatic technocrats in the late Weimar period. These were, at the time, unread by those who most needed to read them.

About the Author
Otto von Pulpo is a retired archivist, amateur historian, and former Vice-Chair of the Commission for Bivalve Misclassification. He resides in a gently collapsing wreck off the Heligoland shelf and writes occasionally on democracy, plankton, and the perils of charismatic overreach.

The Real Armageddon: Musk’s DOGE and the Dismantling of Public Trust

Photo by Chris F on Pexels.com

“If you read the news, it feels like Armageddon. I can’t walk past a TV without seeing a Tesla on fire,” Elon Musk said recently at a Tesla all-hands meeting. “I understand if you don’t want to buy our product, but you don’t have to burn it down. That’s a bit unreasonable.”1

The quote is evocative—perhaps designed to stir sympathy. Yet it invites a measure of irony. While vandalism against Tesla properties is, of course, deplorable, it is neither as widespread nor as catastrophic as Musk, and biased media reporting, would have the public believe. Fewer than a dozen reported incidents—at Tesla dealerships or Supercharger stations—have resulted in fires, graffiti, or property damage. In nearly all of these cases, suspects have been arrested and charged.2

In a country of over 330 million people, where more than 200,000 vehicle fires and 500,000 structure fires occur annually,3 and where Florida and Texas alone report nearly 3,000 murders each year,4 these incidents—while serious—are statistically insignificant. What Musk decries as “Armageddon” is, in national context, a series of isolated acts that have been swiftly addressed by law enforcement.

Meanwhile, under Musk’s leadership of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), far greater destruction is being wrought—not upon property and government subsidized business interests, but upon the institutions designed to serve the American people.

According to Reuters, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is expected to lose over 80,000 employees under DOGE’s efficiency plan.5 Already, this downsizing is disrupting vital services: clinics are understaffed, appointments are delayed, and mental health services—already under strain—are faltering.6

This is not bureaucratic “streamlining.” The VA currently serves over 18 million veterans,7 many of whom depend on timely and specialized care for physical and mental trauma, service-connected disabilities, and long-term support. Disabling this infrastructure in the name of “efficiency” is not neutral policy—it is institutional abandonment.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has not fared better. Facing mandates to reduce its workforce by up to 50%, the SSA is bracing for a collapse in the timely delivery of services to more than 70 million Americans, including over 50 million seniors.8 Already, SSA field offices in major cities have shortened hours, laid off staff, and seen processing times for benefits skyrocket.

Federal workers have responded with urgency. In San Francisco and other metropolitan areas, SSA and VA employees have staged public protests, warning of the catastrophic impact these cuts will have on their most vulnerable clients.9 Their message is clear: public service cannot survive on ideology alone.

Thus, while Musk’s Teslas may burn in isolated incidents, the real fire is the one now consuming the administrative state (the means by which public servants deliver public services to the citizens they serve pursuant to laws passed by Congress). The irony is sharp. Musk’s complaint—“You don’t have to burn it down”—could just as easily be addressed to himself. If you do not like the structure or scale of government, you do not have to dismantle its capacity to serve. That, too, is a bit unreasonable.

What Musk labels as terrorism when directed at his private enterprise is tolerated—even celebrated—when inflicted upon public institutions. Yet the human cost of the latter is infinitely greater. The quiet collapse of service infrastructure—untelevised and untheatrical—is the more insidious disaster.

In the end, the real “Armageddon” may not be a vandalized Tesla on a TV screen. It may be the veteran denied timely access to urgent medical care. The senior citizen waiting months for a critical in-person meeting at a Social Security office. The single parent lost in a phone queue with no one left to answer.

These are not symbolic gestures. These are lives.

Notes

  1. Pras Subramanian, “Tesla’s Elon Musk Holds Surprise All-Hands Meeting to Assuage Employees and Investors,” MSN Money, March 21, 2025.
  2. New York Post, “Pam Bondi Announces Charges Against 3 in Tesla Attacks,” March 20, 2025.
  3. National Fire Protection Association, “Vehicle Fires,” 2024.
  4. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, 2021.
  5. Reuters, “US Plans to Fire 80,000 Veterans Affairs Workers,” March 5, 2025.
  6. Reuters, “VA Shake-up Disrupts Mental Health Services,” March 20, 2025.
  7. Pew Research Center, “The Changing Face of America’s Veteran Population,” November 8, 2023; Reuters, “VA Shake-up Disrupts Mental Health Services,” March 20, 2025.
  8. Sara Dorn, “Here’s Where Trump’s Government Layoffs Are,” Forbes, February 21, 2025.
  9. San Francisco Chronicle, “Federal Workers Protest Musk-Led Government Cuts,” March 14, 2025.

The Dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education: A Calculated Assault on the Nation’s Future

Abandoned classroom. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The destruction of the U.S. Department of Education is not merely a bureaucratic restructuring or an attempt at governmental efficiency. It is, rather, a brutal, ideologically driven attack on public and higher education itself—an assault decades in the making. The immediate consequences, such as the callous firing of over 1,300 employees and the gutting of its Office for Civil Rights, are alarming, but they are only symptoms of a broader effort to delegitimize and dismantle the tradition of public education in America. This is no accident; it is a deliberate and malicious campaign waged by reactionary forces who have long sought to annihilate the very concept of education as a public good.

Before addressing the broader catastrophe, it is essential to recognize the dedicated public servants whose careers have been abruptly and callously ended. These were not faceless bureaucrats but individuals who dedicated their lives to ensuring access to quality education, protecting civil rights, and supporting students, parents, and teachers. They are the ones who worked tirelessly to administer federal student aid, enforce anti-discrimination laws, and uphold policies meant to ensure that education remained a pathway to opportunity rather than a privilege of the few. To see them falsely maligned and slandered while being discarded so cruelly is an injustice, not only to them but to the nation they so nobly served.

To understand the scope of this travesty, one must acknowledge that public education in the United States has been under sustained assault—not from bureaucrats, not from educators, and certainly not from the imagined “woke” enemies that conservative demagogues irrationally scream about—but from the anti-public education, anti-higher education agenda of the right-wing forces that have festered in the American political landscape since Brown v. Board of Education so deeply outraged the bigoted sensibilities of many Americans. This movement, which cloaks itself in deceptive terms like “school choice” and “parental rights,” is nothing more than a long-running campaign to dismantle public education in favor of a reactionary, privatized system that siphons resources from the many to enrich the few.

Milton Friedman, the sinister patron saint of the libertarian free-market fantasy, provided the economic blueprint for this war on public education. His advocacy for school vouchers was never about “improving education” or “empowering parents”—it was about facilitating the exodus of white children from integrated schools while redirecting public funds into private, often exclusionary institutions. The modern conservative attack on public education is a direct continuation of this shameful tradition, now infused with fresh venom as it seeks to erase any federal coordination, civil rights protections, and guarantee of equal access to education.

And now, with breathtaking ruthlessness, this agenda is reaching its culmination at the hands of pusillanimous politicians hiding behind false narratives. The elimination of nearly half the workforce of the Department of Education within the first two months of the second reign of incompetence is an unmistakable step toward the total obliteration of the department. The Office for Civil Rights, already struggling to process the nearly 25,000 complaints of discrimination it receives from the public yearly and one of the last remaining institutional bulwarks against discrimination in schools—has been slashed to the bone, ensuring that students with disabilities and others who are discriminated against, whether on sex or race or national origin, will have nowhere to turn for timely relief when their rights are trampled. This is not accidental; this is the plan.

The current Education Secretary, in the grand Orwellian tradition of this administration, has assured the public that these cuts will somehow improve “efficiency” and “accountability.” Such statements are not merely disingenuous—they are outright lies, designed to mask the true intent behind this evisceration: to dismantle any federal structure that protects education as a right rather than a privilege reserved for the wealthy and well-connected.

Adding further insult to this grievous injury, the most aggrieved one has handed the reins of this demolition project to none other than our billionaire tech overlord. This grotesque display of plutocratic interference sees our billionaire tech overlord—who has no experience in education policy but plenty of experience in exploiting workers—granted unfettered access to sensitive government data and decision-making power over federal agencies. Under the laughable guise of “efficiency,” his Technokratische Jugend has set about dismantling the very institutions that serve as the backbone of public education, further centralizing power in the hands of the ultra-rich while leaving working Americans to suffer the consequences.

But let us be clear: this is not just an attack on those in public service. It is an attack on the very principle that education should be accessible to all, that an informed citizenry is essential to democracy, that knowledge should not be hoarded by the privileged few. It is an attack on the American future, a calculated and malevolent act of national sabotage designed to entrench ignorance and subjugation. Presently, the enlightened pro-choice anti-education agenda of our political elite has delivered unto us a nation where 54 percent of adults read only at the 6th grade level—imagine a decade hence where we will be!

Public education is not a luxury; it is the foundation of an equitable society. The destruction of the U.S. Department of Education is not about “efficiency” or “streamlining” government—it is about ensuring that the levers of power remain in the hands of a select few while the masses are kept ignorant, powerless, and too overwhelmed to fight back. This is a crisis of democracy, and it will have consequences that reverberate for generations.

The wreckage of this assault will be vast and far-reaching. Higher education costs will continue to increase as many institutions shutter their doors, vocational training programs will wither, and civil rights enforcement in schools will become an afterthought, if it exists at all. Meanwhile, a handful of oligarchs and right-wing ideologues will gloat over their victory, having successfully reduced one of the last bastions promoting American progress into a smoldering ruin. And continue to pay attention to the war on institutions of higher education, our overlords are not done reducing our heirs into ignorance.