Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.
Which dovetails nicely with the planned birthday bash in June:
On the Jumbotron, from Moscow and Pyongyang, respectively, we can expect warm birthday greetings from Vlad Putin and Kim Jong Un.
I loved the movie, “A Beautiful Mind,” starring Russell Crowe – the story of a brilliant mathematician and his struggle with mental illness. He denies and denies and denies being ill, causing no end of chaos around him, until.
Eventually he has a moment of clarity and tells his loved ones that one of the two imaginary people that he’s “seen” for years – a little girl – “never gets old.”
That’s his “Come to Jesus” moment in the film. The little girl never ages. She isn’t real.
Trump supporters? It’s time. It’s time for YOU to have your own “Come to Jesus” moment. The clues are all out there, plain for all to see.
Many years ago, I read an article that pointed out that almost all of the longest-lived irrational belief structures had one thing in common. They all incorporated a belief that told the believers: No matter what, anything that contradicts any belief is a lie and should be ignored. That is, the belief is a self-reinforcing structure.
And we see that with so many Conspiracy Theories, which is what MAGA basically is. MAGA, while they fervently believe that government workers are all lazy frauds, also believe in the “Deep State”, which has magical levels of power to manipulate society. So that’s a built-in excuse for such failures. “Trump and DOGE did find lots of fraud, but the Deep State blocked them from throwing anyone in prison!” And if Trump or Musk fail so spectacularly that even that excuse isn’t enough, then it turns out that Trump or Musk were secretly part of the Deep State all along!
This “Deep State” belief is strong enough and magical enough that it can explain any failure, no matter what. It’s not constrained by logic, law or physical reality.
From reporting that I’ve seen, Musk brought in some young techies to review the systems.
Young techies aren’t MBAs nor forensic accountants. Pair them with someone who knows how to look for fraud, and I’m sure that they can write up all sorts of algorithms that will scan the database for questionable activities.
But then you need manpower to follow up on those questions and prove the result out, one way or the other. It’s unlikely that you can prove fraud just from a tax return or something.
So… You’re looking at the Biden strategy of having enough people to actually investigate and enforce the laws.
Beautiful! I have it from a reliable source that SSA’s internal systems were not a model of reliability before. Well, at least folk can easily and quickly get answers through the 800 number, right?
I was talking the other day with a guy I had been told is MAGA. (My mistake.) He was asking about fraud in the federal agency I work in. I told him my understanding is that there is precious little fraud - if defined in terms of someone actually lying, or failing to say something they know they ought to. Now - if you just talk about people aggressively trying to obtain government benefits? Well, I don’t consider that fraud.
He countered, “Well, why are we being told there is all this fraud?” I asked who was saying that. He said, DOGE. And if I can’t believe my government, who should I believe."
I asked him how DOGE defined fraud, and he admitted he didn’t know (because, of course, they haven’t.)
Just impossible to try to communicate intelligently with these folk. However, to some small extent, his statement that he ought to be able to trust what his government says had some appeal to me. In anything approaching normal times with an administration that was not so clearly corrupt as this one, I would hope government pronouncements would merit some trust. Of course, every admin lies on ocasion - such as when we were lied into war with Iraq.
