Marty Levine
February 24, 2025
After last weekend’s CPAC gathering, my news feeds were awash with pictures of Elon Musk wielding a very large chainsaw. He got it as part of a bit of stage craft before a screaming crowd of MAGA acolytes with Argentina’s President Javier Milei there to add a bit of additional gravitas to the moment. That image should tell us a lot about what the intent of the MAGA crowd is when they tell us they are out for efficiency and that they are just redesigning our government so that it can work better and cost less.
Chainsaws are not tools used to tune and perfect. Chainsaws are used to cut down and destroy. Loggers use them to take down trees so they can be transformed into something other than a tree; perhaps into lumber for building something or ground into pulp to make paper products but certainly not to make a better tree. Firefighters use them to take down what remains after a fire and when they are done they do not leave behind what was there before.
I have never had a contractor in my house as we tried to improve a kitchen or a bathroom with a chainsaw in their toolbox.
The supposed purpose of the DOGE strategy and organization has been crafted to shield its true purpose. The executive order establishing DOGE was simple and straightforward
This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.
And the President’s strategy which DOGE was said to be implementing was also prim and proper:
To restore accountability to the American public, this order commences a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy. By eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity, my Administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of Government itself.
These are words that I might have written as I approached reshaping the Jewish Community Centers of Chicago two decades ago. We were then, as the federal government is today, delivering many different services to many different parts of the community we served. We were an organization, as is the Federal Government, facing annual operating deficits that required attention. We were, like the Federal Government, an organization that those we served depended on, often without viable, affordable substitutes should we choose to stop serving them.
I know there is some danger in comparing my work in a mid-sized local organization with the immense global system that is our Federal government. But if anything, the fact that what Trump and Musk are saying they want to do is more complex and touches the lives of so many more people makes what I learned still relevant.
As I approached the challenge that was before me it was always critical to remember that the changes we might make would affect people’s lives and could cause real pain. This was true of both those we served and those who were our workforce – the ones who delivered on the service promises we had made. We needed to remember that the work of reorganization was not a laboratory experiment or an academic exercise. It impacted the real world and real people’s lives would be changed.
It was always critical to never forget that things that seemed simple as we wrote them in a plan or described them to our community were always more difficult and complicated when we put them into action. No part of this organization was separate from other parts. Understanding linkages and connections was difficult but critical.
As I approached the work of reducing and reshaping (of making the JCC more efficient and effective), it was always critical to be very clear what our organization’s PURPOSE was. It was impossible to redesign our organization if we were not clear about what any redesigned part of the organization was out to accomplish. We could not understand whether any change, or any reduction was meaningful if we did not understand how that would affect our ability to fulfill our purpose.
This experience in an organization whose staff numbered just over 2,000 and whose budget was just under $50 million tells me how much more difficult it will be to accomplish those goals across the Federal Government which employs 2 million and whose budget totals multiple trillions of dollars. So when it took months and months to effectively reach our redesigned and reshaped JCC Chicago I know that the pace that Trump and Musk are not serious about what they have told us about their goals. They have something else in mind.
This past Sunday morning we saw how true this was when we learned via an X (formerly Twitter) post that Mr. Musk told those 2 million employees to take 48 hours and describe their last weeks’ accomplishments. Musk indicated that if they had done well (whatever that meant) they might get a promotion and if they failed to reply they might be fired.
If you are serious about improvement you would know this request makes no sense. Reading, understanding, and evaluating 2 million responses would require that a staff is able to understand what each job was about and what each employee had been asked to do within the context of organizational strategies and tactics. That could not be done quickly by a small team of inexperienced and uninformed DOGE employees no matter how brilliant they are. It could not be done without understanding what the purpose of those complex systems were.
If they were serious about this, they would recognize that in order to actually use these self-assessments as a tool they would need to understand the details of the work of each nook and cranny of our government. They would need to understand how these parts are connected and understand the nature of the work. Most importantly they would have to know how that work relates to the purpose of the unit, department, and ultimately to the federal government. To do this requires a knowledgeable team able to understand the details of the work and who can relate the details of each job to the purpose they serve. Not a task that can be done in days or weeks if the desire is to build a better system.
But I do not believe that is their desire. President Trump has been clear about what he is doing. At CPAC the day after Musk was given that chainsaw, he told us that the staff reductions that had already been accomplished were about targeting individuals and not about building a better system of government
“The fraudsters, liars, cheaters, globalists and deep-state bureaucrats are being sent packing,”
And the lack of seriousness in this effort is best illustrated by the firing of staff responsible for keeping our nuclear weapons safe clearly not understanding the danger in not having them in place. They then had to scramble to locate them so they could be invited back to work. When asked about this (a scenario that has been replicated in other agencies over the last several weeks where important jobs were eliminated before the DOGERs realized what they were doing was very bad) the President incoherently responded:
No, not at all. I think we have to just do what we have to do. It’s, you know, you’re going to— it’s amazing what’s been found right now. It’s amazing. In some cases, they’ll fire people then they’ll put some people back … not all of them because a lot of people were let go.
The people who they have brought in to do the work of DOGE to date are not subject matter experts. They are young technocrats who come with another understanding of what they were there to do. They have been given a goal which is not to improve efficiency, but it is to destroy government.
So, what is the purpose that Musk and Trump have in mind for the government?
I do not think it is to serve the people of this country. It is not to provide an essential safety net that ensures we can all thrive. They have defined the purpose of government as allowing private business people, especially those who own large and rich companies to become even larger and more profitable. They do not see the government as responsible for the individual, especially for those whose lives are at greatest risk.
American writer, Albert J Nock, a hero to those who have created this MAGA moment warned in his seminal work Our Enemy, the State that government in any form was evil
Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be “reformed”, “improved”, nor “limited” in scope, simply because of their innate criminal nature.
Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.
What is now taking place in the chaos of the DOGE effort has been in preparation for decades as conservative, wealthy individuals have worked to discredit, weaken and destroy the ability of government to hinder their massing of wealth and power. The consequences of these actions on others are of little or no concern. MAGA and its figurehead leader, Donald J Trump, are in power because they have been able, over these years, to weaken government in the name of strengthening it, and to defame it in the name of helping people in need of help.
Ronald Reagan, at the dawn of their effort to end a government for all the people told us “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” And Musk’s chainsaw is his tool of acting out this vision.
Today we have the richest man in the world wielding a chainsaw on that government with little care for who is hurt and put at risk as long as his wealth and power is protected.
Nock may be the spiritual leader of this effort but he also had something to teach us about the danger of this moment. For those who have made Trump, Musk, and their band of oligarchs their unquestioned leaders perhaps these words from Nock would serve to temper their excitement:
State power has not only been thus concentrated at Washington, but it has been so far concentrated into the hands of the Executive that the existing regime is a regime of personal government. It is nominally republican, but actually monocratic…
These are dangerous times made more dangerous when we do not call out the lie of DOGE and demand they be accountable for what they are really trying to do. If they are allowed to continue to get us debating government efficiency and economy when their goal is actually destruction, we are lost.
