We just won
Ever since we lost the election in November, it’s felt like a series of ongoing losses. Our country has racked up losses. So has our democracy. So have the most vulnerable among us. It’s been demoralizing to say the least. But I’m here to tell you something. We just won one – and it’s a big one.
There are three ways in which a public figure departs a publicly visible project: 1) it’s so successful that everyone can see it’s a success. 2) it’s a moderate failure and so the public figure has to try to publicly spin it as a win. 3) it’s such an obvious failure that the public figure feels compelled to publicly badmouth his own project on the way out the door. It turns out Elon Musk’s DOGE experiment falls into the third category.
It’s not just that Musk is walking away from his own hand crafted federal agency just four months after being handed the keys to the country, in an epic failure that saw him try and largely fail to fire large chunks of the federal government. It’s that he’s now publicly whining about it on the way out. That means even Musk – egomaniacal, delusional, and mentally unwell – knows that everyone can see that he utterly failed.
Part of Musk’s failure is due to just how mentally incompetent he’s become. Part of it is due to Donald Trump’s dementia riddled inability to even understand what’s going on around him, let alone be of any help to his allies. And part of it is due to the fact that our federal court system is largely still functioning. But part of it – a big part of it in fact – is due to the fact that we pushed back against him.
The media was initially content to do what it always does when it covers politics: treat the corrupt, the incompetent, and the insane as if it were merely some kind of new policy initiative. But from the start, we decided not to let that happen. We spoke up, loudly and repeatedly, about just how asinine the whole DOGE debacle was. We spoke up, loudly and repeatedly, about just how unhinged Musk had become. We – you and me – changed the narrative. The media had no choice but to follow, and that negative coverage put the entire Musk DOGE experiment into a death spiral.
So yes, we have indeed won one. The world’s wealthiest man was handed total control over the federal government with the intention of doing unhinged and evil things, and we managed to help throw him off track long enough for him to get frustrated and walk away.
Sometimes a win consists of mitigating a loss. Sometimes those are the most important wins of all. And yeah, maybe we’re stuck looking at those kinds of wins for awhile. But at least they’re wins. Elon Musk lost, which means we won. Let’s not forget that we still have the power to change things for the better just by educating ourselves and using our voices accordingly.
