Life Is Always Greener When All Your Lemons Are In One Basket
As the title implies, mixing metaphors is confusing. While you could potentially (maybe) convey the same message using disparate parts of separate metaphors, it would require the listener to both know and understand the original metaphors and also not immediately think that you are having a stroke.
But in our era of persistent trolling Orwellian doublespeak and endless blossoming digital fields of neologisms (new words entering common usage), is it unreasonable to think that we can't combine two or more competing ideas into a singular confusing idea? A watched bird is never worth more in the hand than in the pot. Rome wasn't built over spilled milk. The apple doesn't fall far before it's hatched.
I'm positive this all sounds like a nonsense hallucination from an AI chatbot, even if you (hopefully understand that I am joking). But this is what it feels like when watching the unfolding palace intrigue taking place with what can only be described as a gelatinous coagulation of the incoming Presidential administration on a policy level. There are so many competing and diverse interests at play that it is difficult to discern how anyone will actually be able to govern and implement policy, especially given the contradictory personal and business interests every single Cabinet member seems to have, other than stemming from an overall ideology of reducing the size of government and reducing regulations on, well, everything that is not the government. It's mixing metaphors, to say the least.
Instead of attempting to list the number of competing interests in the next administration, something probably better suited to actual journalists, I want to look at one specific (big-time air quotes) "department."
The "Department of Government Efficiency" (unfortunately named after the DOGE meme/cryptocurrency derived from the meme), run by "The First Buddy" Elon Musk and fellow billionaire investor Vivek Ramaswamy, has ostensibly been tasked with eliminating wasteful spending from the Federal Budget, and making it, "efficient." Never mind that DOGE is not an actual Federal Department because an official Act of Congress has not created it. It's more of a millennial-styled everyone-gets-a-participation-trophy-yogurt-lid-medal given to two of the President-elect's most ardent and most wealthy supporters.
For the sake of argument, let's say that DOGE has the power to make decisions on the Federal budget, not just counter normative recommendations from two people with no governing experience that no one has to listen to, least of all because the recommendations would likely plunge the United States (and the World) into an instant and deep recession the likes of which we have not seen before.
Pretending that the DOGE duo has the power to eliminate $2 trillion from the $6.752 trillion budget, roughly one-third of the total, how would they do it? Or even just $500 million, as they have since attempted to clarify? About two-thirds of federal spending is mandatory through programs like Social Security and Medicare, and the rest basically goes to the Department of Defense, so where would the proposed cost savings come from?
Would it come from the $1.67 trillion we spent on healthcare in 2024?
Would it come from the $824.3 billion we spent on defense in 2024?
Would it come from somewhere else?
The answer is yes—all of the above.
"How?!" you ask, stroking your chin like 90-year-old Senator Chuck Grassley. Would they attempt to do such a thing?
The answer lies in the financial interests of both men and the powerful cabal of Silicon Valley capital that both Musk and Ramaswamy represent:
Why it's AI, of course.
While I don't believe either of these men actually intends to cut off the government's nose to spite its face and cause an economic meltdown, I do believe that they intend to actively and methodically reduce the number of living human beings working in the federal government and replace them with chatbots powered by Grok (Elon's xAI product) or some of the many ChatGPT-esque approximations thereof, (which may cause an economic meltdown). In both theory and practice, this reduction in human capital would reduce the Federal government's spending on any actual department that DOGE decides to sharpen their budget knives against.
Is the tax code too complex with too many IRS agents to enforce it?
Are there too many people working in the "woke" Department of Education teaching children about slavery having existed?
Do we have too many human soldiers who require salaries, pensions, healthcare, and housing?
Are there too many Medicare and Medicaid employees distributing healthcare to the poorest amongst us too inefficiently and too fragently?
Their answer to all of the above is yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. YES. Somewhere, Musk's taint just started to tingle.
Why employ fleshy meat-sack humans to do any of the above when we can have perfectly good Large Language Model chatbots do it for us? Never mind the deleterious environmental effects and costs of building and powering the data centers needed to deploy such technologies at the scale they want.
This is the most overlooked of all possible "solutions" to the problem of Federal overspending that DOGE seeks to "solve."
Both Musk and Ramaswamy are directly invested in AI companies themselves, have venture capital investors in their own companies who are also heavily in AI companies, and they generally associate with like-minded Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and billionaires who, at this point, are all either running AI companies, are invested in AI companies, sit on the boards of AI companies, or share relationships with the same venture capital centers as both Musk and Ramaswamy. The web of relationships that would make AI the obvious grim reaper for the Federal Budget is densely populated with such characters, but one, in particular, has an outsize influence - Peter Thiel.
Peter Thiel is one of PayPal's founders alongside Elon Musk and a fellow member of the "PayPal Mafia," The group of PayPal founders and executives who have gone on to either found, invest in, or become board members of essentially all of Silicon Valley's most influential firms. The Mafia, including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), David Sacks (Uber/Airbnb), Joe Lonsdale (Oculus/Anduril), Keith Rabois (YouTube/Lyft), and other members, have all become Republican donors, advisors, and/or outspoken Trump supporters, with the seemingly lone exception of Hoffman, who is a Democratic operative and mega-donor.
Thiel was also the first outside investor in Facebook, which, coupled with Paypal, made him a billionaire many times over and led him to found three different venture capital funds: The Founders Fund Established (a SpaceX investor), Valar Ventures, and Mithril Capital Management. Thiel is also the founder of Palantir, one of the world's premier defense contractors and a leading producer of AI systems used for prisons, policing, border control, and general warfare systems. He's also a gay Republican who donated and supported Trump extensively in 2016 and 2020 but who "sat out" of the 2024 election because of his disdain for Trump as a person.
Thiel did not actually sit out of the election however. Peter Thiel is, in fact,
"The Man Behind the Curtain," the veritable Wizard of Oz of the 2024 presidential cycle. Thiel is the primary patron and long-time mentor of J.D. Vance, the Vice President-elect of the United States, the man who is a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Without Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance would not have existed in the public consciousness, let alone as the Vice President of the United States.
It could even be argued that Peter Thiel is the single most powerful person in the world, that most average people have either never heard of. Thiel is also a mentor to Palmer Luckey, a prominent and outspoken Trump backer, the founder of Oculus VR, and the founder of Anduril, the other significant Silicon Valley defense contractor heavily invested in AI systems for warfare.
When we think of smoke-filled backrooms replete with mysterious, powerful billionaires pulling the strings behind the scenes and scheming for the benefit of other mysterious and powerful billionaires and their interests, we are conditioned to think of greasy bankers, slick oil executives, and evil forever-chemical producers, not of gay Republican Silicon Valley venture capitalists and their cadre of acolytes.
Given his general physical appearance, diet of fast food, and, uh, actuarial tables, Trump is statistically more likely to die than he is likely to live through his entire second term as President. Which means J.D. Vance will be the President. Which means Peter Thiel will effectively be the President.
Without exception, Peter Thiel is the nexus point for the political economy of the incoming administration.
The Department of Government Efficiency and its leaders have a vast financial incentive to remake the government in their image and that of people like Peter Thiel. No one would ever accuse these men of not "talking their own book" of business and their book, and the book of everyone else they know and fraternize with is Artificial Intelligence.
While I may be wrong, I believe we are about to see the Federal Government as the first great guinea pig in the remaking of the economy via AI systems, whether or not these systems are currently equipped to do so or whether they will ever be equipped to do so - even if they might have replaced our doctors already. There is simply no other way to reduce the Federal Budget at the scale that Musk and Ramaswamy are proposing and also keep essential programs in place without causing mass civil unrest unless they attempt to cut out the human element and (attempt to) replace it with the AI systems which they and their associates are so heavily invested in.
Applying for Medicare? Talk to this chatbot.
Denied for Medicare? Talk to this chatbot.
Want to pay your taxes? Talk to this chatbot.
Want to learn about slavery? ALERT! YOU HAVE THE WOKE MIND VIRUS! Talk to this chatbot that talks like a Third Reich general.
Crossing the border illegally? Get killed by this chatbot.
They are going to lead their cake to water, but they can't make it eat.
🎧 Free Your Earballs
My annual tradition of making a playlist for the long Thanksgiving weekend with family continues for its 6th year. It is something of a teaser of some music that will end up on my Best of 2024 playlist and is always made so that you can put it on shuffle for hours throughout a long weekend with your entire family without offending grandma or weirding out your parents.
Listen up ya turkeys, it's 31 hours of full albums of music so you've got some work to do.
Apple Music // Spotify
⛳️ Hit The Links
Boota Vista has become one of my favorite podcasts. It's hilarious and Australian and wholly without any political point of view other than "Wow people are weird." Trust me, give it a spin.
Boonta Vista Spotify // Boonta Vista Apple Podcasts
And here is a better version of the Coachella lineup for punk rock nerds.
