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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   32378 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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The media propaganda machine claims that the US will experience a "brain drain" - a term usually applied to third world countries - because of recent DOGE cuts: https://www.reuters.com/world/scientists-us-harried-by-trump-cuts-turn-towards-europe-2025-04-11/.

Of course, the DOGE cuts are necessary to reign in the huge deficit and just as importantly, to stop funding DEI programs and worthless research, like the "tuna" research cite din the article. Just like my taxpayer funds do not need to go to funding transgender surgeries in Honduras, they don't need to use my money to study tuna for "sustainability" reasons. Of course, the EU being EU, they want to hire some of these people for no other reason than to spite the US. There hasn't been any actual investigation into whether they need a tuna researcher; as long as they can dunk on the US and pat themselves on the back, they'll do that.

The DOGE cuts were purely performative. Anyone trying to cut the federal deficit without tackling the absurd ballooning elder care costs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid portions that go to elders) isn't serious. Science is an extremely tiny slice of the federal budget, but it happens to be one where the effects of cuts won't show up for a decent amount of time. This is in contrast to something like tariffs, where Trumpian buffoonishness is almost immediately apparent in a number of ways.

Jewish nuclear researchers that fled Nazi Germany helped produce the atomic bomb. I'm not saying the current crop of researchers are doing stuff that's that serious, but having scientists flee your broken sectarian country is generally a bad thing.

This is such a fucking weird angle, I don't understand why progressives keep deploying it. No, they were explicitly what the people asked for - an end to stupid frivolous spending. Not an end to social security and Medicare. Nobody asked for that. They just wanted to stop the USG from spending American tax dollars to fund ridiculous frivolous bullshit like communist rap albums and teaching lesbian farmers about sustainability.

And considering your position on Trump, the idea of you wanting him to go after Medicare and social security is confusing. It's like you actually don't give a shit about the economy, you just want Trump to do more big things "where Trumpian buffoonishness is almost immediately apparent in a number of ways", because the only thing you care about is being outraged and outrage at trumpian buffoonishness often has a curious way of dying out with the start of a new media cycle.

They just wanted to stop the USG from spending American tax dollars to fund ridiculous frivolous bullshit like communist rap albums and teaching lesbian farmers about sustainability.

The claim was that they were gonna meaningfully cut the deficit (Elon originally gave a figure of 1 trillion at least).

If they merely wanted to cut a left wing patronage network to size they could have said that and aimed lower.

"I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that timeframe," Musk told the Fox News anchor Bret Baier during a panel interview with top members of the DOGE team.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-lowers-doges-estimated-savings-again-2025-4

"We've got a $2 trillion deficit," Musk said. "If we don't do something about this deficit, the country's going bankrupt….Interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking [because] we spend a lot of money on defense. And if that just keeps going, we're essentially gonna bankrupt the country….It's not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses; it's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country. And it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt." https://reason.com/2025/02/12/elon-musk-implausibly-claims-competence-and-caring-can-cut-the-federal-budget-deficit-in-half/

Some people may have also wanted to starve the beast but the point was sustainability.

If the argument is that people expected the government to do this by cutting mosquito nets to Africans and sinecures to left wing professors and not welfare then that is really just the oldest argument against populism: what you actually get if you try to come up with policies based solely on what's popular with people is incoherence and stupidity.

It's clearly a case of hopes and wishes against basic reality. Attacking waste is popular, attacking the deficit is popular in theory. It would be awesome if people teaching Afghans conceptual art were squirreling away hundreds of billions.

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