Barbarians Inside the Gate

It was often said of the first Trump presidency that the "cruelty was the point".

In Trump 2.0, this cruelty remains a given, but what has emerged as a key priority is the overt (and apparently illegal) moves to deconstruct the administrative state. The barely defined group of teenagers operating under the umbrella of DOGE are certainly looking to "move fast and break things", however they look less like the typical tech bros pushing barely thought through ideas, and are acting more like a group of 1980s Private Equity or Leveraged Buyout firms.

As is often the case with populists, complaining, blaming and destroying things comes naturally. Building something to replace it or enacting change in a way that mitigates harm does not. Watching the behaviour of Musk and his acolytes pushing hundreds of thousands of apolitical career talent out of the civil service, let alone trying to wholesale close down departments, makes government less effective.

At this point, I should point out the bleeding obvious.

DOGE is supposed to be about "Efficiency". Being efficient and effective, however, is not the same thing. This looks to be the whole point. Poor quality drives distrust and persuades voters that government has always been the problem - ironic, given that the problems are being created in the first place by a lack of governance.

Add to this the fact that some of the departments and their work that is being erased by the Project 2025 crew, and you have a perfect storm. Destruction of both execution capability within government, lightly sautéed with a sprinkling of ignorance. As journalist Lizzie O'Leary wrote in Slate, casting even "subtle doubt" on government data "could quietly erode the very foundations of our economy" and "our trust in public agencies".

Whilst it appears to be barbarians running amok inside the gates of government, this is deliberate, and was all foretold,