DOGE is doing something less symbolic, primarily. It’s making opaque government records readable and subject to analysis. Some of the opacity was intentional. Some was just a function of how the different departments and agencies operated. But getting a good look at how they actually work shows that truly abusive and damaging amounts of money are being wasted, and quite possibly, in many cases, stolen. Speaking openly about that, and fixing it, to the extent possible, required hard, blunt language. If it continues, we’re all going to benefit from it.
I don't disagree with your description at all, making the opaque legible rather than transparent. I don't disagree about waste! My concern is that we don't have a social fabric for what comes next.
We have a lot of resources to draw on. We have a symbolic history in America, which gives us models for a revived and repaired social fabric. English professors may have a bigger role than they anticipated in the decades ahead!
Thank you for this very thoughtful post. I really appreciate the analogic approach you take to The Emperor's New Clothes. I would be interested to know if you think my expansion of the analogy here is accurate:
As I understand it, you are treating Trump and others in his world as a kind of "truth-teller," like the boy in the fairy tale. They called out the nakedness of the left's social fashion after they "increasingly didn't like the smothering ritual of enforced courtesies." In the fairy tale the boy is an *eye witness* of the nakedness; but this is where the analogy to the right breaks down for me. Many of the right's critiques of the government, academia, the media, Hollywood, and any other seemingly left-leaning institutions come at some remove, as if the boy were not watching the parade of a habitually naked emperor, but rather seeing tabloid photos of the emperor getting in and out of the shower, or composite photos of a naked ankle, a naked arm, and other AI-generated naked body parts, and thus concluding he must be naked all the time. The ritual he is responding to is "smothering" because the tabloid media he consumes amplifies for him every imperfection and manipulates his availability bias, simultaneously encouraging him to hate the very social sciences that might educate him about his bias. The only real alternative is for the boy to educate himself on how the world really works, that most solutions are only imperfect and require tons of expertise even to achieve tolerable imperfection.
Brilliant. You got me thinking about similar unease in the wider world - I'll attempt to see what's going on through the prism of Animal Farm or maybe Nick Bostrom's Fable of the Sparrows. What interesting times!
Perhaps "The Velvet Ribbon" will turn out to be a better fit.
DOGE is doing something less symbolic, primarily. It’s making opaque government records readable and subject to analysis. Some of the opacity was intentional. Some was just a function of how the different departments and agencies operated. But getting a good look at how they actually work shows that truly abusive and damaging amounts of money are being wasted, and quite possibly, in many cases, stolen. Speaking openly about that, and fixing it, to the extent possible, required hard, blunt language. If it continues, we’re all going to benefit from it.
I don't disagree with your description at all, making the opaque legible rather than transparent. I don't disagree about waste! My concern is that we don't have a social fabric for what comes next.
We have a lot of resources to draw on. We have a symbolic history in America, which gives us models for a revived and repaired social fabric. English professors may have a bigger role than they anticipated in the decades ahead!
Who is we?
All Americans.
Thank you for this very thoughtful post. I really appreciate the analogic approach you take to The Emperor's New Clothes. I would be interested to know if you think my expansion of the analogy here is accurate:
As I understand it, you are treating Trump and others in his world as a kind of "truth-teller," like the boy in the fairy tale. They called out the nakedness of the left's social fashion after they "increasingly didn't like the smothering ritual of enforced courtesies." In the fairy tale the boy is an *eye witness* of the nakedness; but this is where the analogy to the right breaks down for me. Many of the right's critiques of the government, academia, the media, Hollywood, and any other seemingly left-leaning institutions come at some remove, as if the boy were not watching the parade of a habitually naked emperor, but rather seeing tabloid photos of the emperor getting in and out of the shower, or composite photos of a naked ankle, a naked arm, and other AI-generated naked body parts, and thus concluding he must be naked all the time. The ritual he is responding to is "smothering" because the tabloid media he consumes amplifies for him every imperfection and manipulates his availability bias, simultaneously encouraging him to hate the very social sciences that might educate him about his bias. The only real alternative is for the boy to educate himself on how the world really works, that most solutions are only imperfect and require tons of expertise even to achieve tolerable imperfection.
Brilliant. You got me thinking about similar unease in the wider world - I'll attempt to see what's going on through the prism of Animal Farm or maybe Nick Bostrom's Fable of the Sparrows. What interesting times!