I think you would be hard-pressed to find an American who doesn’t think our federal government is too big and inefficient. 

Accordingly, there should be 100 percent consensus supporting what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing.

Instead we have chaos, court challenges and another polarizing issue.  Why? Because there is a stark difference between downsizing for efficiency and dismantling to cease existence. So far, the evidence is clear that the real Trump goal isn’t thoughtful efficiency – it’s irrational and ideologically-driven destruction.

When you are downsizing and improving efficiency, you first examine what is going on. If unnecessary work is being done, you stop it. And if you can get necessary work done using fewer resources, you implement such improved work processes first, then re-deploy people or eliminate jobs that are no longer required.

Does anyone seriously believe this logical and industry-tested approach to efficiency is being followed? One of the first executive actions was to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.  Yes, there were some low priority projects you could call waste. But all of them?  

In fact, there are thousands of USAID programs that mean the difference between life and death for people around the world.  It’s a wonderful way to promote democracy. Ceasing the aid is also a wonderful way to alienate people, drive them to our enemies for aid and weaken our country in the global conflicts where alliances are so important.

This administration offered buyouts to all federal employees excepting the military, immigration enforcement and national security. After the plane disaster at Reagan Airport, they realized that air traffic controllers, chronically understaffed, were offered the buyout. The offer has subsequently been pulled from air traffic employees.

Many IRS employees accepted the buyout, with March 1 as their last day of employment. Then this administration realized no one would be home to process tax returns. IRS employees have now been told they have to stay until May 15.  Good luck to you if you call to get a question answered after that date. And if you cheat on your taxes, all you have to do is make it to May 15 and your risk of an audit disappears.

This administration fired the National Nuclear Security Administration staff.  Then they realized that part of the work was to oversee our nuclear weapon stockpile. Oops! 

Now our government is working to rehire these people. Very efficient! 

This administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all of its work.  This agency was created after the 2008 financial crisis that almost resulted in the second Great Depression.  The crisis was created by the virtually unregulated titans of our financial world – stock brokers, banks and the credit rating agencies.  

Since its founding, this bureau has obtained almost $20 billion for defrauded U.S. consumers.

Musk is the anointed leader of this dismantling of our government. Nobody voted for him. He has created a cadre of young, inexperienced people enthralled to carry out his orders.  They have no clue what government actually does or how important it is to millions of Americans. 

Many of you like the idea that billionaires are experts at running things.  Musk acquired Twitter, and then proceeded to fire a lot of people and remove any intent to ensure the platform wasn’t being used to propagate outright lies.  

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda leader, would have loved to have a communication platform like “X” (which is what Musk renamed Twitter).  Meanwhile, “X” is only worth 20 percent of what Musk paid for it. 

Yeah, that’s the guy we want in charge.

Musk has announced he wants to eliminate numerous federal agencies – not reduce, but eliminate. Do you know what these agencies do? Does Musk or his minions?

This federal employee purge is being implemented by sending emails to workers telling them they are being dismissed for poor performance. No conversation with their boss, just an email and their computer shut down. Imagine losing your job that way even though you have years of excellent performance reviews.  

The MAGA people we have put in charge of our country told us what we wanted to hear about how wasteful, “woke” and interfering our government was.  There was enough truth in their political propaganda to win the election. Now we’re seeing the real truth.

They’re too lazy and incompetent to actually first examine what our government is doing, then eliminate the things that don’t make sense. They don’t have the intellectual capacity to work out operational details. They would rather politically posture than do hard work. And their ideological driver isn’t to better govern – it is to destroy government.    

All of us wanted smarter, more efficient government, not absent government.  And all of us, sooner or later, are going to find out that some aspect of government we depended on is no longer there.