Here’s where things stand: Elon Musk’s coup continues to wreak havoc. It remains unclear who is actually in charge of our government or if Donald Trump even cares what Musk is doing, but per reporting from Wired, some Trump loyalists are getting increasingly unhappy with Musk and the “interns” assisting him with the takeover. Federal workers are fed up and fighting back, and elected Democrats in Congress seem to have found some fire in their bellies to fight back. Citizens are protesting Musk and MAGA in DC and across the nation.
More broadly, I’ve noticed the conversation has changed with non-political people in my life. People are concerned about Musk having their social security numbers and have questions about whether things like social security payments and medicare disbursements might be disrupted. Nonprofits with government grants and programs like Head Start are unable to access the funds they rely on to operate. Meanwhile, Trump keeps making pronouncements and issuing executive orders in lieu of trying to legislate anything, and since the courts have to sort all of this out, it’s unclear what will even stick.
As this unfolds, I can’t stop thinking about this sentence: The government needs to keep its hands off my Medicare!
In 2009, people screamed this phrase, as well as a variation about Medicaid, at me over the phone. During the first year of Obama’s first term, I worked on an incumbent’s Senate campaign. The White House and Congress were trying to pass Obamacare, and the Republican minority was doing everything they could to derail it. My job wasn’t to answer the phones, but the volume of calls into Senate offices was so much that constituents couldn’t get through and would call our campaign office instead. Some days, it was all hands on deck, and whatever work I had wanted to do got sidelined as campaign staff answered calls and took notes to pass back to the Federal office.
No one used terms like disinformation or even fake news then, but the conspiracies about healthcare were running wild online, mostly through email forwards and copied/pasted on Facebook profiles. As the campaign’s online communications person, most of what people saw online got forwarded to me. I watched the email chains with false information get wilder over the course of that year (with plenty of antisemitism and racism included), and I’d see it play out even in the liberal college town where I lived. To the point where I once had a stranger threaten me because I was wearing the SEIU for Obama shirt I wore to the gym most days back then, and SEIU was often mentioned in the conspiracies.
I obviously didn’t agree with people who didn’t want healthcare reform, but I understood where it was coming from. As a child of the 80’s, I had grown up hearing things like President Regan saying, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” As a child, I often heard adults make jokes about government bureaucrats, even though my family mostly voted Democrat.
But the people who wanted the government to stay out of their Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security blew my mind. At first, I assumed that what they actually meant was they wanted the programs they relied on not to change, but the more time I spent on the phones, the more I realized how many people genuinely didn’t know that these were all government programs. And when I tried to point this out, they’d often tell me that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
That’s the thing about government programs and benefits, though. When they work well, you don’t have to think much about them. They become part of the background in your life. Many of the people who called and screamed at me in 2009 probably rely on parts of Obamacare now and almost certainly wouldn’t want it taken away from them. They probably don’t realize it’s a government program or even the same Obamacare they once railed against, but it’s something people rely on now, which is why, as of yet, the Republicans haven’t been able to get rid of it.
But thanks to Elon and his goons, attempting to take apart the Federal government piece by piece, we’re all about to get educated about what the Federal government does and how it impacts everything from healthcare to public education. Musk and the tech bros either don’t understand what a dangerous game they’re playing – or they don’t care. Big Tech might want to disrupt and destroy, but most people don’t want their lives upended. They don’t want to think about government programs unless they absolutely have to. And they certainly don’t want to think about not receiving payments, public schools and childcare being disrupted, or the privacy nightmare that is Elon Musk having access to their social security number.
Now is a good time to engage the non-political people in your life or people who have tuned out because it’s all too much. Not with the usual rants about Trump and MAGA, but with the practical and real-world implications of what’s happening and how it will eventually impact them. At this point, there are multiple approaches to that conversation. Social Security feels like the most obvious one to me, but Musk and his goons have come for the Departments of Labor, Education, and USAID, too. The longer this coup continues, the more aspects of our daily lives will be affected. People deserve to know why this is happening, who is responsible, and what can be done to stop it.
I can’t tell you what will happen next or how things will unfold. In my gut, I think things will get worse before they get better. At the same time, I think Trump and Musk have bit off more than they can chew, and it’s clear they don’t care about the ramifications of any of their actions. Donald Trump might have a mandate to lead but no one elected Elon Musk or asked him to screw with the government services and programs we rely on for his own ends. No one gave him permission to steal from us with this smash-and-grab. Americans don’t appreciate being ripped off by a criminal. Make sure your people know that’s what’s happening here.
This is an excerpt from Ctrl Alt-Right Delete, a newsletter produced in partnership with COURIER — a civic media company. It was republished with the author’s permission. Subscribe HERE.
