For more than 12 years, Nicholas Enrich worked at USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, rising to become one of the agency’s top global health officials. Then, in a matter of weeks, he watched as the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) dismantled the six-decade-old agency responsible for delivering American foreign aid around the world.
Enrich documented the experience in his book Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. He joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss what happened behind the scenes, and its devastating consequences.
This is what Mass Murder looks like.
Imagine witnessing an act of horrific gun violence and feeling good later when the perpetrator was caught and faced justice and then turning on the TV and in the wake of that trauma seeing the annoying face of Elon Musk, someone who has committed a far more horrific degree of mass murder than what you just witnessed being displayed across US media as if he should not be in jail for doing the damage he knowingly did.
All forms of violence are bad, but the ones that scare me the most are the ones that are easily made invisible to the conscience of someone in power demanding them for pointless and futile reasons.
Demolishing healthcare for no reason with no plan in place to replace it to provide equivalent care, knowing the damage it will do from the deep established body of public health research, is mass murder there is no other reasonable position to take here.
The worst part doge saved what, a few billion at most? The current US administration has stolen more than that, so a few billionaires can make more money? That should be enough for citizens to be angry let alone their other shit.
The Iran conflict alone is least a billion dollars a day when active… for worse than what was agreed upon before. Go US for another shot in the foot but wrecks the entire world’s economy and makes you look worse on the world stage while making Iran stronger. Making things great still?
The problem is you can say it’s mass murder. I can say it’s mass murder. Maybe a dozen of our friends can agree. But we need to take the next step. Get a bunch of people together, stop laboring, and demand Musk face justice.
Maybe I should write a short story about a small cell of activists who kidnap “Musk”, live stream a trial, and then execute him.
We should get the DOJ right on that guy for his crimes.
Executing Elon Musk will not convince anyone of anything meaningful, justice is only justice if it is applied in a non-violent means and with a public systematic process.
Besides capital punishment being wrong, the worst thing you can do is execute Elon Musk, he is far more attractive as a martyr the rightwing can blur out the ugly awkward aspects of than a living character insufferable in all his revolting detail, take all his money and wealth away and let him be Exhibit A: of why believing in rightwing, empathy starved asshats like Elon is a losing team to be on. Periodically publicly interview Elon Musk and ask him basic questions so he can stumble into revealing his hate and he will be himself an antidote for his own ideology unwittingly.
Endorse violence like you are suggesting and you just push the needle more towards this being a simple story of “Us vs. Them, now pick a side” for the average person who is afraid and awash in the exhaustion of daily life and the deluge of disinformation.
I’m reminded of how old video game Dragon Age had
JusticeandVengeanceas two different manifestations of the same spirit.I don’t think we’ll see justice in our life time. Not to make up for the evils enacted by Musk and those like him. But we might see him suffer and die in terror, and that would be a delight.
Doing nothing would be worse
You need to read some better novels and engage with art deeper if you expect this to be fulfilling, this is the oldest trap of all according to storytellers the world over.
Schadenfreude is fine, but you are after an illusion and you risk trivializing violence in pursuing it.