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.
Every piece of shit who voted for this administration has blood on their hands.
Especially a second time, people who voted for Trump a second time are dead to me I don’t care how close they are as family or whatever, you are no friend of mine and you are no family of mine if you endorse fascism.
His piss poor handling of Covid and the million plus Americans dead because of his fragile ego made anyone who voted for him in any of the 3 elections persona non grata to me. I hope they all get every disease their dear leader cancelled research for. The planet would be better off without their willful stupidity. Bunch of stupid fucks barely smart enough to not drown in a shower.
His piss poor handling of Covid
Sorry, but no.
Covid was handled poorly by a significant population that denied it and went batshit crazy after staying home 10 days. Fucking idiots won COVID.
And if he hadn’t been such a cunt about it maybe his moronic followers/enablers wouldn’t have been such pieces of shit themselves. A leader should lead, and he lead us into a cesspit of stupid fucking assholes with his flippant attitude and approach.
While I won’t argue the public at large were fucking morons, he fomented the whole thing.
I would put far more blame on Facebook and Joe Rogan. Trump signed off on shut down, and when he got sick that was quite inspiring. He signed the Warp speed law and that made a massive difference. He could have played it like Sweden and just ignored COVID completely.
Even Obama and his planned response would have got the same results from a country full of assholes.
Every day I’m disappointed that Musk and friends continue to just walk around living free.
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.
the worst thing you can do is execute Elon Musk
Doing nothing would be worse
But we might see him suffer and die in terror, and that would be a delight.
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.
Be the change you want to see in the world
The most apt imagery is the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, as a metaphor for every institution that was dismantled by DOGE.
It’s easy for anyone to hire guys with excavators to tear down a building, if you don’t care about the building’s contents, its purpose or the environment around it. You don’t even need to know how to get a ballroom built even if that’s what you’d want after. Without pre-emptive restrictions and enforcement of checks on the executive’s power, the destruction can always be faster than the judicial system that would say “that’s wrong, don’t do that”.
yeah, and nobody is talking about it because the zone is flooded, as they say
Also the Gaza genocide got worse.
Nice work, protest-non-voting-lefties. I’d say to remember this when whoever you don’t like wins the nom for 2028, but it wouldn’t matter then either.
Not disputing that Trump is worse than Harris, but you could have picked an issue on which they disagreed.
I did.
No, you did not.
I believe the word she used was “ironclad”
Chop plunk
