by Mark Harvey
To tear something down is infinitely easier than building something of benefit or beauty. Constructing an elegant house that will last through the ages, can take years. From a dream, to design, to approvals, to construction means gobs of money, skilled designers, and dedicated builders. When you see that handsome house perched just so on a hill, with its cedar siding, cased windows, and tidy balconies, know that dozens of men and women labored and strove to get it just right—hundreds of mornings planning, sawing, hammering, painting, plumbing and polishing.
But give me a forty-ton excavator and a couple of dump trucks, and I will demolish that house and clear the site in one day. To a person of evil intent and ill mind, tearing down so much effort in so little time will be a thrill.
That’s what makes vandalism so attractive to people with festering resentments. Destroying something precious to someone else in the dark of the night is the sort of sugar rush that thrills degenerates.
When the richest man in the world takes hammer and tongs to our government and delights in tearing down agencies central to our economy, farms, public health, environment, and foreign policy—when a man-child of his accidental consequence recklessly fires thousands of public employees without knowing the first thing about government, it’s time for anyone who does love this country to stand up and call out a flat NO!
Watching Elon Musk with his strange gothic uniforms of black jackets, t-shirts and ball caps, and reading his inane tweets sprinkled with juvenile humor, brings to mind a deeply insecure adolescent. And yet, that puffed-up adolescent is tearing apart the lives of thousands of Americans directly, and millions of people worldwide as a consequence.
Some Americans assume that because Musk is good at piling up money, he must be smart at governing. Sociologists have a few terms for that assumption: the Halo Effect or Domain Specific Overconfidence. We see it throughout American life: the ex-athlete who assumes he would naturally be a good senator or the celebrity with no science degree weighing in on virology. And it’s a hard notion to shake.
I’ve never been a Musk fan, but I had assumed he had read something of world history and the formation of American institutions. Watching him operate and listening to his declarations about how government should work, I seriously doubt that he’s ever read The Federalist Papers, knows a thing about the causes of The Great Depression, or has read anything substantive about Pax Americana and The Western Alliance. It’s sobering to consider that depth of ignorance in someone given so much power.
Of course the greatest vandal and the man allowing Musk to run rampant is President Trump. What’s to be written about the ignorance and recklessness of Trump that hasn’t already been written? That he opened up a California water reservoir to help with the fires in Los Angeles—when the water from that reservoir had no conveyance to get anywhere near Los Angeles? That the billions of gallons of water released will be sorely needed by farmers in the Central Valley this summer?
Is it possible that the President of the United States has so little understanding of the electric grid and renewable energy that he believes a setting sun or a dying wind would kill the power to our televisions and refrigerators?
Is it possible that the President never read about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs and the role they played in aggravating The Great Depression?
It feels like we have entered a dystopian world in just the seven weeks since Trump took office. One reaches for the dystopian literature to understand what’s happening and some of the classics—1984, Brave New World, The Trial—don’t capture the bizarre era as well as some obscure novels rarely discussed. Take The Sheep Look Up, a book written by John Brunner in 1972. In the science fiction novel, the earth has been so decimated with pollution and abuse that the water is largely undrinkable, the air too toxic to breathe, and the beaches of the world strewn with garbage. The President, called Prexy, has no solutions, just cute sound bites. As the world deteriorates to the point of collapse, he blames everything on communist rebels from Honduras. Sound familiar.
It would be one thing if Trump had a carefully thought-out plan to reduce government spending and reduce any corruption. But he is powered only by a thirst for vengeance and a need to destroy. His efforts to tear apart Biden’s Infrastructure Bill will hurt farmers in the reddest states and professors driving EV cars in the bluest states. Yes, his (and Musk’s) dismantling of USAID initially thrilled the MAGATS (most of whom know nothing about USAID). Then they learned that USAID was a major customer of grain-belt farmers, buying a million metric tons of commodities like wheat, rice, sorghum, and chickpeas every year. That’s a few billion dollars that states like Nebraska and Kansas won’t see anymore.
Then there’s the firing of so many men and women who manage public lands. As of this writing, 3,000 people have been fired from The Forest Service and 2,000 people have been fired from The Department of the Interior. I live near the White River National Forest and I know that it was understaffed before the firings. The Forest Service heavily relies on volunteers to patrol trails and campsites because they don’t have enough paid staff to do it. The BLM and Park Service never have sufficient staff to manage the millions of acres under their control. The National Park Service contributes about $55 BB to the US economy every year, so the savings of a few million dollars in salaries and what will consequently result in summer chaos is what’s called bad business.
The list goes on. It’s shocking. It’s discouraging. It’s disgusting.
Always tempting to throw out some tepid suggestions like, “Call your senator” or “Sign a Petition.” But the usual forms of protest seem quaint with what’s going on in today’s world. And I may be too optimistic—I often am—but it seems like there is a groundswell of opposition and anger to the wholesale vandalism of our country’s institutions and the world order.
There are raucous townhall meetings in the reddest states where congresspeople are shouted into silence after giving craven speeches supporting Musk and Trump. There are protests organized overnight in our greatest cities supporting Zelenski and Ukraine’s fight to survive the senseless invasion by Russia.
Most hopeful of all, perhaps, are the European nations, along with Canada, demonstrating a united front in support of some of the principles many of us still value: the sovereignty of free nations, trust in good science, a free press, and protection of the environment.
Watching those still sane nations meet in plenary forums can give an American conflicting emotions: the hope that they are strong enough to lead the world out of this dystopia; and a melancholy feeling that we are no longer a member of that group. It seems like a long time ago, but we were once the nation that beat the Nazis, helped rebuild Europe, eradicated polio, and wrote the Magna Carta of environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act.
In a recent speech observing the third anniversary of the Ukraine-Russia War, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen demonstrated a quality of leadership so badly needed in this country. She expressed Denmark’s admiration for Volodymyr Zelensky’s courage in defending Ukraine and its repulsion for Putin’s aggression. The contrast of her moral clarity to our craven president abandoning seventy years of supporting the Western Alliance couldn’t be starker.
In her speech she said something that we have to believe if we’re to get through this dreadful time. She said, “The best thing about heroes is that they always win at the end. And if they aren’t winning, then it’s not the end.” We’re not winning yet, and if we are to win, it will take the same sort of determination and courage shown by the prime minister of Denmark and the leader of Ukraine. If we’re to stop the complete vandalism of our nation by the reckless men and women who don’t care a wit about anyone besides themselves, we’ll need to be lion-hearted in our dissent, heroes in fighting for our land.