Naive Ignorance

A thing happened on Saturday. A number of cities, domestic and foreign, saw protestors gather under a "Hands Off" banner, to voice objection to Trump policies - and deride Trump, Musk, and the people who support them.

Placards offered slogans like:

• MAGA - Morons Are Governing America

• Let Them Eat Teslas

• Make America Normal Again

• Trump Still Sucks

• Know Your Parasites - Deer Tick - Dog Tick - Luna Tick

• What Are You Doing To My Democracy of 2 1/2 Centuries?

• Veterans Against Fascism

• Fags Against Fascism

• Dump Trump

• Resist Like It's Germany in 1938

• Women Are Sick Of This Shit

• Putin's Most Useful Idiots

And... a litany of "Hands Off..."

• Our Schools

• Books

• Free Speech

• Arts

• NATO

• Civil Rights

• Veterans Benefits

• Public Lands

• Libraries

• Social Security

• Science

• Human Rights

• Our Democracy

• My Uterus

• The Dept Of Education

• HIV Funding

• Medicare

• PBS

• Disability Rights

You get the idea.

Broadly speaking, the Hands Off demands fall into two categories: The spending of Other People's Money, and stuff that isn't actually being threatened.

First, the OPM.

This was foreseeable and inevitable. The reason that government spending has grown and grown and grown is because the vast majority only ever want cuts to stuff they don't care about. They have their sacred cows and their gravy trains, and so when it comes time to say "let's fix this mess," they say "as long as you do it to someone else." We have become a society that has absolutely no qualms about believing we are entitled to take and spend Other People's Money if we deem the purpose a good one.

Second, the straw men.

Things like "our schools" refer to... what, exactly? The elimination of a federal department that has done nothing to improve education, that has done a lot to make it worse, and that really shouldn't exist at all?

What about Medicare? There is zero doubt that Medicare, left unmodified, will become insolvent in a decade or so. Moreso, DOGE is further highlighting what many of us already knew - that there is massive waste, abuse, mispayment, fraud, and the like in the system. And has been for a long time. Back when Obamacare was being debated, I blogged that Medicare lost to waste, fraud, etc more than the entire private healthcare sector earned in profits. In other words, anyone who cared to look knew that hundreds of billions were being wasted.

That applies to countless other DOGE "revelations." That there was and is waste-fraud-inefficiency-errors has been talked about forever by people who give a damn. It's those who don't who are either genuinely surprised or "shocked, shocked!" to hear about it all.

The genuinely surprised could be forgiven their naive ignorance (really, how can any thinking adult believe the government isn't rife with waste and inefficiency) if they demanded action and supported DOGE, even with qualifications. But, when they protest the remedying, my propensity to forgive evaporates. By some estimates, the annual waste-fraud-inefficiency-errors exceeds a trillion dollars. Out of roughly $7T in spending. When fifteen percent, or perhaps a lot more, of what I pay in taxes every year gets the equivalent of a match and a can of lighter fluid, I have every reason to look askance at the people rooting for that to continue. When the nation is $37T in debt, and another $73T in unfunded liabilities, people who protest doing something about this don’t get any sympathy or empathy.

As for those who pretend the waste isn't there, so that they can keep feeding at the trough or otherwise spending my money in grotesque fashion? You are contemptible.

The latter are, I am certain, part of the organizing efforts that produced the Hands Off marches. As usual, many and perhaps most of the protesters were unaware that they were protesting things that weren't actually happening or genuinely at risk, and were (again, as usual) venting emotional outrage unsupported by facts.

Naive ignorance.

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An afterthought: While there are some skeptics of DOGE and of Trump that protest the process (and in some cases I number myself among them), I have concluded that many “process” protests are merely veils for a different truth. Whether that truth be "I don't want my sacred cows gored" or "I hate Trump therefore I oppose whatever he does" doesn't really matter.