Defending "Our Bureaucracy"

For Democrats and progressives, there's no democracy outside the administrative state

Here’s what “Resistance Is Futile” looks like…

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One very effective method of winning a political fight is to get the other side to defend the indefensible.

This thought occurred to me yesterday as I watched Congressional Democrats rally in Washington DC against the Trump Administration’s attempt to bring some accountability to government. DODGE tsar Elon Musk’s look into the books of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) brought forth some very embarrassing information about how our tax dollars are being put to work around the world. Institutional contractors in gender development offices around the world got $16 million. The Center for Climate-Positive Development got $4 million. A cool $1.5 million was expended to promote DEI in Serbian workplaces. The production of a DEI musical in Ireland was subsidized to the tune of $70,000. Staging a transgender opera in Columbia cost Uncle Sam $47,000. A transgender comic book for Peru was a relative bargain at $37,000.

And here’s the topper: In 2016—that is, toward the end of Barack Obama’s second term—USAID financed a cement factory in Gaza. The price tag was $310 million. The beneficiary was Hamas, which needed cement to reinforce and extend its network of terrorist tunnels. This is what happens when po-mo progressive bureaucrats are let off the leash.

USAID does provide traditional forms of foreign aid: food assistance, basic healthcare and vaccination, etc. and this indeed was the agency’s original mission. But it seems doubtful that President John F. Kennedy, who created USAID by executive order in 1961, would look with approval on the dubious expenditures listed above. His idea was to use humanitarian aid to further the goals of US foreign policy in a positive manner, not to promote the daffy obsessions of a radical political faction.

But over time, USAID evolved in precisely that direction. It became a law unto itself, claiming independent status, contemptuous of congressional oversight, substituting the priorities of its progressive staff and NGO clients over those of US foreign policy. Well, those days appear to be over. President Trump has appointed Secretary of State Rubio as the acting director of USAID, and he will see to it that henceforth, the agency functions as originally intended.

Democrats and progressives are exceedingly furious over Musk’s audit of USAID and other federal agencies. Of course they are, and it’s not because they’re worried about a foreign aid cutoff. They’re furious because they constitute the party of government and are not at all eager to have government’s inefficiency and fiscal irresponsibility held up to public scrutiny and ridicule. So they rallied against Musk, and it was a sight to behold.

It seems unlikely that the American people will by persuaded by the show that the Dems put on. First, foreign aid is among the least popular types of federal government spending. A robust majority of the American people believe that America spends too much overseas. Second, federal government employees are not wildly popular with the public. And third, the behavior of the rally participants was a resounding own goal. Of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, let it suffice to say that it’s time for him to take a step back. As usual, Representative Jasmine Crockett was both profane and incoherent. Sounding like Granny Clampett on LSD, Senator Elizabeth Warren ranted on and on about the evils of Elon—not one single American ever voted for him, she yelled. (Well, for that matter nobody elected the bureaucrats at USAID who gave Hamas a cement factory, either.) Naturally, the Dems denounced Musk—wait for it—as a Nazi. And stealing a line from MAGA 2016, the crowd chanted, “Lock him up!”

But as usual, it was Representative Maxine Waters who stole the show—screaming and ranting and generally behaving like a lunatic on the lam from the giggle emporium. Honestly, the Democrats would be well advised to keep that grotesque harpy far away from the cameras—miles, in fact!

The general line followed by speakers at the rally was that the Ogre Trump and his familiar, Musk, are plotting to deconstruct the federal government, and that this is a crime against humanity. The fact that Trump is the head of the executive branch, that he has a perfect right to inquire into the doings of his employees, and that the American people have a right to see how the taxes they pay are being spent, was never mentioned amid the cries that “our democracy” is under threat. No, the real threat to “our democracy” is that people might get a look behind the curtain, to see how the sausage actually is made. And that possibility terrifies the broad Left.

We may be fairly certain that as the Trump/Musk audit proceeds, many more examples of wasteful spending, fraud, and corruption will come to light. Medicare, for example, hemorrhages money to the tune of $100 billion per year, due partly to fraud and partly to bureaucratic incompetence. Social Security fraud is another major problem. The Social Security Administration’s inspector general has estimated that between 2105 and 2022, improper payments, many of them due to fraud, cost the system $72 billion, though some of this money was eventually recovered.

Then there’s the Department of Education. Is it really needed? True, a good deal of federal funding flows to public education—but that job could be handled by an office staffed with a couple of hundred accountants and clerks. DoE has around 4,400 employees. What are they doing? Given the parlous state of public education in America, especially in many of our largest cities, the answer seems to be: nothing much.

By rallying to the side of the administrative state, the comrades have condemned themselves to defend the indefensible—indeed, they’ve volunteered to defend the indefensible. And it’s a pretty shoddy defense: Check out the Resistance Left content on Substack Notes and you’ll find reams of stuff like this:

Social media at its worst has the power to dumb down and trivialize anything, especially when it comes to politics. I find it impossible to believe that people who post such things believe that they’re striking a blow for “our democracy.” They’re just venting their anger and frustration over the turn that American politics has taken: a turn against the jewel in the crown of progressivism: the administrative state. And that drives the Resistance Left to distraction: Trump’s setting the national agenda, and the comrades are having a collective nervous breakdown.