Editorial: American hellscape, technocrat heaven

With a recent excess of media coverage about Elon Musk — who is now the senior advisor to President Donald Trump — we know we’re not the only ones noticing that American politics are getting weird. 

During his Inaugural Ceremony, displayed on national television, Trump was flanked by tech billionaires — rather than his family and former presidents, which is tradition. This set the tone for his presidency, as Musk got one of the best seats in the house. 

Just last week, Tesla electric vehicles were parked in front of the White House as the president read from the company’s PR materials like a sleazy car salesman. 

Musk, the Technocrat, was Trump’s biggest single donor, giving $288 million to his campaign. He was then conveniently chosen as the senior advisor to the president and the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), named after an internet meme. 

It’s not unusual for a president to be bankrolled by America’s wealthiest. However, it is weird for them to flaunt it, waving the power that wealth gives you in the faces of their constituents. 

Through DOGE, Musk has been able to wield a power almost unprecedented by a non-elected, politically inexperienced government official. 

As political officials cozy up with billionaires, Musk’s evolution from America’s most embarrassing billionaire to a key player in the executive branch might turn out to be prophetic of the future of the U.S. 

In 2021, Time Magazine declared Musk “Person of the Year” and described him as someone who intended to “save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit.” But the article also used “clown” as one of his descriptors. At the time, this part of his character seemed charming at best and “cringe worthy,” yet innocuous, at worst. 

Now, as Musk has gained political power, he’s showcased ties to troubling politics by making an endorsement of Germany’s far-right party — Alternative for Germany, which has neo-nazi ties. Musk also gave what looked like a Hitler salute during his Inauguration Day speech, though he denied that was the meaning behind it, and posted in support of antisemitic conspiracy theories. 

As his power accumulates, his behavior can no longer be written off as “clownish” or “cringe-worthy.” He’s crippling American democracy. 

In 2025, it seems as though Musk’s goal was never to “save our planet.” Instead, it was to amass the most wealth and attention possible, and he’s achieving it by aligning himself with the online far-right. 

After purchasing Twitter — now called “X” — in an attempt to “promote free speech,” the 50-year-old billionaire eliminated rules banning hate speech. Within the first month and a half of his ownership of the app, Musk interacted with right-wing figures, using his platform to spread bigotry and misinformation 170 times, according to Media Matters.

Musk has tried to curate an online nerdy edgelord persona through extremist posts on X, attempting to offend his left-wing political opponents and upkeeping his reputation for gaming. But his gaming prowess was proven to be just smoke and mirrors when it was discovered that he hired people to play on his video game accounts for him. 

His position on the leaderboards of several popular video games, which he bragged about on the Joe Rogan podcast, including Diablo 4, were bought rather than earned. And the same could be said about his role in government. 

Musk gained his wealth through a series of successful business endeavors. After he merged X.com with a software company to become PayPal, everything Musk touched seemed to turn to gold. Now, he’s the world’s richest person, owning six companies, including SpaceX, xAI, The Boring Company, and X, which have benefited from Trump and DOGE’s deregulation. 

DOGE is purported to be an agency that saves government money by getting rid of the lazy bureaucrat who is “at the beach and in bubble baths,” wrote Sen. Joni Ernst, co-chair of the congressional DOGE caucus. In her statement to U.S. taxpayers, she cited a report by the Federal News Network that said only 6% of federal employees work in-person full time. This statistic is not true. 

USA Today fact checked this study and found that 54% of federal employees work in-person full time, and federal employees only make up 4% of U.S. government spending — so how much money is DOGE really saving?

DOGE is largely tackling non-defense, discretionary funding in its cuts, but this only accounts for 14.9% of federal spending. And the tactics that DOGE has used to take a “chainsaw to bureaucracy,” as Musk said on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, have created more confusion and messy legal battles than budget cuts. 

This is not to say there isn’t action needed in making some of the agencies that DOGE is targeting more cost efficient, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which enforces financial consumer protection laws, the Department of Education, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, among others.

However, the methods that DOGE is using in order to cut away inefficiencies, such as firing federal employees without doing sufficient research first, is only causing concerns of more inefficiency. For example, DOGE fired, then quickly rehired, the team in charge of the U.S.’ nuclear weapons. DOGE also fired and is attempting to rehire workers tied to bird flu response.

It shouldn’t be shocking that a government agency named after a meme — a meme that contains the image of a shiba inu with comic sans text and broken English — by a middle-aged, X edgelord is an agency that might not have American’s best interests at heart. 

Last year, Musk said, “I believe it’s a real weakness to be liked and I do not have that” in an interview with The New York Times, which has since been reported on Instagram pages like @alpha_leaders. 

However, all of Musk’s recent public endeavors — from his account on X being filled with reposts of people praising him, calling himself “dark MAGA” on stage with Trump, to faking proficiency in a video game — shows that Elon Musk wants to be liked so badly. 

Despite what he tries to project, Musk is not a politician. He is not a scientist. And he is not humanity’s salvation who is going to whisk us away to Mars as the planet dies. Instead, Elon Musk is a loser.