The Dem Demonization Strategy against Musk is weaker than DDS against Trump, but also weakens & dilutes the criticisms.

Privatizing was your suggestion not mine. BPA is one of the more functioning elements of the Federal Government, but there is no reason why a grid has to be run by the Federal Government just because part of the Pacific Northwest has been, and that need not look like privatization.

It seems though that you think a privately-run grid would be worse for you personally. That’s as may be. People have choices about where they live and how easy and what kind of utilities are available certainly should inform those choices.

I haven’t seen anyone here talking about it, but there were also a bunch of Bonneville Power Administration people who are gone and legacy media did try to inflate that into an anti-Musk/anti-Trump story and trying to scare us about power outages, but if you read carefully they are mostly people who took the “fork in the road” and not people fired–people who’d rather have the money than the job.

In the short run, BPA will figure something out. In the long run, since this isn’t the Soviet Union I don’t see why FedGov needs to own and run a power grid.

The other big anti-DOGE story I didn’t see mentioned here was the fired NNSA employees, with hyperventilation about the safety of our nuclear weapons.

But from what I can tell these were people in charge of paperwork, they’re not literally guarding the weapons.

Similarly, if the whole Department of Education were fired, schools would not have to close, because those people do paperwork and write checks, they actually don’t educate anyone. Just because people work in a government department called something does mean they are actually essential for doing that thing, though the legacy media would like us to believe so and is probably too ignorant to know differently.

The best possible response these people will get from ordinary Americans is
“Suck it up, buttercup; nobody else gets the security you think you’re entitled to, and there’s nothing unfair about you losing it.”
And a lot of them will get told “count yourself lucky you’re not going to jail for 10 to 20 years for defrauding your employer; that’s what would happen if life were fair.”

In the last 30 years which of us hasn’t experienced a sudden redirection, found him or herself without income, lose a job or a position we loved out of the blue and in a way we couldn’t have anticipated?

Most of what shocks me about the government employees losing their jobs now is that they’re experiencing this with the newness of a child who still thought the world was a giant, and “fair” schooling experience, even though some are my age or even older. It just tells me they have been insulated from the real world. Perhaps it’s part of being embedded in the over-structure of the planners that you have faith in it. This mostly astonishes me.

Yes, I feel sympathy with those who aren’t crooked or corrupt. Because I’ve been there. We’ve found ourselves going from a two-income household to a zero-income household suddenly when we had toddlers and the economy was problematic for job-finding. I’ve found myself suddenly without income in a year when we had sudden and unexpected demands on our income. I think we all have. All of us adults. So we feel empathy. We know what it’s like. Who doesn’t? (Though let me tell you, the eight month deal is better than anything I got or anyone I know got. And don’t be a fool. Of course if you take the deal they’ll pay. They have to. The only thing that would stop it is a complete collapse of the economy and at that point we all have problems.)

All of us.

So, for those caught in this: Yes, it sucks. I do realize it sucks. But you know what? We can’t go on the way we’ve been. We simply don’t have the money for this. At some point we have to retrench and shrink government, because government is not the productive part of economy. It’s parasitical on the real economy. And at this point the economy is dying of being sucked dry by the government. And the government is suffering from too much money, which is why it comes up with the idea that it’s up to it to finance transgender operas in Serbia. Or even crazier stuff.

To the rest of us, yes they will push the hostage puppy at you. The hostage puppy being the cute sweet puppy that the government is feeding and looking after, as well as doing a lot of things that would look good on a demon’s resume.

Yes, the puppy is real, and the puppy will suffer, but behind it are all the things that would really buff up the demon’s resume.

While it’s not fair (that word again) for the puppy to suffer and die, and all good people will hurt over it, the fault for the puppy’s death is not on the people who stopped the government leeching on working people and creators. It’s on the people who use the puppy and its cuteness to hide their heinous crimes. In fact, in war hiding your fighters behind the innocent is what’s known as a war crime.

Comments regarding the plight of the departing government employees are not overwhelmingly sympathetic.

I have been doxxed. Rather than let others control the narrative, I am addressing this directly.

My name is Jennica Pounds. I recently resigned from my job to pursue DOGE-adjacent efforts full-time. While my background check is still in progress, my ultimate goal is to work with the Administration to cut waste and improve efficiency.

What began as a side hobby became a mission when I uncovered the role of NGOs in these issues. This is not about left or right. This is about us—the people.

I gave up everything for this—my safety, my career—because I believe in what I am doing.

I am 100% Deaf and nonverbal. My lack of signing fluency does not make me any less Deaf. It is a result of a language impairment related to my autism called expressive dysphasia, which affects my ability to construct language fluently in real-time.
…

I do not believe the Deaf community should be politically aligned with any party. A priority of mine has always been on holding the Administration accountable to Deaf Americans, including advocating for policy changes such as allowing a second interpreter camera stream on television broadcasts. I will continue using my platform to push for these necessary changes.

Unites State President Donald Trump has stepped in to support Elon Musk after the billionaire received backlash for sending out an email threatening to fire federal workers who would not explain their work achievements.
…
The President then offered his backing to Musk, suggesting many federal workers could be fired as the US is “incompetently run”.

“I think Elon wants to, and I think it’s a good idea,” President Trump said of Musk’s demand during the first meeting of his cabinet on Thursday.

“You got a lot of people that have not responded. So we’re trying to figure out, do they exist? Who are they? And it’s possible that a lot of those people will be actually fired.

“If that happens, that’s OK, because that’s what we’re trying to do. This country has gotten bloated, fat, disgusting, and incompetently run.”

It is the second time in two days President Trump has commented on the issue, giving a misleading response for workers.

“It’s somewhat voluntary,” he said. He also claimed “if you don’t answer, I guess you get fired”.
…
Musk joined President Trump’s cabinet meeting on Wednesday, where he said the email was a “pulse check” to check government money was going to workers who were actually alive, as he suggested dead people may still be on the payroll.

The President acknowledged some cabinet members disagreed with the directive, but claimed “for the most part” they were “thrilled”.

“If they aren’t, I want them to speak up,” he said before asking cabinet members in the room and receiving no response.

Choosing not to answer is voluntary, but there are consequences.
However, if a Cabinet Member did object (as Patel and Gabbard did), they aren’t going to do it in front of the press (even if AP and Reuters aren’t there to misreport it).

Sarah Hoyt did a post on that feeling recently. Sounds like you are getting the same vibes she did.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2025/02/17/grab-your-mallet/

I’ve been trying to explain how I feel with what’s happening in the country, and with what Doge is doing…

Beyond becoming addicted to the Doge site… which is sad and pathetic, but then you guys knew that. I mean, that I’m at severe risk of becoming addicted.

But there is a feeling behind all this, and I finally pinned it. It’s the feeling when the wall came down in Berlin.

I don’t think I can fully explain how amazing, wonderful, shocking and maybe a little scary it was to those of you born and raised after the fall of the wall. or even to those of you who were in elementary school at the end of the cold war.

For me, for my generation, particularly those of us who grew up in Europe (which includes any number of you guys who grew up in military bases) there was the overwhelming certainty at any moment the whole thing would go hot, and we’d have maybe a second to kiss our asses goodbye before being vaporized.

The idea/feel was not just that the countries behind the iron curtain were as powerful as the US (let’s not pretend Europe made any kind of contribution to this scariness) but also were secretly more powerful and better organized.

We knew they were more ruthless. We knew people died trying to climb the wall from East to west, because the communists would gun them down with no mercy: Men, women, children, babes in arms.

And then one day we woke up to images of the wall being torn down. Not by armies, not by professionals, but by members of the public who had had about enough. After all the rebellions that failed, after all the despair, common people on the street were just destroying this symbol of oppression with mallets, chisels, hammers, crow bars, and at the end of the process, bare hands.

Stock warning to new readers: Sarah writes daily and doesn’t always edit out the typos and stream-of-consciousness disconnects, but what she says is always worthwhile.