as someone said "Rich kids playing chicken with the
lives of the peasantry."
"The director of the Social Security Administration
actually said, with actual words, that he’d shut down
the agency if he did not get clarity from a judge.
Before I get to what the judge said, let that sink in.
The man in charge of Social Security said the door is
now open to stopping payments to scores of millions of
elderly people if he did not get something that he
wants from some person whom he dislikes.
The man responsible said, in essence, that he is going
to dare this person whom he dislikes to not do what he
wants, and if she does not do that thing, he’s going to
shut down Social Security, in the process almost
certainly killing some of those scores of millions of
people.
Do it.
Or the old man gets it.
This is what you say when you have no fear of voters,
not only those of us who are working and paying into a
system that may be the only guarantee of survival after
we’re done working, but also of that class of voter
that shows up for every election, from the president to
the city hall comptroller. This is what you say when
being held democratically accountable for your words
and deeds is an afterthought, if even that.
This is also what you say when you’re dry-running the
concept of a nefarious future plan, perhaps in this
case, stealing from a gigantic pool of money that every
working person has been paying into since they started
working, then blaming the theft on some boogeyman.
What did the judge say? She said Elon Musk’s “DOGE”
does not have rightful authority to access the computer
systems of the Social Security Administration, which
contain “personally identifiable information,” and
ordered it to delete previously obtained files.
In reaction, Administrator Leland Dudek said the ruling
was too vague. “Everything in this agency is PII,” he
said. “Unless I get clarification, I’ll just start to
shut it down. I don’t have much of a choice here.”
Friday was the second time he said this. The first time
was Thursday.
The judge clarified herself, though she did not need
to, as Dudek’s demand for clarity was based on a
willful misreading of her order.
Even so, everything’s fine now, but also not fine, not
fine at all, because the man responsible for Social
Security has revealed himself to be a hostage-taker who
is willing to endanger the lives of scores of millions
of elderly people to get something in return, even the
stupidest thing.
More generally, Dudek has revealed the mindset of the
regime, which is to say, its criminal mindset, to wit:
there’s nothing we can’t do, as it can be justified by
the fact that no one is standing in our way. Not even
the most reliable voters will stand in our way. We
don’t fear them.
That the judge clarified herself is a case in point.
She didn’t need to, but Dudek forced her, which means
that future rulings are subject to whether the regime
believes they are right. That makes the regime the
final arbiter of the law. That leaves open the
likelihood of it saying that whatever it does is
“legal,” even if what it does is steal Social Security.
In light of this, we have wonder what some moderate
Democrats are thinking, as only their party has the
promise, politically, of standing in the regime’s way,
thus reminding it of the price to be paid for even
hinting at being willing to hold hostage scores of
millions of elders.
US Senator Adam Schiff was on a late night TV show
during which he said the return to power for the
Democrats is rooted in their ability to convince a
majority of Americans that they can “get shit done.”
Giving voice to the conventional wisdom among the
Democrats, Schiff stands in contrast to what some are
now calling a nascent tea party-like movement inside
the party, perhaps best represented by New York
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was the
main draw to a 30,000-person rally in Denver “against
oligarchy.”
I have said “oligarchy” is poor messaging, but the
point remains that AOC (as well as US Senator Bernie
Sanders, who was also at the rally) can draw crowds
this big because everything they say is a story. In
that story, there are good guys and there are bad guys.
There is no one else.
The good guys do not spend their time explaining why
they are good guys. They do not ask imaginary referees
for permission to fight the bad guys, because the bad
guys are not just bad. They’re evil. The good guys know
you can’t be reasonable with evil without becoming
evil.
AOC and the energy she’s leading are focused on
“oligarchy” right now, but it’s easy to imagine their
focus being redirected to transparently evil-doers,
such as the director of the Social Security
Administration appearing to test-run a literally
diabolical scheme to steal billions and billions and
billions from everyone who is not very obscenely rich."
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