On Monday morning, employees for USAID got an email telling them to stay out of their headquarters. The email was signed by Gavin Kliger, one of the young engineers working with Musk who helped him gain control of the Office of Personnel Management last week.
In a late-night X Space over the weekend, Musk said that he and his DOGE cronies had gotten into USAID and found it wanting. “As we dug into USAID it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms,” Musk said. “If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless. USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple you just need to get rid of the whole thing. That’s why it’s got to go. It’s beyond repair.”
That is the way the USA works. The country elects a tyrant who runs the executive government stacked with their cronies, people who will back them and who need to be rewarded for their support (the spoils system). It has always been like that. They formed too early and didn’t have the benefit of evolving mature parliamentary democracies like the other British colonies.
It is the job of their sorry excuse for a parliament and the politicised institution that substitutes for a high court to keep the executive accountable but both have demonstrated an unwillingness to hold the executive to account and without a true separation of powers they are clearly in very dangerous territory.
The people of the US are in control of their own destiny. They have the numbers and the power to make their country whatever they want. If they fail to do so, through their cowardice or complacency it isn’t because they lack the ability but the will.