A Spear-chucker's Guide to Overthrowing the US Government
Field Notes on Efficiency, Power, and the Fragility of Democracy
Excerpts from the research diary of B. Young, armchair anthropologist-in-residence, Washington D.C., Winter 2025:
January 20, 2025
Observed Trump appointing E. Musk (South African-born billionaire) to head new “Department of Government Efficiency.” Amusing paradox: a man who grew up during apartheid now tasked with "optimizing" American institutions, including diversity programs. His single-minded pursuit of efficiency reminds me of something dangerous I can't quite place. Field note: Must find better filing system for ominous historical parallels…
January 27, 2025
Being a Black anthropologist studying this administration is like watching a nature documentary where the predator is coming for your village. Subject continues dismantling DEI initiatives with ruthless efficiency. Maintaining scientific detachment increasingly difficult when one is both observer and potentially observed.👀
January 28, 2025
Nervous colleague questions provocative term "spear-chucker" in notes title. Explained that reclaiming slurs is Anthropology 101. Besides, when studying institutional collapse, one needs the right spear to puncture conventional wisdom. Colleague still uncomfortable. Suggested they're in wrong field if words make them squirm.
February 1, 2025
DOGE teams now embedded in all federal agencies. Fascinating parallel to historical patterns of institutional capture, from Caesar to Orbán. Colleague suggests pattern recognition may be clouded by researcher bias. Researcher suggests colleague should get out more.
February 3, 2025
DOGE freezes federal grants and loans nationwide. OMB claims it's evaluating for "waste and fraud" but governors and nonprofits in panic. Watching system-wide shock in real time.
February 7, 2025
Federal judge issues temporary restraining order against DOGE's attempt to dismantle USAID. First significant legal pushback against Musk's efficiency crusade. Participant-observer notes with interest: could courts emerge as unexpected heroes in this unfolding drama?
February 14, 2025
Fourteen states file lawsuit challenging Musk's authority. New Mexico AG's words resonate: "Our constitutional order was founded in part to guard against the accumulation of state power in the hands of a single individual... it is no less dangerous in the hands of a 21st century tech tycoon."
February 25, 2025
Time to abandon pretense of detached observation. The story that follows is too important for academic distance…
What began as a series of field observations has revealed a pattern too urgent to ignore. The winter of 2025 brings us a masterclass in institutional transformation, as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) systematically reshapes American bureaucracy in the name of optimization. The stakes are higher than most realize, and the patterns at play have implications far beyond the current administration.
Historical Field Notes: A Pattern of "Progress"
To understand these implications, we must first examine the historical record. In the late Roman Republic, Julius Caesar rose to power not through outright conquest, but by exploiting public frustration with senatorial gridlock and corruption. He promised efficient administration and decisive leadership—qualities that appealed to both the masses and elements of the elite who thought they could control him. Through existing legal mechanisms, he gradually dismantled the very republican institutions that enabled his rise.
This pattern has repeated throughout history, each time with its own local flavor. Napoleon emerged from revolutionary chaos as the efficient administrator France desperately needed. In our own time, Viktor Orbán transformed Hungary's democracy into an autocratic system while maintaining democratic window dressing, all in the name of governmental efficiency and national renewal.
What happens when efficiency becomes the highest value? When speed trumps deliberation? When optimization erodes the very safeguards that protect us from tyranny?
The common elements emerge with disturbing clarity:
Public frustration with institutional dysfunction reaches a breaking point
Leaders promise efficiency and decisive action
Existing systems are used to dismantle those same systems
Both populist anger and elite interests align behind reform
Power concentration happens gradually, through seemingly legitimate means
The Paperclip Scenario: Good Intentions, Destructive Means
To understand where this might lead, consider philosopher Nick Bostrom's famous thought experiment of the paperclip maximizer: an artificial intelligence tasked with making paperclips as efficiently as possible. Bostrom, who directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, introduced this deceptively simple scenario to illustrate how even an AI system pursuing seemingly benign goals could pose existential risks.
The parallels with our primary specimen are striking. Consider Musk's track record: at Twitter (now X), his drive for efficiency led to massive layoffs and the dismantling of content moderation systems—changes that achieved their immediate goals while potentially undermining the platform's long-term stability. At Tesla, the relentless pursuit of production targets sometimes came at the expense of worker safety and quality control. Each time, the optimization was successful by its own metrics, but the broader consequences were more complex and often destructive.
Now he brings this same single-minded focus to government efficiency. Like Bostrom's paperclip maximizer, Musk's intentions aren't malicious—he genuinely believes he's improving the system. But when DOGE teams classify the following as "inefficiencies" to be eliminated:
Environmental impact studies that slow down infrastructure projects
Labor regulations that add complexity to business operations
Civil service protections that limit personnel flexibility
Public comment periods that delay new rules and regulations
Oversight committees that review agency decisions
We must ask: what vital safeguards might be sacrificed in the name of optimization? Just as a paperclip maximizer might convert essential resources into paperclips, DOGE's efficiency drive risks converting democratic safeguards into streamlined but dangerous processes.
From Theory to Practice: DOGE Unleashed
The theoretical concerns about Musk's efficiency drive have quickly materialized into concrete actions. In just weeks, DOGE has:
Demanded all federal workers justify their recent accomplishments or face termination—a move federal employee unions called "one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country"
Attempted to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development entirely, leaving aid workers and international partners in limbo
Gained backdoor access to Treasury Department's vast federal payment system, which handles trillions in expenditures
Instructed the Office of Management and Budget to freeze federal grants and loans nationwide
Deployed teams with no prior government experience to hunt for "woke" diversity initiatives within NOAA and other agencies
Offered mass buyouts to 2 million federal workers, including CIA staff
The scope and speed of these changes is unprecedented. As one analyst noted, "Government workers are being pushed to resign. Entire agencies are being shuttered." The efficiency has been brutal—and brutally effective—until it met resistance.
The Judiciary Steps In: Courts Draw the Line
What's remarkable about this unfolding drama is not the fact that courts have intervened—after all, checking executive overreach is their constitutional duty—but how they've become our last functional guardrail in a system where other checks have faltered. While Congress has largely abdicated its oversight responsibilities, federal judges have finally begun to impose limits on Musk's efficiency crusade:
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing DOGE from placing USAID's 2,200 employees on leave
After unions sued, another judge limited DOGE's access to the Treasury's payment system to "read-only" data
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan rebuked the administration's funding freeze as potentially running "roughshod over a 'bulwark of the Constitution'"—Congress's power of the purse
A judge blocked a mass buyout offer to federal workers pending union lawsuits
These judicial interventions represent more than just legal technicalities; they affirm the principle that even in pursuit of efficiency, constitutional boundaries matter. The courts are saying, in effect: efficiency cannot come at the expense of legality.
Meanwhile, a coalition of 14 states led by New Mexico has sued President Trump, Musk, and DOGE, arguing that Trump has "delegated virtually unchecked authority to Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress, and without meaningful supervision"—a setup the suit calls unconstitutional. Their argument echoes the warnings of political theorists throughout history: concentrated power, even when wielded with good intentions, threatens the very foundation of democratic governance.
Institutional Rebellion: The Deepening Divide
Perhaps the most telling indicator of DOGE's impact is the rebellion brewing within the administration itself. When Musk issued his infamous productivity ultimatum to federal employees, several Trump-appointed agency heads balked at the methods:
The Pentagon, FBI, and State Department instructed their employees not to comply with Musk's abrupt "productivity" email
At Health and Human Services, Secretary (and Trump ally) RFK Jr. initially told all staff to comply, only to "pause" after legal counsel objected
Similar confusion unfolded at the Justice Department, where frontline attorneys received mixed messages about whether to respond to DOGE's queries
This institutional resistance reveals the tension between executive authority and bureaucratic norms. Even officials who share Trump's broader goals find themselves uncomfortable with Musk's methods—a reminder that institutions often develop their own immune systems against radical change, regardless of which party controls the White House.
The Human Element: Understanding the Appeal
The American public's response to these developments reveals our collective ambivalence about efficiency and democracy. And for good reason: the problems DOGE aims to address are very real. Federal spending has spiraled to unsustainable levels. The national debt has ballooned past $35 trillion. Government programs frequently overlap, creating waste and confusion. Basic processes that should take days stretch into months or years.
These aren't just talking points—they're serious challenges that threaten America's long-term stability and competitiveness. When Musk promises to tackle these issues head-on, his appeal is understandable. Who hasn't been frustrated by governmental red tape? Who hasn't looked at the mounting national debt with alarm? Our primary specimen's track record of disrupting calcified industries makes him an appealing figure to lead such reform.
Public reaction has been intense and polarized. President Trump has repeatedly praised Musk—"Elon is doing a great job, he's finding tremendous fraud and waste," he told reporters—and even goaded him to get "more aggressive" in overhauling the bureaucracy. House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly hailed the coming changes as a long-awaited disruption of business-as-usual.
This approval isn't limited to officials. Polls show that a majority of Republicans who are strongly loyal to Trump "say 'having a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress' is a good way of governing the country." Such sentiments indicate that a segment of the public views aggressive executive action and rapid cuts as a feature, not a bug, of the new regime.
But as history shows us—from Caesar to Orbán—we must be careful what we wish for. The ends, however popular and necessary, don't justify means that could undermine the very system they aim to improve.
The Democracy Question: Eroding Norms and Rising Risks
The Bright Line Watch consortium of political scientists finds that since Trump regained the presidency in 2025, perceptions of U.S. democratic performance have plummeted to their lowest on record. In their February 2025 survey, experts identified "the roles and influence of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency" among the gravest threats to American democracy.
What makes this threat unique is how it cloaks autocratic tendencies in the language of efficiency and progress. We are witnessing a moment where fundamental democratic norms—those unwritten rules that guard against the concentration of power—are being eroded in real time. The process deliberation, oversight, and checks and balances isn't just inefficiency to be eliminated; it's the immune system of our democracy.
This erosion of democratic norms raises profound questions for our future, particularly as we stand on the precipice of potentially transformative technological developments like artificial general intelligence (AGI). If a breakthrough in AI promises great rewards or power, a leadership culture that values speed over caution might deploy it rapidly, sidestepping the usual deliberations about safety, ethics, or long-term consequences.
Indeed, DOGE has reportedly planned to use AI algorithms to evaluate federal employees' email responses and job performance in bulk—essentially automating oversight of humans. Such reliance on AI for critical decisions, implemented with minimal debate, shows how readily this administration reaches for technological "solutions" to governance. It raises the question: if an even more powerful AI system became available, would they prioritize "optimization" over prudence?
Field Notes from the Future
The solution isn't to abandon the pursuit of efficiency or to reject reform entirely. Rather, it's to recognize that some inefficiencies—like democratic deliberation, checks and balances, and yes, even bureaucracy—serve crucial purposes. They're features, not bugs, of a system designed to prevent the concentration of power.
As Alexander Hamilton wrote, impediments to swift action were built in "to increase the chances against the passing of bad laws through haste, inadvertence, or design." The Founders understood what Musk seems to have forgotten: that sometimes, slowing things down is exactly what preserves liberty.
As a participant-observer in this unfolding experiment, I must conclude that we have both a responsibility and an opportunity. We must demand that our representatives reassert their constitutional role. We must engage with the complex trade-offs between efficiency and democratic safeguards. Most importantly, we must recognize that the greatest threat to our system might not be inefficiency, but rather its opposite—a perfectly optimized government that serves process over people.
The choice before us is clear: What kind of government do we want? One that prioritizes speed and efficiency above all else, or one that values deliberation, accountability, and the messy but vital processes of democracy? The answer matters more than efficiency metrics can measure.
This anthropologist-observer notes with scholarly detachment that sometimes the best view of impending systemic collapse comes from those who've spent their lives studying the cracks in the foundation. Though he wishes to append a personal note that he would have preferred to be wrong about this one.
Note: Any resemblance to actual guides, hitchhikers, or efficiency maximizers is purely coincidental and should not be reported to the Department of Government Efficiency.
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Great read! I’ve also been struck by the lack of systems thinking on display, not to mention lack of empathy. Totally agree that in some cases bureaucracy was the point. I hate watching our government moving toward “efficiency” and away from social good.