The ancient Chinese had a name for it: “Death by a Thousand Cuts.” It was a form of hideous torture-and-murder they perpetrated against enemies, real or imagined.
The victim would be tied up and over the course of days gobs of flesh, including fingers, ears and genitals would be cut off as the victim, in screaming agony, slowly died.
Another cutter, one by the name of Elon Musk, is gleefully engaged in his own version of “Death by a Thousand Cuts.” He justifies his slashing attacks by calling them ways to eliminate fraud and waste. His merciless tactics involve “cuts” of another kind but with the same purpose: to cripple American agencies until they wither and die. Musk’s unkind cuts involve massive firings of federal employees and the closing of field offices, among other tactics, all the while demonizing good public servants and the hard work they do.
To use one example: the Social Security Administration. President Trump vowed many times he would not touch the SS system. But if laying off or firing thousands of its workers and shutting down so many offices isn’t “touching” it, what is?
Musk recently said Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” a “Ponzi” being a “scam intended to dupe investors.” To justify his reckless, ruthless cuts, Musk has spewed misinformation (inaccuracies) and disinformation (lies), including the contention that dead people and many folks born 150 years ago and longer are still getting monthly checks.
Here’s just one example of the pain Musk’s cuts are causing. An 82-year-old Seattle man was declared dead, so his SS checks were stopped. The “dead” man tried calling the area SS office, to no avail. Then he went to the office and had to stand in a line 50-people long. In the office were only a few SS workers left to help the waiting people. Finally, after a four-hour wait, the man was able to prove he was old alright – but not dead yet!
The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935. And since then, millions of retired and/or disabled Americans have been and (so far, hold your breath) are still able to survive without sinking into dead-end poverty, homelessness, hopelessness.
But along comes Elon Musk, an unelected “advisor” and the world’s richest man. Through the years, this “efficiency” honcho has received at least $22 billion in U.S. government payments for contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits for his two mega-companies, Tesla and SpaceX. That sounds a bit “Ponzi,” doesn’t it?
It’s obvious Musk was chosen to be Trump’s sic-‘em dog, a loud-barking Court Jester who takes the blame off of the King.
What a grim irony this grotesque, grinning chainsaw-wielding billionaire, this man of a thousand cuts, is using “fraud fighting” as his excuse to weaken our agencies and institutions, all the while imperiling the well-being of the elderly and so many other good, hard-working Americans.
Trump-Musk proclaim these attacks are necessary ways to achieve “government efficiency.” Should we laugh or cry? They are, in fact, ways to weaken and destroy agencies and programs that have worked so well for so long and that have made America great indeed.
These deaths by a thousand cuts will bring us back to dark times. Trump’s red-cap MAGA slogan should stand for “Make America Grim Again.”
