Allow Me A Brief Burst Of Angry Moralizing

Singal-Minded is not going to be a #Resistance publication, but I just want to pause a beat on what’s happening right now

This piece was originally longer. It included a lot of social-media posts from “dissident right” or “new right” or “far right” — or whatever we are calling them — influencers who seem very upset that folks like Armand Domalewski are pointing out that the decisions the Trump administration and Elon Musk and DOGE have made appear to have have quite literally killed people for no reason.

Domalewski, for example, highlighted the fact that overseas, people who rely on USAID for healthcare — including Sudanese infants — have simply died because of the sudden and sweeping funding pauses and outright program cancellations DOGE instituted after Trump’s inauguration. There was one article in the Times about women who had medical devices left inside them, and another about farmers who voted for Trump getting screwed over; The Washington Post published a harrowing account of foreign workers who had to scramble out of a conflict zone, leaving their possessions (and in at least one case, a dog) behind because suddenly they did not have access to the resources they were supposed to have access to. Or here’s The Telegraph on the death of a 71-year-old as (apparently) the direct consequences of Trump and DOGE’s decisions.

It goes without saying that this is merely the tip of the iceberg. And around the time all this was all going on, Elon Musk gleefully tweeted:

We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Could gone [sic] to some great parties.

Did that instead.

Online, new/dissident/far-right influencers are treating it as childish and ridiculous to care that people are probably dead because of the rushed and disorganized and incompetent and in-many-cases-illegal efforts at “cost-cutting” spearheaded by Musk.¹ It’s “emotional manipulation,” they keep saying. Plus: Isn’t it also bad that some of these places are so reliant on U.S. aid? Isn’t that the real crime, that we let them become dependent?

I’m not going to quote these influencers directly. What they’re saying is callous and idiotic and I’m trying to simply make a point here, not stoke the endless online beef that makes it harder for people to take all this seriously.

One of the most frustrating things about this crop of midwits is that they seem to be completely new to politics. For example, disputes about the efficacy of international aid aren’t new. They couldn’t be less new. Talk to anyone who has done international aid and, while they don’t all agree, they will likely have some critique of how it’s delivered, if not the overall project. “We should suddenly and without announcement pull healthcare access from vulnerable people around the world” is not a meaningful approach unless you are either callous or a truly hardened sociopath.

Similarly, a lot of people think the U.S. government spends too much money, and that too much of it is wasted. Setting aside the asininity of “feeding USAID into the woodchipper” as a cost-savings measure, given what a small percentage of the U.S. budget it comprises and the obvious potential positive externalities of the U.S. engaging in health and development services in other countries (setting aside broader, more zoomed-out questions about the long-term feasibility and efficacy of our aid efforts), this, again, is no one’s idea of a sane or caring person’s conservative approach to economics.

What’s going on really is bad and morally indefensible. Trump and Musk would be well within their rights to legally attempt to rein in the size of government, if they think that’s particularly important. But that would mean actually writing legislation and working with agencies to downsize in a sane way that will lead to as little death and hardship and (less importantly) as few lawsuits as possible. It could be as simple as, you know, not leaving medical devices inside women who are participating in clinical trials overseas. Giving some notice and some opportunities for other aid groups, local or foreign, to pick up the slack.

I’m going to do my best not to write Orange Man Bad over and over and over in this newsletter. I think what really gets me about the present moment, though, is the fact that the Trumpians thoroughly trounce everyone, control everything, and still are intent on breaking things rather than passing legislation. That’s partly because neither Donald Trump nor Elon Musk has the attention span to actually understand federal agencies and spending, and it’s partially because their movement is 90% animated by resentment, and resentment tends to break things rather than shrink or reform them.

Negative externalities are a thing. You can cut a program and think you are saving $50 million, but if you don’t understand what that program does or who relies on it or profits from it — and Musk shows zero sign of even being able to accurately read, comprehend, and convey the contents of basic budgeting documents — cutting that program may end up costing you more than you save! I mean, think about the lawsuits alone: Each one of these has the potential to cost the government a lot of money. Why not, you know, follow the law? Along those same lines: Whatever you think about the size of the U.S. budget, if you suddenly cut off payments to someone who was relying on them and didn’t have a chance to plan ahead, that, too, is going to have knock-on effects. A shock to a single household’s income reverberates well beyond that house — it ripples out into the neighborhood and sometimes beyond.

What I’m saying is that what’s going on now is both sloppy and morally grotesque, and it’s disingenuous to say “Oh, so you think it’s morally grotesque to care more about Americans than the world?” or “You think it’s morally grotesque to cut government funding?” Like this? Yes. Absolutely. I don’t understand how anyone could think otherwise. This is a disaster.

I have something already written and scheduled for Wednesday morning that has nothing to do with Trump.

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Questions? Comments? Ways to cut $1 trillion from the U.S. budget with literally zero downside, act now, limited-time offer? I’m at singalminded@gmail.com, on Twitter at @jessesingal, or on Bluesky at @jessesingal.com.

WASHINGTON, DC — FEBRUARY 11: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, accompanied by U.S. President Donald Trump (R), and his son X Musk, speaks during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on February 11, 2025, in Washington, DC. Trump is to sign an executive order implementing the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) “workforce optimization initiative,” which, according to Trump, will encourage agencies to limit hiring and reduce the size of the federal government. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

1. This is completely laughable.