Because collapse is often incredibly slow! The Roman Empire declined for centuries. The US, I believe, has been collapsing since the 1970s. These things can take a while, often imperceptibly slowly. And yet here we are, staring down the barrel of a cessation of the US government’s administrative capacity.

I don’t think Musk and Trump are thinking in these terms. One is a drug-addled Nazi and the other is an increasingly demented crime boss. Their decisions are driven primarily by their unrestrained impulses to aggrandize themselves and hurt others. There is no real coherent plan beyond “steal as much as you can for yourself” and “punish as many other people as you can.” By gutting the US government, they are in many ways making these goals harder to reach.

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