Elon Musk and DOGE are doing what amounts to a comprehensive audit of the federal government, and it is driving the Democrats nuts. 

This is, of course, because the federal budget is their piggy bank that funds both the leftists themselves and all their evil plans. 

But for many bureaucrats, the resistance to Musk's "intrusion" into what they consider their business has a simpler source: they just see themselves as doing their jobs, and in their view, nobody has a right to watch over them as they spend the taxpayers' money. The average bureaucrat cares less about what the money is spent on than that the managers above them don't bother them. 

It's not until you get to the top levels of the bureaucracy that you hit the Deep State and the political appointees. 

None of these people think you have a right to know how they spend the money and are genuinely angry when you ask. 

Elon Musk just posted a video from an interview that Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense under Biden and long-standing Deep Stater participated in. Sitting down with John Stewart she had a wide-ranging discussion with Stewart and seemed genuinely baffled and offended that he questioned how the Pentagon spends its money. 

This is what we’re dealing with everywhere in government
pic.twitter.com/ObsfvINEQ2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2025

Sure, we can't account for where it goes, but that doesn't mean it didn't go to good things... And the deeper Stewart tried to probe--and he was clearly and rightly exasperated by the answers--the more bizarre her answers became. 

Stewart, who I often though not always disagree with, asked a perfectly legitimate question: if you can't pass an audit and don't know where hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars went how can you justify your budget, especially when there are clear deficiencies that haven't been addressed. 

Money goes down a rabbit hole, but you can't feed your troops... Hicks' answer is simple: give us more money. 

This is the bureaucratic mindset in a nutshell. What we do is good because it is we who do it. We are the arbiters of goodness and should have unlimited access to resources with no accountability at all. 

How dare you ask? I particularly liked her jibe at Stewart: what childhood trauma made you care about the money we spend?!

You see the same thing at USAID, where the only test for whether the money was spent well was that it was spent at all. If it was approved and sent out, it must be good. Some poor African children will eat better because USAID helped build terrorist tunnels in Gaza and censorship organizations in Europe. 

Topple a government or two, and the world is obviously a better place. Because we said so. 

I genuinely believe that the ordinary federal worker is just doing his job as he sees it, but that he sees his job as funneling money into what the hive mind, led by the Deep State, decides is good work. Transing people in far off lands? That is the cause of the day, so spend $20 million on it. 

Using @DataRepublican tool I searched for "transgender"

$466,432,716 in first 100 results (tool limited to 100). State Health Departments, City of NY, tons of universities. Plenty outside US as well. $10.8mm for a clinic in Kenya. $3.6mm for a clinic in Columbia.

Wild pic.twitter.com/DPRpmE7H2T

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) February 5, 2025

We are transing people in Kenya. Kamala Harris CAMPAIGNED on transing illegal aliens in 2019. 

The hive mind assimilates these values and spews money out, and they balk at the idea of accountability. The very idea is offensive to them. 

I watched Hick's interview with Stewart and her attitude was striking, and absolutely indicative of how government bureaucrats think. She is genuinely shocked that anybody would want to hold her accountable and clearly offended by the implication that she would be part of a system that was not the epitome of virtue. 

The most destructive elements of federal spending are Deep State efforts to shift power to the transnational elite and to fund their NGO infrastructure, but most federal bureaucrats are resisting the audit for more banal reasons: they consider everything in the federal government to be theirs. We are interlopers. 

It is striking how many liberals see what Trump and Musk are doing as antidemocratic--an actual coup. In their eyes the elected president doing what he campaigned to do is a coup because they think they are the Real™ government. Elected officials are window dressing for democracy, but the real power is and always should be theirs. 

🚩 Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway Are in Full Panic Mode Now Calling for the Arrest of the @DOGE Engineers

“I want to see Democratic governors … use the full faith and the letter of the law to put you folks in prison … This is a coup … We need to go gangster here.” pic.twitter.com/RT5qiBRbFR

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 8, 2025

"This is a coup." An elected president doing what he campaigned to do is a coup. They really believe that, because they really believe that L'État, c'est moi.