Eddie Glaude: As We’re Discussing Elon Musk and DOGE, We’re Not Talking About How the Federal Gov’t Represents American Values

EXCERPT:

GLAUDE JR.: "Well, I think, you know, in assigning blame, you’re right, I think in this regard. But I think people want folks to fight. They want to fight for — what are your values, what are you fighting for? Are you fighting for us? And I think that that’s legitimate. That’s a legitimate concern. Look, I think I’m also worried about the fact that, you know, only when it hurts you are you now concerned. You were okay with certain policies that would hurt other communities. Now that it has come home to roost, people are angry. I want to tap that selfishness at the root of that perhaps. But I think there are two things that I want to say really quickly. One, of course, we have to be mindful of the human cost. People have been talking about efficiency and waste and big government and the like. We’re seeing the human cost here, that families are struggling, people have to pay mortgages. They have to send their kids to college. They’re worried about how they’re going to put food on the table, expensive food on the table. And folks are just, kind of with the chainsaw, cutting. But also, we’ve got to widen the aperture. What is the conversation about our obligations to each other? I don’t know what the social good is in this country. I don’t know what the baseline obligations Americans have to each other and how government represents that. We’ve shredded the social safety net since the 1980s. Right? What are our obligations to our elderly? What are our obligations to the poor? What’s the role of government in ensuring that these baseline values are evidenced in our relationship to each other? And as we are engaging in this kind of, shall we say, bull-in-a-china-shop approach to federal government, there’s no conversation about who we are as Americans and how the federal government represents those values."