The wanton destructiveness of unelected, unconfirmed Elon Musk and his dodgy minions will result in no savings to the federal government, only long-term damage. Firing Pentagon employees so more can be spent on drones doesn’t make our country safer; it merely enriches certain favored defense contractors at the expense of veterans and other workers.

In addition, Musk’s “cost-cutting” measures are aimed primarily at agencies and staff that actually help Americans or protect them from predators, foreign or domestic. Other Trump measures are designed to transfer holdings in the public interest to private hands, like declaring our national forests open to logging. This is pure piracy. Destroying the Commons, the wealth of a nation held in public trust and used for the common good, has happened before in history. It doesn’t end well for all but a privileged few.

Trump has no serious plan to reduce our national debt; if he did, it would not include tax breaks for the wealthy.

As with so many of his companies, Trump is now running the United States into bankruptcy. Trump was never a great businessman. He’s a narcissist with a narrow range of feelings, anger and resentment chief among them, and endless delusions of grandeur. His kind of grandiosity can do a lot of damage, though rarely to himself because he does have a knack for escaping any reckoning.

The rest of us won’t be so fortunate.

Dale Moss

Shelburne Falls