The Government We Deserve: Trump and Musk’s Ugly Split is a Perfect Reflection of the Current State of America

AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

One of my father’s go-to lines when I was a kid was, “Mess with a truck, you get run over.” It wasn’t subtle, but it stuck. I’ve since adapted it for my own sons: “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” Same idea, upgraded for the iPhone era.

I’ve been thinking about those aphorisms this week while watching what apparently passes for political discourse in 2025: the public brawl between Donald Trump and his former bro-from-another-ego, Elon Musk. Allegations, counterpunches, late-night posts, and the kind of bottom-feeding gossip that used to be the domain of Page Six — now rebranded as governance.

To spell it out explicitly: the stupid game here we’ve played here is electing unserious and thin skinned attention whores to run the government. The prize we’ve won? An unserious government run by thin skinned attention whores.

Musk, in a flex that would’ve seemed unthinkable two months ago, is threatening to start a third party. He’s mused about impeaching Trump. He’s even suggested that the Justice Department is covering up the Epstein files to hide Trump’s name — his feed has, for the last 24 hours, been like a Reddit thread where every participant is on mushrooms.

Meanwhile, Trump — always a showman, sometimes a statesman — has been relatively reserved in his response. Initially, when Musk first turned on the Trump-backed spending bill, the president responded not with his usual digital flamethrower, but with carefully crafted leaks to media outlets casting Musk’s crusade as personal. Only later did Trump revert to form after some intense prodding from Musk, who he called “crazy,” threatened his billions in federal contracts, and hinted at drug use, citing a bonkers New York Times report.

It’s wild theater. Addictive, messy, endlessly clickable. Two over-leveraged egos lobbing accusations like they’re at a Silicon Valley-themed roast in the backroom of Mar-a-Lago. We are not so much informed citizens as we are rubberneckers driving past a very expensive car crash. If you have an account on X, formerly Twitter, you no doubt spent a disturbing amount of time scrolling on the platform yesterday. Workplace productivity among X users likely took a hit rivaling the Monday after the Super Bowl.

If you’re looking for policy, scroll elsewhere. What we’re getting is kayfabe politics: two faces battling it out for the attention belt. Wrestlemania for the plutocratic set. And if that metaphor feels tortured, well, so is the country.

Thomas Jefferson, or maybe someone pretending to quote him on Facebook, once said: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” There’s wisdom in that, even if it’s more suited to a bumper sticker than a Federalist Paper. If he were around today, I imagine he’d tweak it to say: Elect a reality TV star, don’t be surprised when the White House starts to feel like a reboot of The Apprentice, with more indictments and worse lighting.

The nation, for the record, is not doing great. The economy is teetering under the weight of a trade war being waged on the basis of Trump’s erratic whims. A government shutdown or default feels less like a possibility and more like the season finale cliffhanger. Yet the national conversation is not focused on any of that, but on the performative slap-fight between two billionaires more concerned with ratio-ing each other than preventing a fiscal crisis.

Meanwhile, the media ecosystem — now a blend of old-school outrage merchants and partisan YouTube hacks — feeds on the chaos. Outrage sells. Nuance? Not so much.

Most importantly, this conflict is distracting us from a massive spending bill that seems likely to add trillions to the federal deficit (unless you believe that old “grow our way out of it” snake oil), featuring massive tax cuts for the super wealthy (at a time when wealth disparity is nearing record highs), and cuts to medicare for many who can ill afford it. These are dead serious issues.

All of which brings us to Neil Postman. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman warned that when entertainment becomes the vehicle for public discourse, the result isn’t just distraction — it’s decay. Politics becomes theater. News becomes content. The line between serious and spectacle disappears, and suddenly we’re parsing memes for policy and mistaking clout for competence.

Postman wasn’t just right. He was terrifyingly prescient. We are living his thesis out loud, in real time, retweet by retweet.

Trump and Musk didn’t get here by accident. They rose — each in their own way — through charisma, spectacle, and a willingness to blow through norms like they were yellow lights. They’re not just participants in the circus. They are the ringmasters. And the rest of us? We’re watching, slack-jawed, popcorn in hand, asking whether the next episode drops at 8 p.m. or midnight.

Play stupid games. Win stupid prizes. Turns out that’s not just parenting advice. It might be our national motto.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.