This isn’t a joke anymore. Republicans have effectively outsourced their congressional duties and oversight responsibilities to a crew of tech-obsessed geeks whose political worldview seems filtered through the fever dreams of teenage boys. And that’s because, in many ways, those teenage boys are now running the country.
Take, for example, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine—a 19-year-old who’s currently helping Elon Musk dismantle the federal bureaucracy as part of what’s being called the U.S. DOGE Service, otherwise known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
Elon Musk
Let’s start with the antics of the country’s self-appointed adolescent-in-chief, Elon Musk. This is the man who thought it would be clever to design Tesla car horns that sound like farts and who named the “DOGE” initiative after a viral meme featuring a bewildered Shiba Inu. After announcing Coristine’s role, Musk proudly posted an AI-generated image of himself on X (formerly Twitter), sitting behind a desk emblazoned with the DOGE logo, wearing oversized sunglasses and a jawline exaggerated to comic-book proportions.
But Musk’s behavior isn’t limited to meme-worthy stunts. His trolling and trash talk seem perpetually dialed to the maximum. In just the past six weeks, he has made a gesture widely interpreted by white nationalists as a Nazi salute at a rally (so let’s just call it what it is); responded to critics by tagging a troll account named “@IfindRetards”; and mocked federal workers by suggesting they need to prove they have “a pulse and two neurons” to keep their jobs.
And then there’s his apparent delight in gutting the public sector. Musk seems to relish firing people—not those doing meaningless desk work, but employees who are deeply committed to their roles. Like the custodian at Yosemite National Park, who told the San Francisco Chronicle after losing his job, “In the past 24 hours, I’ve cried more than I have in my entire life.”
