I have been observing with breathless awe the latest triumph of our grand Republic’s economic engine. We are told by the public prints that the government has appointed its first Chief Design Officer, a gentleman of immense private fortune and impeccable aesthetic taste, whose solemn patriotic duty is to “modernize the internet-facing portions” of our great public offices.
He is to make the websites look prettier.
How comforting it is to know that while the great, dark, rusted machinery of the state groans and rattles behind the curtain, unseen and untouched, the citizen who is being stripped of his pocket-change will at least have the privilege of watching the operation through a interface as slick and satisfying as a high-end boutique.
If the republic is to sink, let it at least sink with a perfectly centered font and a pleasing color palette.
The Gospel of the Gilded Interface
Our grand digital architect was recently heard pouring out a libation of pure, unadulterated devotion upon the altar of our Chief Magistrate, fawning over the newly inaugurated “Trump Accounts”, which have begun their holy crusade of trading upon the public exchanges. With that peculiar, sweeping generosity that belongs exclusively to men who do not have to count their pennies, he declared with great solemnity what it is that “Americans deserve.”
“Why can’t the government be more like an Apple Store?” this great man muses.
It is truly a profound question. When a citizen’s retirement records are lost in some subterranean digital swamp, or when a veteran spends nine months waiting for a clerk to click a broken link, how reassuring it will be to know that the error message is rendered in a modern, human-centered design. The back-end of these agencies may remain an ancient, tangled wilderness of nineteenth-century logic, but the front porch will look like a million bucks. Or, more accurately, like several hundred billion dollars of appropriated capital.
What We “Deserve”
This phrase, what Americans deserve, has long been the favorite vocal exercise of all Washington politicians, the congress critters, and the many high-salaried bureaucrats. It is a beautiful, elastic term. Whenever a public servant is about to pocket a handsome sum from an insider trade on Kalshi, or when he is preparing to retire from office straight into a private consulting firm designed to catch a no-bid contract from the executive engine, he invariably begins his speech by telling the working crowd how much he desires to give them what they deserve.
Let us look at what they mean by the term:
- The Dividend of Division: They give the people a steady diet of high-minded moral arguments, carefully calibrated to set neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, blue-collar against white-collar.
- The Harvest of the Righteous: While the crowd is busy defending the sacred honor of these manufactured values, the lawmakers are quietly studying the stock tickers, adjusting their portfolios, and ensuring that the campaign dollars flow into the proper, deep pockets.
- The Aesthetic of Equity: We receive a gorgeous, shiny web application; they receive the actual capital.
The values they preach from the stumps are a spotless garment; the actions they perform in the dark are a greasy apron. They tell the mechanic and the clerk that they deserve the American Dream, and then they charge them admission just to look at a picture of it.
It is a magnificent swindle, beautifully designed, and run on the most modern software.