I believe reactions to this picture of the guys at DOGE are the perfect litmus test for revealing The People That Hate Themselves.

The people that see this image and become hostile or distrustful are the people that are default-suspicious of achievement. That suspicion stems from a poisonous (but awfully creative!) emotional response where they've internalized their own inadequacies and fear of growth so deeply, that they reject the idea that someone can be successful without being morally reprehensible.

The People That Hate Themselves wear inferiority like a badge of honor. They are the people that demand government efficiency while demonizing anybody who spends working hours trying to provide it.

It reminds me of Tim Walz bragging that he doesn't know what venture capital is, or AOC bragging that she's the poorest member of Congress. Claps all around because they know their audience hates themselves too.

Achievement itself is the evidence of corruption, so of course, they lose things like elections to maintain their moral superiority. When you think you are innovating, they think you are exploiting (they don't really get what that means btw).

At some point in the last decade, meritocracy became a dirty word to them. When barriers to Equal Opportunity were more obvious (eg explicit discrimination), they focused on dismantling them to drive wealth toward real merit. As the meritocracy gradually exposed itself, the people that called for that Equal Opportunity came to discover that they never became wealthy. Naturally, “Millionaires” and “Billionaires” became useful slurs and grandstanding against wealth became the national zeitgeist.

Their response reflects the silent epiphany they've all faced: there are much deeper, more internal inadequacies that prevent them from finding a sense-of-purpose that aren't one of the typical "-ism"s.

They become stymied by their own lack of wonder / resourcefulness and eventually lose self-efficacy; their life succumbs to 5-days-work-2-days-chill with some gym sprinkled in.

As their imagination atrophies, they become so accustomed to their own self-abasement that their aperture closes into knowing the world as a zero-sum game. The People That Hate Themselves are experiencing death by thousands of consecutive boring days; they've surrendered their soul to the idea that purpose and pleasure are sensibilities reserved for wealthy old straight white American men.

The people who see the young men at DOGE with distrust are not sharing a political posture.

They are confessing to you that They Gave Up. That there will not be more challenges or more rewards in the life ahead for them.

The only contradiction remaining for them to face now is that for some reason, it seems that some people are still trying to create. The people who still explore and build are the last evidence of their own failures to mature and adapt to a meritocratic world, and they would like you to stop.

So keep exploring people and places, solving puzzles, and building new shit. Kudos to these guys at DOGE for giving the world an honest try.

𝒩𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓈𝑒𝓁𝒻