Veterans and V.A. employees. Fisheries and Wildlife biologists. National parks workers. Firefighters. Middle-class federal employees who guarantee that Social Security checks go out on time and that rural hospitals and clinics receive the Medicare payments that keep their doors open. All of these are victims of America’s True Deep State’s takeover of the United States government. Not the imagined Deep State of middle-class bureaucrats but that of the upper one percent of the monied class.

Elon Musk’s bouncing around on stage brandishing a chainsaw symbolizes more that a thinning of the federal thicket; it represents a clear-cutting of America’s middle class. For generations, the wealthiest of Americans have dreamed of a re-made country in which the majority of citizens go without healthcare, livable wages, or old-age security — an America of privilege financed by poverty.

If Musk and Trump were as serious about cutting the nation’s debt as they are about eviscerating the middle class, they would hack off the oil depletion allowance, increase the level of income at which Americans are required to pay into Social Security (HA!), demand the repayment of all money “borrowed” by Congress from the Social Security Trust Fund, and raise — not lower — the highest tax rate paid by the wealthiest. (This last could be done in the spirit of MAGA. During the Eisenhower administration surely a “Great” era, this rate stood at greater than 90 percent.)

PAUL BRAY,

Alpena