DECEMBER 2, 2024 – If you’re a Democrat the paper version of The Times these days will make you crazy. Musk, Patel, RFK, Jr., a former security guard-turned-county sheriff as director of the D.E.A.; sheriff, RFK, Jr., Patel, Musk . . . Gaetz, Hegseth, Gabbards; Gabbards, Hegseth, Gaetz, in case you’ve forgotten about the roster of Trump’s uber-loyalists singularly unqualified to manage sprawling federal agencies.
On one level I understand the frustration with group think, mental rigidity, ossified and ingrown organizational structures, and regulatory regimes that are captive to the very interests that are supposed to be regulated. In an attenuated way, this frustration could well lead to a revolutionary outcome.
In the historical record, however, most revolutions aren’t controlled processes. After the powder keg explodes, rarely do things work out as intended.
What seems to be unfolding with the pending Trump revolution is an assault not only on the bastions of political and governmental power but against the operating principles on which those bastions developed. This marks a fundamental change in how democracy in America has generally worked. Since the Civil War, the standard approach to electoral resistance within our Constitutional framework was “throw the rascals out”—at the next election. This time around, however, something more radical, consequential and unprecedented is unfolding: it’s now a case of “throw the rules out” and “toss a lot of rascals in.”
The Trump agenda reacts in contempt to power derived from knowledge, expertise and experience. It proclaims, “Drain the swamp, not only of power but of everything on which that power is based, be it good or bad.” With mind-blurring regularity, the call to drain is supported enthusiastically by an electorate influenced by platitudinous falsehoods and skeptical of inescapable truths. In any event, by including everything controlled, operated, guarded, or administered by the government in the definition of “swamp,” the Trump agenda will leave in place of the “swamp,” a desert devoid of innumerable programs and services from which nearly all of us benefit to one significant degree or another.
Many of Trump’s announced appointments thus far reflect the utter disdain that he and his followers have for government as it has evolved. The surest way to signal this contempt is to put in charge people who are patently unqualified to run much of anything, let alone an entire department of government. Why follow norms, if the objective is to destroy the department? Constructive reform, just like remodeling a house, requires expertise and experience. Destroying what others have built, just like razing a house, requires only matches and rags soaked in gasoline.
Defunding government and dismantling its influence will unleash a rash of adverse consequences. Our individual and collective safety and economic well-being will be jeopardized in ways that will become apparent only after it’s too late to turn back the clock. In the process of thoughtless disruption—as opposed to deliberative reforms—we will prove ourselves unreliable on the world stage and ungovernable at home. Both will come at an inestimably high cost to all of us.
It must be acknowledged that every government agency—just as every organization in society— and its raison d’etre should be examined continually against the gauge of the greater good. But that’s not part of the Trump’s modus operandi. Trump’s way is to swing a baseball bat, not caring what gets destroyed in the process, only what brings the biggest cheers of adulation from a fawning crowd. The main point of the exercise is not to advance the greater good but to win retribution and benefit private and personal interests—the ultimate form of #MeNow, the 21st century slogan of the Disunited States of AMErica.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
