So, I was around for this WoC discussion back in the first Trump "administration". Most the questions around constitutional viability that Damir mentions here were brought up then, but there was a lot of resistance (as I remember) to actually thinking about the failure scenario. I think I made the comment somewhere that constitutions are not eternal institutions, that signs of impasse in the US system were unmistakeable, that polarization made standard change mechanisms unworkable, and that -- though we couldn't know the day nor the hour -- either a coup from above or just a plain coup was so likely that the real question was whether one's preferred or detested actors would bring it off. (The previous sentence may pull together points that were originally scattered or less baldly stated.)
It seems like what we are seeing. -- and Damir describes it very well -- is a coup from above. It shocks me, it leaves me groping for a response, but it doesn't surprise me. Might the coup fail? Can we contain it? Like Damir, I just don't know.
Complicity? No. Glee. This is what the GOP base has been demanding, in steadily-less polite terms, for several political generations. And the hunger has only grown more ravenous as all efforts at even-handed reform or compromise have failed, been sabotaged, or rejected. People on the left and institutionalist sides have gotten used to assuming that the civil service and "norms" would handcuff any significant deviation from their goals, but assist them while they were in power. That assumption is in the process of being ripped up.
I think the entire point of our constitution was to only allow agreed upon change. It is often better to do nothing than to make rash changes. I think we would be in a better place if we had left the Federal government on autopilot since the Clinton White House. Spending and debt are out of control. If the Republicans cannot cut spending, then they must increase taxes. Capital gains is the ideal place to start. I hate how the Republicans have turned into this mess of freeloading rednecks who cut taxes and refuse to touch the entitlements that drive government spending.
What no one talks about is that government contracting is expensive because of transparency. It is expensive to have transparency along with other frankly silly requirements such as "buy American" and the requirement that all Federal funds be spent in competitively bid procurements. Such rules necessitate bureaucracy not only in the Federal government, but in the states and municipalities as well because anyone getting Federal funding must play by Federal rules. I work with this first hand (I am in purchasing for a municipal agency).
We should not change our government willy-nilly. That has NEVER helped the country. Searching for "efficiencies" always ends in corruption. We are not Singapore. We do not pay our bureaucrats enough to get the best of the best. We remedy that with process. The correct policy would seek to either cut spending, or raise revenue. There is no easy cash to be found. It is a bad sign that Trump is trying to do this. We can hope it is for show, and not out of ignorance, but the President will need Congress to change laws if he wants to streamline Federal agencies. A better move would be to actually address the problem (the massive gap between revenue and expenditure). We need budget surpluses for a decade at least to get our debt back to reasonable levels, or run up inflation to reduce the debt that way (how we paid for Vietnam and the Great Society).
"Agreed upon" by whom? The waves of conservative voters who have elected multiple "protest" and "reform" movements to legislative majorities haven't agreed to massively-spiraling federal spending or the highest foreign-born percentage of the population since the 1880's. And yet it happens.
Our founding fathers stated that Constitutional reforms require super-majorities. Many of the policies we need only required a simple majority in both houses and a President who does not veto the legislation. Right now we require either cuts in spending or increased revenue (probably both). The current deficit is 7% and growing with the highest debt level ever. The last five years have been a disaster in Federal spending. No one will take responsibility.
I expect this of the creepy modern Progressives who have ruined the Democratic Party, but the Republicans failure to reign in spending has played its part as well. We could not afford the Bush tax cuts nor the Trump tax cuts. At a minimum we need to at least get the deficit lower than nominal GDP growth.
As for foreign-born percentage, that does not concern me. What concerns me is ILLEGAL entries. We can live with well-educated, hard-working immigrants in large quantities. What we do not need are welfare recipients who appear to be permanent public charges. We stop the foolishness at the border, and the problem is fixed. We need immigrants. I have worked in manufacturing and supply chain, and we need people who work hard. We could also use far more foreign doctors and nurses to bring down medical costs.
The real question is how we can get the current Congress and President to balance the budget. Not pontificate, but actually cut entitlements. The myth of government waste is only believed by those ignorant of how and why the government engages in transparent, rules-based contracting/procurement. That is not going to change, but we can cut Medicare and medicaid, or SSDI, or other major spending. If that is not possible, then harmonize capital gains taxes to the long-term rate. If that is not enough, raise that capital gains tax. Ideally, we would end corporate taxation and raise the capital gains tax to offset the revenue loss. That would be a gain to everyone and remove the incentive for much of the lobbying. Of course, no politician will do this because ignorant fools imagine that corporate taxation still matters.
"I hate how the Republicans have turned into this mess of freeloading rednecks who cut taxes and refuse to touch the entitlements that drive government spending."
"Refuse?" Republicans since Reagan have been slavering to cut entitlements. Remember how GW Bush proposed privatizing Social Security? How Republicans have doggedly fought all extensions of Medicaid and unemployment insurance? How they keep trying to kill Obamacare? Republicans are deadly enemies of entitlement programs. They hate spending money on poor people.
You say you're eager to see the budget balanced. Then why aren't you fiercely criticizing the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts, which added $5 trillion (in current dollars) to the deficit and overwhelmingly benefited corporations and the wealthy?
If this is "creepy Progressivism," then call me creepy!
I do not see how are positions are different. The Reagan era tax reforms I agree with, the net tax cuts I do not. The Bush and Trump tax cuts were irresponsible. Regarding cuts to entitlements, we will have NO CHOICE. We cannot continue to keep spending like we do. We can and should increase capital gains taxes, ideally by setting the rate to the short-term rate (we foolishly have two rates based on the false concept that short-term investments are bad (the myth of "speculation"). This would also remedy the current practice of wealthy individuals paying comically low taxes by categorizing their compensation as capital gains.
With regards to "poor people," we could so so much more for considerably less cost by ending humiliation. We should have universal basic income. The first step should be to lay off every employee who determines who gets aid. I think we should have either a national health care system, or a free market one. Either would be better than what we have now. With regards to social welfare, our system is expensive and does a terrible job. The only real fix is to eliminate any determination by people, and frankly, to eliminate the humiliation-based system of social workers. The concept is racist and demeaning. Every citizen should get a check starting at age 18. No one gets more or less. It would be cheap and easy to administer, and no one would be locked down in expensive places like NYC and California.
Also, your "5 trillion dollars" figure is wrong, unless you are taking the NPV of that in perpetuity (which is not correct). I agree that those tax cuts were irresponsible. The Bush tax cuts were worse. BUT, we still need to get entitlement spending back on track. The best way would be to implement UBI. Furthermore, we just need to get rid of the welfare worker system. It is demeaning and worse than useless.
In addition, we should all recognize that the Democrats in local government have committed a crime against poor people with their zoning laws and corruptions dressed up in pretty language ("affordable housing" requirements that give friends and family $5m apartments in Manhattan for $1200 per month, required the construction of 4 bedroom apartments in hip, young neighborhoods that need MORE tiny, affordable units, not "family" housing on Chicago's Rush Street or the Lower East Side of Manhattan). We need our most dynamic markets to have housing for everyone, not only rich people and the politically connected. We need to end zoning laws in NYC, California, DC, Boston, and any other place where a young person cannot get an affordable, TINY studio apartment. Developers should not be forced to build large units, or even worse, to tax the entire market so connected individuals can get apartments at a 99% discount (what "affordable" means in New York City).
I live in Chicago. I have voted Democrat my entire life. It breaks my heart to see how the Democrats have handed the presidency to Trump twice. I have no love for the Republican Party, but so long as the Democrats are the party of rich white ladies who imagine that they are oppressed, they are effectively worse than the Republicans. It is a crime what has been done to our big cities (pricing them out of reach for regular people, and all the opportunities that come with their dynamic markets). I see Chicago going down the same path as NYC, setting up the same terrible policies that result in only luxury housing being built, apartments torn down to build $1m homes in my South Side neighborhood. and the worse, apartment buildings becoming so expensive as a result of counter-productive "affordable" initiatives such that no affordable units are ever allowed to be built, only luxury buildings with a handful of apartments to be gifted to friends.
The Democrats could sweep both the House and Senate, and win the presidency if they just set aside the crazy, but it is a requirement because the rich creeps who run the party demand it. It used to be the Republicans who were the creeps, but now the Democrats seem incapable of even trying to win. And, both parties protect the wealthy. The Democrats are as bad as the Republicans on letting the wealthy pay 15% tax rates. I want both parties to change. For the Democrats, I just want them to be the party of Obama and BILL Clinton. They win elections that way. America is better that way. I have no idea how to get the Democrats to fight for working people again. I am a liberal, and I believe in liberalism, not some "Progressive" who thinks 15% tax rates for billionaires is good, or that allowing anyone to cross the border without documents is good, but making LEGAL immigrants wait ten years is not bad.
I want the LIBERALS to take back the party from the creepy, racist "Progressives." Then the Democrats can rule again. The Republicans only win when the Democrats abandon the working class majority. I do not want my Chicago to be a place where only rich people get to live here, but that is what Progressives do. I hate them. I want liberals back. People like Obama and Clinton. We still have good Democrats like Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin. Either of them would have won the presidency last year. Both get pressured into supporting silly crap by the rich white people who took over the party. The new elite want to look good instead of doing good. The result is Republican electoral victory.
"I had heard about Vought’s views before Trump assumed power, and had written them off as the kind of hyperbolic language that frustrated intellectuals use when describing their lurid power fantasies. I never bothered to think about how it could actually be pulled off. Now that I see it happening, it’s a brutally effective approach. Breathtaking, really."
With all possible respect,Damir, what on earth were you thinking? The signs were abundant and unmistakable. Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election make it perfectly clear that he had no Constitutional scruples whatever. His constantly repeated promises to fire or prosecute anyone who had anything to had anything to do with prosecuting or even investigating him made it perfectly clear that he was emotionally and mentally unbalanced. The fact that he denied that Project 2025 was a blueprint for his second administration was clear proof that Project 2025 was a blueprint for his second administration, since he lies about such matters automatically. And what did you make of his offer to sell energy policy to the energy industry in exchange for a $1 billion campaign contribution?
I suspect, dear Damir, that you were reluctant to. believe that these things meant what they obviously meant because that would have aligned you with the left and hence compromised your carefully cultivated pose of omnidirectional, above-the-fray centrist skepticism. Well, better late than never. I hope I can now welcome you to the ranks of impassioned and relentless critics of Trump and his congressional Republican accomplices.
A lot of commenters to this post seem to forget that “May you live in interesting times” is a curse and also seem very secure in the belief that the metaphorical fire will not engulf *them* but only things they dislike. I am sure that such beliefs will end well for them.
As a non-American, I view your experiments in pyromaniac-based organizational reform from afar with fascination and also the hope that the self-immolation won’t singe me too badly.
I am blown away by these initial successes. Damir captures it well. But honestly, I think the real question from voters will be the same: are we better off now? Somehow foreign aid, and the tragedy of something under 1% of the US population losing their jobs doesn't feel like it will hurt us much. There's a lot that could go horribly wrong, but I like the comment in the last pod about Trump just pulling levers no-one was willing to pull. Apparently, he's the first republican with balls. Because the GOP has been airing these grievances since I was a kid and Clinton was president.
It looks like RFK Jr. will be approved. If the outcome of that is Monsanto burns to the ground and big pharma stops being a refuge for WSJ finance bros. I think I'm willing to take some pain around 'science' not being as authoritative. This and many other areas of government failure keep me curiously hopeful as to how it will all play out. But man, it is wild to see a guy trying things that we used to just give lip service to in exchange for dumb American votes!
Some of us in the United States like to believe that we are a nation guided by the rule of law. That works if the populace accepts the rule of law as a fundamental norm of behavior. What happens when the populace abandons norms of conduct that were once widely accepted as the fundamental mode of behavior? Will the rule of law continue to guide people's behavior? Or will we descend into a messy "might makes right" existence? What would happen if tomorrow 49.5% of the population decided to ignore stop signs and just blow through intersections? We are currently conducting that experiment. The results will be illuminating. But illumination will occur only if we are able to learn, or re-learn, history.
I understand going after USAID. They really are irrelevant so they are an ideal target. The OMB is a different story. They actually serve an important function especially in the Federal capital budgeting process (think OMB 300's and related stuff). If USAID dies, not one will miss it outside of smug elites and corrupt business men along with their corrupt foreign government cronies.
The OMB, on the other hand, it a vital part of the Federal government. Furthermore, the "wild man" act makes us look bad. I have no doubt the Chinese are broadcasting that American claims about the "rule of law" are all fake news and the US is run just like the People's Republic. That genuinely hurts the US. I just hope he does not put another industry lobbyist in for FCC chairman. That was his biggest mistake last time around. Ajity Pai was corrupt beyond belief. I would rather see that position filled by Kid Rock or Kodak Black instead of another clown like Pai.
I was a young man when it became apparent to me that the unelected Federal bureaucracy was the real power in this country, and was running most of it - not the President, and certainly not Congress.
I’m 51 now (yikes) and it has grown ever more out of control in that time. I’m satisfactorily convinced that there is no way to wrest control of the U.S. government back to the people’s elected President and representatives than through breaking the bureaucracies back, to include just ending entirely certain sections of it.
Will some “good” things get caught up in the collateral damage? Yes, most certainly. I no longer care. Attack it, relentlessly.
One shortcoming of past left-liberal attempts to compare Trump to the Confederacy or European authoritarians is that he actually echoes two Yankee nationalist politicians who specialized in this mix of legal hardball and media blitz; Teddy Roosevelt and Joseph McCarthy. The question of Trump's legacy as president is if he can articulate a lasting vision of America for a future Democratic president to complement like the former, or if he will spiral out in flames and vendettas against America's political order like the latter.
There's a plausible read either way. The alignment of Silicon Valley to be bipartisan like finance rather than a heavily Democratic donor industry seems like a real thread connecting the interests of elite Republicans and Democrats. But will it hold? And can anyone outside of an eccentric historian explain Trump in a through-line of early 21st century American culture that isn't just an advertising campaign? I think it's the lack of cultural coherence in America more than any hardball legal move against Congress that frightens people the most. Nowhere is that more clear than Elon Musk, a man who embodies ruthless industrial success addressing climate change and space industry with the moral and aesthetic sensibilities of a child scrolling Reddit.
Damir is incorrect when he suggests that Trump’s actions destroying USAID may be an unhealthy intrusion on the rights of the legislative branch. USAID has been a rogue, malignant part of the executive branch which DOGE is properly targeting. I favor (much) smaller government and thus don’t favor a powerful presidency in general, but we are in a situation where Trump needs to wield power aggressively for now to destroy as much of the deep stats as possible. Some time in the future, if the dismantling has been successful, it is likely we will then need to bring the executive branch back to a smaller footprint.
I'm not sure I suggested that. I suggested that it's perhaps being seen by the Executive as a healthy pushback against the Legislative branch's intrusions into its own prerogatives.
I hear descriptions like “rogue, malignant part of the executive branch” in a number of places, but I’ve not seen it backed up by anything other than vague tweets. Do you know if there is any sort of longer-form writing that lays out the case for this in a clear way for people unfamiliar with this charge?
I think this is a charge often leveled at aid agencies writ large. Rightly or wrongly, they often see their remit as broader than the national interest. But I hope that the questions that arise out of this piece are much broader than anything having to do USAID’s demise. I suggest this has nothing to do with USAID as such. It’s just the first thing at hand, something to send a signal to the rest of the workforce.
It may well be that the details don’t matter to people like Trump and Musk; perhaps they are indeed just dismantling USAID to intimidate other departments. I think I’m mostly just trying to do my due diligence before coming to that conclusion. If there’s an alternate explanation, then it makes sense to ask if it is actually laid out anywhere before dismissing it.
Much appreciated! After reading the National Review article, I did some digging on Paul Neifert and his 1990s accusations against USAID, which were featured at the beginning. Not sure if anyone else cares about the details, but, for the curious, Neifert's contemporaneous account is on page 17 here: https://afsa.org/sites/default/files/fsj-1994-11-november.pdf
(It happened long enough ago that I'm not personally convinced it matters all that much for the current organisation, but given that it's the first thing NR chose to reference, I did want to know.)
So, I was around for this WoC discussion back in the first Trump "administration". Most the questions around constitutional viability that Damir mentions here were brought up then, but there was a lot of resistance (as I remember) to actually thinking about the failure scenario. I think I made the comment somewhere that constitutions are not eternal institutions, that signs of impasse in the US system were unmistakeable, that polarization made standard change mechanisms unworkable, and that -- though we couldn't know the day nor the hour -- either a coup from above or just a plain coup was so likely that the real question was whether one's preferred or detested actors would bring it off. (The previous sentence may pull together points that were originally scattered or less baldly stated.)
It seems like what we are seeing. -- and Damir describes it very well -- is a coup from above. It shocks me, it leaves me groping for a response, but it doesn't surprise me. Might the coup fail? Can we contain it? Like Damir, I just don't know.
The absolute complicity of the GOP is the only thing that surprises me. We should be terrified
Complicity? No. Glee. This is what the GOP base has been demanding, in steadily-less polite terms, for several political generations. And the hunger has only grown more ravenous as all efforts at even-handed reform or compromise have failed, been sabotaged, or rejected. People on the left and institutionalist sides have gotten used to assuming that the civil service and "norms" would handcuff any significant deviation from their goals, but assist them while they were in power. That assumption is in the process of being ripped up.
Exactly this. The Left hasn't had a fire in its belly (unless it's a woke fire) for ages now.
I think the entire point of our constitution was to only allow agreed upon change. It is often better to do nothing than to make rash changes. I think we would be in a better place if we had left the Federal government on autopilot since the Clinton White House. Spending and debt are out of control. If the Republicans cannot cut spending, then they must increase taxes. Capital gains is the ideal place to start. I hate how the Republicans have turned into this mess of freeloading rednecks who cut taxes and refuse to touch the entitlements that drive government spending.
What no one talks about is that government contracting is expensive because of transparency. It is expensive to have transparency along with other frankly silly requirements such as "buy American" and the requirement that all Federal funds be spent in competitively bid procurements. Such rules necessitate bureaucracy not only in the Federal government, but in the states and municipalities as well because anyone getting Federal funding must play by Federal rules. I work with this first hand (I am in purchasing for a municipal agency).
We should not change our government willy-nilly. That has NEVER helped the country. Searching for "efficiencies" always ends in corruption. We are not Singapore. We do not pay our bureaucrats enough to get the best of the best. We remedy that with process. The correct policy would seek to either cut spending, or raise revenue. There is no easy cash to be found. It is a bad sign that Trump is trying to do this. We can hope it is for show, and not out of ignorance, but the President will need Congress to change laws if he wants to streamline Federal agencies. A better move would be to actually address the problem (the massive gap between revenue and expenditure). We need budget surpluses for a decade at least to get our debt back to reasonable levels, or run up inflation to reduce the debt that way (how we paid for Vietnam and the Great Society).
"Agreed upon" by whom? The waves of conservative voters who have elected multiple "protest" and "reform" movements to legislative majorities haven't agreed to massively-spiraling federal spending or the highest foreign-born percentage of the population since the 1880's. And yet it happens.
Our founding fathers stated that Constitutional reforms require super-majorities. Many of the policies we need only required a simple majority in both houses and a President who does not veto the legislation. Right now we require either cuts in spending or increased revenue (probably both). The current deficit is 7% and growing with the highest debt level ever. The last five years have been a disaster in Federal spending. No one will take responsibility.
I expect this of the creepy modern Progressives who have ruined the Democratic Party, but the Republicans failure to reign in spending has played its part as well. We could not afford the Bush tax cuts nor the Trump tax cuts. At a minimum we need to at least get the deficit lower than nominal GDP growth.
As for foreign-born percentage, that does not concern me. What concerns me is ILLEGAL entries. We can live with well-educated, hard-working immigrants in large quantities. What we do not need are welfare recipients who appear to be permanent public charges. We stop the foolishness at the border, and the problem is fixed. We need immigrants. I have worked in manufacturing and supply chain, and we need people who work hard. We could also use far more foreign doctors and nurses to bring down medical costs.
The real question is how we can get the current Congress and President to balance the budget. Not pontificate, but actually cut entitlements. The myth of government waste is only believed by those ignorant of how and why the government engages in transparent, rules-based contracting/procurement. That is not going to change, but we can cut Medicare and medicaid, or SSDI, or other major spending. If that is not possible, then harmonize capital gains taxes to the long-term rate. If that is not enough, raise that capital gains tax. Ideally, we would end corporate taxation and raise the capital gains tax to offset the revenue loss. That would be a gain to everyone and remove the incentive for much of the lobbying. Of course, no politician will do this because ignorant fools imagine that corporate taxation still matters.
"I hate how the Republicans have turned into this mess of freeloading rednecks who cut taxes and refuse to touch the entitlements that drive government spending."
"Refuse?" Republicans since Reagan have been slavering to cut entitlements. Remember how GW Bush proposed privatizing Social Security? How Republicans have doggedly fought all extensions of Medicaid and unemployment insurance? How they keep trying to kill Obamacare? Republicans are deadly enemies of entitlement programs. They hate spending money on poor people.
You say you're eager to see the budget balanced. Then why aren't you fiercely criticizing the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts, which added $5 trillion (in current dollars) to the deficit and overwhelmingly benefited corporations and the wealthy?
If this is "creepy Progressivism," then call me creepy!
I do not see how are positions are different. The Reagan era tax reforms I agree with, the net tax cuts I do not. The Bush and Trump tax cuts were irresponsible. Regarding cuts to entitlements, we will have NO CHOICE. We cannot continue to keep spending like we do. We can and should increase capital gains taxes, ideally by setting the rate to the short-term rate (we foolishly have two rates based on the false concept that short-term investments are bad (the myth of "speculation"). This would also remedy the current practice of wealthy individuals paying comically low taxes by categorizing their compensation as capital gains.
With regards to "poor people," we could so so much more for considerably less cost by ending humiliation. We should have universal basic income. The first step should be to lay off every employee who determines who gets aid. I think we should have either a national health care system, or a free market one. Either would be better than what we have now. With regards to social welfare, our system is expensive and does a terrible job. The only real fix is to eliminate any determination by people, and frankly, to eliminate the humiliation-based system of social workers. The concept is racist and demeaning. Every citizen should get a check starting at age 18. No one gets more or less. It would be cheap and easy to administer, and no one would be locked down in expensive places like NYC and California.
Also, your "5 trillion dollars" figure is wrong, unless you are taking the NPV of that in perpetuity (which is not correct). I agree that those tax cuts were irresponsible. The Bush tax cuts were worse. BUT, we still need to get entitlement spending back on track. The best way would be to implement UBI. Furthermore, we just need to get rid of the welfare worker system. It is demeaning and worse than useless.
In addition, we should all recognize that the Democrats in local government have committed a crime against poor people with their zoning laws and corruptions dressed up in pretty language ("affordable housing" requirements that give friends and family $5m apartments in Manhattan for $1200 per month, required the construction of 4 bedroom apartments in hip, young neighborhoods that need MORE tiny, affordable units, not "family" housing on Chicago's Rush Street or the Lower East Side of Manhattan). We need our most dynamic markets to have housing for everyone, not only rich people and the politically connected. We need to end zoning laws in NYC, California, DC, Boston, and any other place where a young person cannot get an affordable, TINY studio apartment. Developers should not be forced to build large units, or even worse, to tax the entire market so connected individuals can get apartments at a 99% discount (what "affordable" means in New York City).
I live in Chicago. I have voted Democrat my entire life. It breaks my heart to see how the Democrats have handed the presidency to Trump twice. I have no love for the Republican Party, but so long as the Democrats are the party of rich white ladies who imagine that they are oppressed, they are effectively worse than the Republicans. It is a crime what has been done to our big cities (pricing them out of reach for regular people, and all the opportunities that come with their dynamic markets). I see Chicago going down the same path as NYC, setting up the same terrible policies that result in only luxury housing being built, apartments torn down to build $1m homes in my South Side neighborhood. and the worse, apartment buildings becoming so expensive as a result of counter-productive "affordable" initiatives such that no affordable units are ever allowed to be built, only luxury buildings with a handful of apartments to be gifted to friends.
The Democrats could sweep both the House and Senate, and win the presidency if they just set aside the crazy, but it is a requirement because the rich creeps who run the party demand it. It used to be the Republicans who were the creeps, but now the Democrats seem incapable of even trying to win. And, both parties protect the wealthy. The Democrats are as bad as the Republicans on letting the wealthy pay 15% tax rates. I want both parties to change. For the Democrats, I just want them to be the party of Obama and BILL Clinton. They win elections that way. America is better that way. I have no idea how to get the Democrats to fight for working people again. I am a liberal, and I believe in liberalism, not some "Progressive" who thinks 15% tax rates for billionaires is good, or that allowing anyone to cross the border without documents is good, but making LEGAL immigrants wait ten years is not bad.
I want the LIBERALS to take back the party from the creepy, racist "Progressives." Then the Democrats can rule again. The Republicans only win when the Democrats abandon the working class majority. I do not want my Chicago to be a place where only rich people get to live here, but that is what Progressives do. I hate them. I want liberals back. People like Obama and Clinton. We still have good Democrats like Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin. Either of them would have won the presidency last year. Both get pressured into supporting silly crap by the rich white people who took over the party. The new elite want to look good instead of doing good. The result is Republican electoral victory.
I agree with most of this. Rather than enter minor qualifications, I'll just thank you for the lengthy and good-tempered explanation.
Garry: I think you are speaking to a different situation than the one that exists. "We" aren't changing our government willy-nilly. "They" are.
"I had heard about Vought’s views before Trump assumed power, and had written them off as the kind of hyperbolic language that frustrated intellectuals use when describing their lurid power fantasies. I never bothered to think about how it could actually be pulled off. Now that I see it happening, it’s a brutally effective approach. Breathtaking, really."
With all possible respect,Damir, what on earth were you thinking? The signs were abundant and unmistakable. Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election make it perfectly clear that he had no Constitutional scruples whatever. His constantly repeated promises to fire or prosecute anyone who had anything to had anything to do with prosecuting or even investigating him made it perfectly clear that he was emotionally and mentally unbalanced. The fact that he denied that Project 2025 was a blueprint for his second administration was clear proof that Project 2025 was a blueprint for his second administration, since he lies about such matters automatically. And what did you make of his offer to sell energy policy to the energy industry in exchange for a $1 billion campaign contribution?
I suspect, dear Damir, that you were reluctant to. believe that these things meant what they obviously meant because that would have aligned you with the left and hence compromised your carefully cultivated pose of omnidirectional, above-the-fray centrist skepticism. Well, better late than never. I hope I can now welcome you to the ranks of impassioned and relentless critics of Trump and his congressional Republican accomplices.
A lot of commenters to this post seem to forget that “May you live in interesting times” is a curse and also seem very secure in the belief that the metaphorical fire will not engulf *them* but only things they dislike. I am sure that such beliefs will end well for them.
As a non-American, I view your experiments in pyromaniac-based organizational reform from afar with fascination and also the hope that the self-immolation won’t singe me too badly.
https://youtu.be/wmin5WkOuPw
I am blown away by these initial successes. Damir captures it well. But honestly, I think the real question from voters will be the same: are we better off now? Somehow foreign aid, and the tragedy of something under 1% of the US population losing their jobs doesn't feel like it will hurt us much. There's a lot that could go horribly wrong, but I like the comment in the last pod about Trump just pulling levers no-one was willing to pull. Apparently, he's the first republican with balls. Because the GOP has been airing these grievances since I was a kid and Clinton was president.
It looks like RFK Jr. will be approved. If the outcome of that is Monsanto burns to the ground and big pharma stops being a refuge for WSJ finance bros. I think I'm willing to take some pain around 'science' not being as authoritative. This and many other areas of government failure keep me curiously hopeful as to how it will all play out. But man, it is wild to see a guy trying things that we used to just give lip service to in exchange for dumb American votes!
Some of us in the United States like to believe that we are a nation guided by the rule of law. That works if the populace accepts the rule of law as a fundamental norm of behavior. What happens when the populace abandons norms of conduct that were once widely accepted as the fundamental mode of behavior? Will the rule of law continue to guide people's behavior? Or will we descend into a messy "might makes right" existence? What would happen if tomorrow 49.5% of the population decided to ignore stop signs and just blow through intersections? We are currently conducting that experiment. The results will be illuminating. But illumination will occur only if we are able to learn, or re-learn, history.
I understand going after USAID. They really are irrelevant so they are an ideal target. The OMB is a different story. They actually serve an important function especially in the Federal capital budgeting process (think OMB 300's and related stuff). If USAID dies, not one will miss it outside of smug elites and corrupt business men along with their corrupt foreign government cronies.
The OMB, on the other hand, it a vital part of the Federal government. Furthermore, the "wild man" act makes us look bad. I have no doubt the Chinese are broadcasting that American claims about the "rule of law" are all fake news and the US is run just like the People's Republic. That genuinely hurts the US. I just hope he does not put another industry lobbyist in for FCC chairman. That was his biggest mistake last time around. Ajity Pai was corrupt beyond belief. I would rather see that position filled by Kid Rock or Kodak Black instead of another clown like Pai.
I was a young man when it became apparent to me that the unelected Federal bureaucracy was the real power in this country, and was running most of it - not the President, and certainly not Congress.
I’m 51 now (yikes) and it has grown ever more out of control in that time. I’m satisfactorily convinced that there is no way to wrest control of the U.S. government back to the people’s elected President and representatives than through breaking the bureaucracies back, to include just ending entirely certain sections of it.
Will some “good” things get caught up in the collateral damage? Yes, most certainly. I no longer care. Attack it, relentlessly.
One shortcoming of past left-liberal attempts to compare Trump to the Confederacy or European authoritarians is that he actually echoes two Yankee nationalist politicians who specialized in this mix of legal hardball and media blitz; Teddy Roosevelt and Joseph McCarthy. The question of Trump's legacy as president is if he can articulate a lasting vision of America for a future Democratic president to complement like the former, or if he will spiral out in flames and vendettas against America's political order like the latter.
There's a plausible read either way. The alignment of Silicon Valley to be bipartisan like finance rather than a heavily Democratic donor industry seems like a real thread connecting the interests of elite Republicans and Democrats. But will it hold? And can anyone outside of an eccentric historian explain Trump in a through-line of early 21st century American culture that isn't just an advertising campaign? I think it's the lack of cultural coherence in America more than any hardball legal move against Congress that frightens people the most. Nowhere is that more clear than Elon Musk, a man who embodies ruthless industrial success addressing climate change and space industry with the moral and aesthetic sensibilities of a child scrolling Reddit.
Damir is incorrect when he suggests that Trump’s actions destroying USAID may be an unhealthy intrusion on the rights of the legislative branch. USAID has been a rogue, malignant part of the executive branch which DOGE is properly targeting. I favor (much) smaller government and thus don’t favor a powerful presidency in general, but we are in a situation where Trump needs to wield power aggressively for now to destroy as much of the deep stats as possible. Some time in the future, if the dismantling has been successful, it is likely we will then need to bring the executive branch back to a smaller footprint.
I'm not sure I suggested that. I suggested that it's perhaps being seen by the Executive as a healthy pushback against the Legislative branch's intrusions into its own prerogatives.
I hear descriptions like “rogue, malignant part of the executive branch” in a number of places, but I’ve not seen it backed up by anything other than vague tweets. Do you know if there is any sort of longer-form writing that lays out the case for this in a clear way for people unfamiliar with this charge?
I think this is a charge often leveled at aid agencies writ large. Rightly or wrongly, they often see their remit as broader than the national interest. But I hope that the questions that arise out of this piece are much broader than anything having to do USAID’s demise. I suggest this has nothing to do with USAID as such. It’s just the first thing at hand, something to send a signal to the rest of the workforce.
It may well be that the details don’t matter to people like Trump and Musk; perhaps they are indeed just dismantling USAID to intimidate other departments. I think I’m mostly just trying to do my due diligence before coming to that conclusion. If there’s an alternate explanation, then it makes sense to ask if it is actually laid out anywhere before dismissing it.
Like everything else in the U.S., this is all falling along partisan lines. I think the Thomas Edsall NYT essay linked in the post isn’t a bad place to start to see how people like Russell Vought feel about federal agencies in general. For USAID specifically, this is a bit of an overview from the right (obviously the left will have objections): https://www.nationalreview.com/news/usaids-long-track-record-of-wasteful-left-wing-spending-made-it-an-obvious-first-target-for-musk/
Much appreciated! After reading the National Review article, I did some digging on Paul Neifert and his 1990s accusations against USAID, which were featured at the beginning. Not sure if anyone else cares about the details, but, for the curious, Neifert's contemporaneous account is on page 17 here: https://afsa.org/sites/default/files/fsj-1994-11-november.pdf
(It happened long enough ago that I'm not personally convinced it matters all that much for the current organisation, but given that it's the first thing NR chose to reference, I did want to know.)