Tag Archives: Trump

Why Government Grew

Among the many things that drive me up the wall (I’m close to the ceiling most of the time) is the common inability to distinguish between bigger government and inappropriately intrusive government. What the Founders feared was a government that invaded the individual liberties of citizens, not a government that established new agencies to deal with new problems.

This isn’t, I hasten to say, a misconception held only by Republicans. I still remember a friend who worked for the state during the Evan Bayh administration. His small agency was addressing the then-emerging problems of HIV. The federal government instituted a program that would have paid to place two more desperately-needed personnel in his agency–including the overhead costs of their employment. He was told he couldn’t take advantage of that program because Bayh didn’t want exposure to the accusation that state employment had increased during his term in office.

I think about that persistent bias against numerical growth–the very common inability to differentiate between the growth of power and authority and an increase in manpower–whenever I read about Musk’s determination to slash the size of government while blithely erasing limits on its authority.

A recent New York Times essay provided a perfect example of the difference–and a brief demonstration of how government growth occurs and why the Trump/Musk assault is so dangerous.

In the late 19th century, the government chemist Harvey Washington Wiley proved several shocking suspicions about the American food supply as correct: Milk was routinely thinned with dirty water, coffee contained bone, ground pepper was full of dirt, cocoa was packed with sand, and cayenne was loaded with brick dust.

The findings turned Wiley into a crusader for food safety, and by 1906 Congress finally agreed that regulations were needed. With the passage of the Food and Drugs Act and the Meat Inspection Act, the United States created the framework for a federal system to test ingredients, inspect food factories and recall unsafe products.

This system has been criticized as seriously underfunded and often overcautious. But it has prevented a return to the fraudulent and poisonous food supply of the 19th century, which one historian called the “century of the great American stomachache.” That is, until recently, when the Trump administration began to unravel that safety net.

When this nation’s Founders wrote the Constitution, most Americans still grew their own food. If mom wanted to cook chicken for dinner, she was likely to go out in the yard and wring the neck of one of her flock; if that chicken was ill, the consequences were her responsibility. When food preparation became an industry, responsibility for product safety became a communal issue. The representatives of We the People decided (properly, in my view) that government had an obligation to regulate that production.

Our mad king doesn’t recognize that responsibility, and we are all endangered by the heedless effort to reduce government employment and responsibility.

Along with its other ill-considered actions, the administration has been targeting food safety programs for “downsizing.” As the linked article notes, last month two Department of Agriculture advisory committees that had provided guidance on fighting microbial contamination of food as well as meat inspection protocols were simply shut down. (If that wasn’t dangerous enough, the administration also expanded the ability of some meat processors to speed up their production lines–a provision that makes it more difficult to carry out careful inspections.)

The administration also delayed a rule that would have required both manufacturers and grocery companies to quickly investigate food contamination and pull risky products from sale. At the start of April, thousands of federal health workers were fired on the orders of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; a plan called for terminating 3,500 employees at the Food and Drug Administration — a move that he welcomed as a “revolution.” Consumer watchdogs and others described it as a safety blood bath.

Of course, it isn’t just food safety. Or drug efficacy. The Founders didn’t envision an FAA, either. Forgive me for wondering whether the recent rash of air mishaps is connected to the “downsizing” of that agency. And while the MAGA morons dispute the reality of climate change–okay, the utility of science generally–the EPA also protects the water we drink and the air we breathe from industrial pollution, among other things that didn’t exist in the 1700s. The list goes on.

The threat to individual liberty doesn’t come from the employment of officials to monitor food and drug safety, or oversee air traffic. The threat comes from autocrats unwilling to respect the constraints of the Bill of Rights.

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It Can Happen Here…

In fact, it’s happening.

I’m old enough to remember learning of the death camps in Nazi Germany, and feeling grateful that I was safe in a good country–a country established on the premise that all men were created equal. Even at that young age I was aware that the United States hadn’t always lived up to its principles, but–like most Americans–I viewed those times as regrettable lapses that we were outgrowing, not as warnings that we, too, harbored many damaged and destructive people intent upon dominating and demeaning those they consider “Other.”

Much as we might wish it, we can no longer pretend that America isn’t in the middle of a coup engineered by oligarchs determined to jettison the Constitution and spit on the rule of law. (Those motives impel the attacks on universities and law firms–they quite correctly see education, law and legal ethics as threats to their ambitions.) Trump and Musk have two main motivations: more rewards for the rich– which requires plundering the nation for the benefit of the “already haves”–and restoring the social and legal dominance of White Christian males.  

The assault on America’s already-inadequate social safety net is intended to move even more wealth to the billionaire class via tax reductions. The effort to restore White “Christian” male supremacy requires a more multi-faceted assault–from demands to rid schools and businesses of DEI and similar demands, none of which the administration has the legal authority to make, to the purging of websites that accurately show contributions made by women and minorities–especially Black people–to efforts to disenfranchise millions of women voters via the Save Act.

As the Center for American Progress has explained,

This legislation would require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation—in person—when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. Specifically, the legislation would require the vast majority of Americans to rely on a passport or birth certificate to prove their citizenship. While this may sound easy for many Americans, the reality is that more than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport and as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name.

Because documentation would need to be presented in person, the legislation would, in practice, prevent Americans from being able to register to vote by mail; end voter registration drives nationwide; and eliminate online voter registration overnight—a service 42 states rely on. Americans would need to appear in person, with original documentation, to even simply update their voter registration information for a change of address or change in party affiliation. These impacts alone would set voter registration sophistication and technology back by decades and would be unworkable for millions of Americans, including more than 60 million people who live in rural areas. Additionally, driver’s licenses—including REAL IDs—as well military or tribal IDs would not be sufficient forms of documentation to prove citizenship under the legislation.

This attempt may be too blatant to pass the Senate, but the mere fact that the MAGA cult is willing to propose so anti-democratic and anti-woman a measure is stunning–and illuminating.

And then there’s the growing Rightwing radicalization of the military.

Following the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, investigations revealed that at least 151 of the insurrectionists had a military background. In response, the Pentagon issued a historic stand-down order and created a working group on extremism.

In December of 2021, that working group released new policies, defining what constitutes extremist activities, and policing how soldiers behave on social media, including affiliations with extremist organizations. This February, the Department of Defense issued a memo halting efforts to to root out white nationalists and other far-right influences. The reason given was that such efforts were “not in line with Donald Trump’s executive orders.”

That would be the same Donald Trump who asserts his authority to arrest and deport immigrants, green card holders, and for that matter, American citizens who oppose him–without due process, and in defiance of court orders. 

I’m quite sure our would-be autocrat knows no history and has never heard of Louis XIV (although he seems to have adopted that monarch’s over-the-top decorating style.) He’s also adopted a sentiment attributed to him– “L’état, c’est moi” (I am the state). Louis XIV saw himself as the embodiment of the French nation, and believed his decisions and desires were the law of the land.

Trump actually has more in common with Louis XVI, who was executed for treason in 1793.

In the absence of a guillotine, I hope to see you all at the protest this Saturday. 

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Hayek’s Warning

Among the many–many–frustrating elements of today’s political discourse is the media’s insistence on characterizing MAGA and the Trump administration as “conservative.” That consistent misuse of language is right up there with the persistent sanewashing of what any sentient American recognizes as insanity coming from he whom a friend recently called “that malignant moron.”

There are multiple ways in which today’s GOP is dramatically inconsistent with genuine conservatism. At the very least, people with a conservative philosophy are notable for wishing to conserve elements of society that have value. Indeed, one of the historic differences between conservatives and liberals has been the reluctance of conservatives to endorse social and institutional changes when the status quo has rather clearly outlived its usefulness.

Conservatives have also been believers in free trade–a belief endorsed by the Republican Party of the past.

True conservatives are thus appalled by the Trump/Musk radical destruction of America’s constitutional and legal framework–and by the incredible and destructive economic ignorance displayed by Trump’s fixation on tariffs.

One of the historical icons of genuine conservatism was Frederich Hayek; back when I was a Republican (and Republicans were largely conservatives, not ignorant racists), Hayek’s Road to Serfdom was required reading for conservative intellectuals, so I was interested to read a recent Bulwark column by Charlie Sykes, in which he noted that Hayek had addressed the reasons for the periodic emergence of Trump-like figures.

Sykes quoted Roger Kimball, for a 2016 essay titled “How Hayek Predicted Trump With His ‘Why the Worst Get on Top’.” (Sykes notes that Kimball has subsequently joined those who fawn over “Dear Leader.”)

The Austrian-born economist and classical liberal, who played such a central role in the emergence of American free market conservatism, had a keen understanding of the temptations of authoritarianism. That’s what makes his warnings seem so prescient. “’Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded,” he wrote. Hayek’s chapter on “Why the Worst Get on Top” in his classic work, The Road to Serfdom, diagnosed the populist impulse that would lead to the demand for ceding power to a “man of action.” This is “the position which precedes the suppression of democratic institutions and the creation of a totalitarian regime.” At some point in a political or economic crisis, there “is the general demand for quick and determined government action that is the dominating element in the situation, dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic procedure which makes action for action’s sake the goal. It is then the man or the party who seems strong and resolute enough ‘to get things done’ who exercises the greatest appeal….”

Hayek described several preconditions for the rise of a demagogic dictator, including a dumbed down populace, a gullible electorate, and scapegoats on which that demagogue can focus public enmity and anger.

Hayek thought that the more educated a society was, the more diverse members’ tastes and values would become, and the less likely they would be to agree on a particular hierarchy of values.  He observed that the desire to create a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook in society requires descending “to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and ‘common’ instincts and tastes prevail.”

But in a modern society, potential dictators might be able to rely on there being enough of “those whose uncomplicated and primitive instincts,” to support his efforts. As a result, Hayek said, he “will have to increase their numbers by converting more to the same simple creed.” Here is where propaganda comes into play. The “man of action,” Hayek wrote, “will be able to obtain the support of all the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently.”

Hayek predicted MAGA in his description of the third and most important element of demagoguery: the need to identify an enemy. It is easier, he noted, “for people to agree on a negative programme, on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off, than on any positive task. The contrast between the “we” and the “they”, the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action.” If you want the “unreserved allegiance of huge masses” you must give them something to hate.

There are some things our “malignant moron” knows instinctively…

There are a number of labels we might apply to Trump’s supporters. “Conservative” isn’t one of them.

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Telling It Like It Is

As Americans try to cope with the national lunacy being imposed on us by the cretins in charge of our federal government, two essential elements of our current disaster have become too obvious to ignore.

First, voters did this. Granted, not a majority–most voters cast their ballots for someone other than the cult leader, and a disgraceful number of American citizens didn’t even bother to vote. Trump’s “victory” was razor-thin–but it was a victory, and we are reaping the consequences of that disastrous civic failure.

Second, the overwhelming reason voters supported Trump was racism. Those voters didn’t cast ballots for the destruction of America’s global dominance, or for the evisceration of Medicaid and Social Security; most of them (if they followed actual news and knew what was going on) would oppose measures hobbling the IRS’ ability to audit our billionaire overlords. No–what they wanted, and what the administration is providing, is culture war, an effort to take the United States back to the social arrangements of the 1950s and before, a time when LGBT folks were closeted, no one had even heard the word “trans,” women were in the kitchen, and Black people “knew their place.”

A recent essay from Jennifer Rubin in The Contrarian examined the language MAGA employs in an effort to veil that obvious effort. Prominent, of course, is the administration’s war against “DEI.” (It’s so much nicer to rail against letters of the alphabet than to use the N word…)

As with “CRT,” the MAGA censors, thought police (aimed at rooting out “improper ideology”), Great Replacement paranoids, and outright bigots cannot tell us precisely what “DEI” is—they merely know they are dead set against it. Teaching children to hate America. Making whites feel guilty. Quotas. None of that resembles the “DEI” practices utilized by universities, employers, researchers, and government entities—but that’s irrelevant to them.

Nuanced concepts (e.g., outreach to recruit Americans of all backgrounds, medical trials to ensure women’s physiology is taken into account) do not appeal to people who think Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick epitomize “merit.”

Increasingly “DEI” in the MAGA dictionary has come to mean “Blacks” or “women” or “a convenient scapegoat who represents the ‘other.’” A plane goes down? DEI. A museum pays tribute to the greatness of Jackie Robinson? DEI.

Increasingly, the anti-DEI mission has become an explicit attempt to blame or erase non-whites, females, and other disenfranchised groups. Remember when they used to oppose “canceling” people and policing speech? MAGA ideologues no longer hide their core belief: that white men are inherently qualified, the “true” history of America has been made by white males, and non-white men are to blame for all calamities.

What Rubin correctly calls a “ham-handed effort to bolster white advantage” doesn’t conceal the obvious. The goal is to resegregate America, to return the country to what White Christian Nationalists believe is the proper, “Godly” order of things: dominance of White Christian Males over everyone else. As Rubin notes, if we had any doubts of that goal, Trump’s repeal of LBJ’s Executive Order 11375 gives the game away.

LBJ’s Executive Order “gave the Secretary of Labor the authority to ensure equal opportunity for people of color and women in federal contractors’ recruitment, hiring, training and other employment practices,” The point was simple; if the federal government was contracting with private firms, it had the right to demand that those firms refrain from discriminating. If the composition of the relevant workforce was markedly different from local demographics, that didn’t necessarily preclude contracting, but the business would need to show that it had taken affirmative steps to recruit a more representative workforce.

In other words, the government wasn’t going to use our tax dollars to reward intentional discrimination.

As Rubin points out,

The anti-DEI crusade seems aimed to repeal the fundamental statutory and constitutional protections that prohibit discrimination and give meaning to “All men are created equal.” After all, if the MAGA crowd really wanted to root out unfairness and promote merit they would insist we reject unqualified white appointees and dump legacy admissions at colleges and universities schools. Instead, the anti-DEI crusade aims to bolster white entitlement and eradicate any sense of obligation to right society’s wrongs.

The war against “DEI” and the effort to make “woke” an epithet are intended to cloak MAGA’S racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism with neutral language, to pretend that efforts to address systemic inequalities are the problem, not the inequalities themselves.

Ironically, in voting their fears and bigotries, MAGA folks voted to retreat from the foundational principles that really did make America great.

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About Those Tariffs

All Americans have been getting an education about economics, and specifically tariffs. Some Americans–those who voted for Trump or who didn’t bother to vote–are also getting a rude awakening. (It turns out that it really does matter who holds political office…)

I have not encountered a single reputable economist who doesn’t agree that tariffs are really taxes on the American public, or who believes that their imposition will revive American manufacturing and provide Americans with good jobs. The jobs promise is particularly obtuse; even if the tariffs did result in more factories being built in the U.S.–which is highly unlikely for a number of reasons–anyone who has been watching the manufacturing sector will confirm that its workers are being steadily replaced by automation.

Perhaps the most concise and convincing case against the stupidity–the insanity– of Trump’s tanking of an economy that was the envy of the globe was this brief talk by Fareed Zakaria. 

Rather than indulge in my usual prolonged rant, I am urging you to click on the link and listen to a calm and convincing explanation of why the world of hurt we are all experiencing isn’t temporary and won’t–can’t–lead to Trump’s imaginary rosy future.

If one of our occasional MAGA trolls happens to be reading this, and discounts Zakaria, who is, after all, not just a member of the hated media, but eminently sane and reasonable (qualities anathema to MAGA), how about listening to Ronald Reagan on the subject?

So much winning…

My own rants will resume tomorrow…..

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