Donald Trump, two months before taking office as President, is transforming the domestic political landscape of the USA and resetting global politics. While it is customary for leaders of nations to offer congratulatory phone calls to newly elected US presidents, these contacts seem to mark a major shuffle in power structure.
World leaders seem anxious to make a good impression. According to CNN, many are “scrambling” to get on his good side.
This, I suspect, has much to do with the people Trump has chosen to be in his cabinet. Those names mean things, because they signal a purpose to his intentions.
Domestically, approximately half of our country is elated, and the other half shell-shocked. That proportion intrudes into our personal spaces, including friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and casual acquaintances. If you are of a Trumpish persuasion, it might be best not to ignore the heartburn this election has caused; you probably have friends, as I have, who need to let the new reality sink in. As Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, “I sense there has been a great disruption in The Force.” Or words to that effect.
The cabinet appointments: The only big name thus far offered by the President-elect that is remotely mainstream is:
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State
There are some lesser luminaries on Trump’s appointee list who are unsurprising Republican choices. These might include:
Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff
Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff
Doug Collins, Veterans Affairs
But then we get to the juicy ones. Note how critics describe these choices:
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., health food nut, vaccine denier: Health & Human Services
Pete Hegseth, part-time Fox News anchor and almost axe-murderer, Defense
Tulsi Gabbard, Spirit of Aloha promoter: Director of National Intelligence
Mike Huckabee, unhinged Christian Nationalist, Ambassador to Israel
Tom Homan, family separator and anti-Muslim zealot, “Border Czar”
Elise Stefanik, election denier, Ambassador to the United Nations
Kristi Noem, self-confessed dog-murderer, Homeland Security
And the one that takes the left-wing cake:
Matt Gaetz, alleged sex trafficker, Attorney General.
If confirmed, the DOJ lawyers who investigated Gaetz will now work for him. (Maybe it’s time to update the old resume.) There will be serious opposition even from Republicans on this one. We’ll see how it works.
No one knows how Matt Gaetz will do in the job, but one thing many would NOT like to see would be a continuation of normalcy at the Department of Justice. In the last 4 years, “normalcy” has included turning police powers on political enemies.
That has to stop. Maybe Gaetz is the guy to do it.
What will they really do?
Says one widely-read publication: The MAGA bench is deep with frightening individuals…
Which makes me wonder what these incoming administrators will actually do, while on their way to burning down civilization as we know it. I customarily use a search engine that I believe to be relatively untainted by politics, yet locating the actual, expressed purposes of the above-named figures in news items on the web is a virtual impossibility.
A search for “What do conservatives say about RFK” returned these links:
Conservative media sours on RFK
Republicans are starting to worry
Driven by conspiracy theories
Mind-bending politics
Lurches right
Those sorts of regurgitated main-stream talking points seem unfruitful. So I sift through what I have read and try to come to my own reasonable conclusions:
RFK is focused on Making America Healthy Again through better nutrition long-term, and by making pharmaceuticals available, uninfluenced by politics or big money. I think he is probably aware he will face huge headwinds from monied interests. Such as every pension plan investment in the free world.
I disagree with most of RFK’s policy positions (he is pro-choice, and favors both legalization of drugs and same-sex marriage) but he is not being hired for that. He is being hired to do battle with Big Pharma, Big Food and perhaps Big Agriculture.
Tom Homan insists that a large, unfortunate and virtually unrestricted invasion across our borders necessitates a correspondingly large, unfortunate effort to identify and deport violent criminals. And any time a felon is apprehended, by the way, his children are not normally locked up with him. I suppose you could call this “family separation,” but the term is needlessly inflammatory.
Mike Huckabee apparently believes Israel has a right to exist peacefully, and that US support for Israel is a major factor in keeping terrorist states — meaning Iran — in check. This approach has been proven to make everyone safer. As evidence, Trump’s first term.
Pete Hegseth appears to find the Pentagon’s insistence that “our strength is our diversity” is something more suited to parlor rhetoric than to war fighting. It seems he wants claims of American muscle to be backed up by actual American muscles. What a concept.
The essence of anger
Which leads me to speculate on why, exactly, we are knee-deep in vitriol. I confess I have been somewhat bewildered ever since the first day Donald Trump rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy for President almost 10 years ago. The berserk ravings of his critics are mystifying. Why are they so upset?
These cabinet appointments go some way to answering that question. Most of those named directly threaten the careers of those who depend on government. That includes public-sector bureaucrats and private-sector commercial interests.
Richard Foster’s book title Money, Sex and Power (1985) pithily identified what that author saw as the principal motivators of humankind. Foster’s world view was Biblically informed.
With Trump’s appointments, those who wield money and power are clearly in the crosshairs of a new administration. That’s 2 out of 3.
The consent of the governed
The U.S. government has enormous power because it controls enormous wealth. It would appear that a great many average Americans, rising each day to make a living, have become convinced of the danger and unfairness of a bloated federal government. They have undertaken to make it smaller. Their chosen instrument is Donald Trump, and by extension, those with whom he is surrounding himself.
Thinking outside the box? Donald John Trump has left the box far behind. In fact, he has set the box on fire.
Actionable wisdom from the planet Vulcan
My own Child-of-the-Sixties worldview, I am coming to realize, is formed by an eclectic mix of the Bible and Star Trek re-runs. Attempting to make sense of what American voters intended in the recent election, a particular snippet came to mind. In the TV series, there was an illustrative scene in The Galileo Seven, S1E16.
Spock and McCoy and some of the gang were in the shuttle craft, far from the Enterprise, trapped in a rapidly decaying orbit. The craft had seconds left before burning up. Impulsively, Spock jettisoned the rest of the fuel and ignited it. The resulting blast set off what amounted to an emergency flare in space.
(One thing I have never understood: Objects moving in space will continue to move in space at the same speed for a long time, because there is no friction. So how do you “run out of gas” when you’re in orbit? For that matter, why do the warp drives need to keep cranking out constant RPMs once the ship is moving? Do they not teach these basics at Star Fleet Academy? Never mind. I digress.)
Back on Enterprise, the ever-attentive Mr. Sulu alerted Kirk, who ordered the transporter locked onto whomever was near the flare. That reliable Chief Engineer Scotty promptly “energized,” cross-circuited to A (or something), and brought them back safely aboard.
Handy device, that transporter.
McCoy razzed Spock about his last-second emotional outburst with the flare maneuver.
With trademark stoicism, Spock calmly replied to the Doctor: “I reasoned that in the situation, the only logical response was an emotional outburst.”
It worked for Spock and (except for the expendable crewmen who for some reason were speared to death by shaggy, grunting aliens earlier in the script) it worked for the other cast members on the shuttle craft.
Maybe it will work for Donald Trump, and maybe it will work for the cabinet appointees, and maybe — just maybe — it will work for We The People, who delivered an unmistakable message on November 5, to wit:
We have put up with enough woke nonsense. America’s only logical response is an emotional outburst.
Mr. President, fix this thing!
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