I'll say this for the Trump II Administration: they're living up to their promise to do a lot of things all at once.
Trump declared today that his long-rumored Tariffs Against Everyone (Canada, Mexico, China) start tomorrow. Folk on excitable (but not necessarily wrong) left websites. Musk has apparently taken over HR servers at the Office of Personnel Management, reinforcing "go on your dream vacation by resigning now" emails to government employees. Federal websites are being purged of information about HIV, trans care, climate change, and other Trump-no-like-them topics. Trump is doubling down--without a shred of proof or justification--on the notion that DEI is to blame for the air disaster on Wednesday night. NSF grant processes still seem frozen. The CDC is prevented from communicating about HIV/AIDS, and CDC employees were frantically archiving data from its webpages before they're purged. We seem on the brink of voting in anti-vax, anti-medical-research Robert F. Kennedy as HSS Secretary (threatening iffy GOP Senators like Bill Cassidy if they don't confirm him). The DOJ fired dozens of employees involved in prior Trump-focused investigations, and the FBI is readying a purge of all FBI folk involved in investigating Trump's multiple crimes. The ICE raids continue, now with talk of deporting those arrested to Guantanamo.
I'm not even mentioning everything. Not two weeks in, and Trump shoves down our collective throats a multiple-constitutional-crises-at-once shot with a ruin-the-economy-as-quickly-as-possible chaser.
My guess is that they're betting on a combination of reliable propaganda dissembling (from Fox News et al.) and just plain exhaustion to make this all seem normal. But I have trouble seeing how, for example, driving out 70% of federal workers will do anything but cause basic governmental collapse. Nothing will work. Trump will have broken the government.
I get that's what some of his supporters want--or at least what many of them think they want. The right since Reagan at least has ginned up deep hatred of government while at the same time fomenting ignorance about just what the government is and what it does. Will people like it when (for example) their tax returns take longer to come in right as prices are skyrocketing, interstates degrade, air traffic control disappears, medicare and social security admin grinds to a halt, etc., etc.?
The hopes I see on the left right now involve faith in the millions of brave/industrious government workers doing . . . things? . . . to preserve vital pieces of government informational infrastructure, like scientists storing seeds underground to replant after the apocalypse passes. There's some thought, also, that swift legal challenges can freeze or slow a lot of Trump's plans. And then there's the grim, leopards-eating-faces schadenfreude hope vested in the inevitable "find out" phase that's coming (perhaps as early as next week!) after all this f-ing around.
Surely, this line of hopeful thinking goes, Trump won't be able to deflect blame for the immediate and painful consequences of choices made by his move-fast-and-break-everything crew. Surely popular backlash will come for him. The cost of doing so many things all at once--loudly and publicly--is that you burn away any scrap of plausible deniability. You can't claim that it's not your fault when you boasted about doing all the things.
Surely.
I don't know. As long as Trump can convince his base that he's doing this most to the groups that deserve it (marginalized folk, brown folk, immigrants, queer folk, poor folk), I think his base will swallow it. As long as the billionaires he's surrounded himself with perceive continued profit for themselves, I think his funders will support it. As long as the politicians he's wrapped around his fingers see their careers as reliant on him, I think they'll allow it.
And schadenfreude? I don't anticipate much of that. The leopards dine on everyone's faces, not just those of the ones who voted them into power. Hard to say "I told you so" when you're shrieking through the jagged hole where your lips used to be.
Rough times ahead.
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