Despite his New York crudeness and bragadocio, Donald Trump has begun a service to the foundational ideas and premises of America, and thereby to every American. He, himself, and every one of his most loyal compatriots, is oblivious to the magnitude of that service. What has he done?
His presidency has operated, as most have done, at a public level, variously reported in praise and condemnation, broadcast and published – the level at which modern politics are negotiated and fulfilled. Beneath that, he operates within the secret, classified levels that are presented to each president as though to initiate him to the centers of real governance, hidden from public view for reasons of “national security,” wink. This secrecy conveys a patine of power and influence to which he has been inaugurated, shared by very few. It is heady stuff, becoming a member of the world’s most august and arcane fellowship. The continuity of the secrets, of the secretive machinations, of the vital, world-controlling decisions that only he can make, of the “nuclear launch codes,” and of the distilled intelligence few others will see, is really out of his hands. It is shared with every president as part of the fable of democratic, civilian control not only of the vast domestic bureaucracies, but of even the military-industrial complex. But, it is a fable.
Here and there brief windows open between the public and private presidencies and much heat is generated, politically, some of the citizenry become agitated, editorials are written, commenters supply commentary, and even Congress expresses its dudgeon, both high and low. The portion of the public made restive by the once “secret” revelations is assuaged by palatable political lies and life goes on. Very few lives are affected. Elections, however, can be effected because of them. Still, not much changes over time.
Beneath the “secret” level of (mostly military and international) governance, there is the amorphous, faceless, simultaneously unorganized yet unified, unelected and permanent, administrative state. This vast majority of our “governors” have virtually no connection to any president or even presidency. Each new “head” of the administration is largely uninvolved with this level. It was in place – two millions strong – long before his election to the “most powerful office on Earth’ and it will remain in place long after he has “left his mark” upon America.
And now, Trump. Trump got elected by defeating the penultimate deep statist, Hillary. Hillary is a political deep statist; the permanent deep statists are, however biased, mainly interested in their individual interest areas, perhaps thanks to some college degree, and in their economic security, excellent benefits and virtual tenure. Political deep statists are more likely to adhere to either the socialist world view – and power – and to the eternal struggle to impose it upon the United States, or to simple, tawdry, utterly corrupt and corruptible personal financial aggrandizement. This is where Hillary Clinton has spent nearly five decades and America has finally had enough of her. Trump is clearly on a path quite divergent from the Clintons’.
Trump doesn’t much care about political correctness. He doesn’t care much about whom he offends, even when he intends to offend them. Most are offended because that is their “shtick:” finding offense everywhere and garnering immediate social media support that will bring the weak-willed to their sniveling, apologetic knees within the hour. Otherwise decent, even productive and useful people, are made weak and malleable by the “woke” offense industry. Soon, people like Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke are apologizing for being white. This doesn’t work with Trump, one of the reasons his supporters stick with him.
Because he doesn’t suffer fools, Trump has engendered impressive levels of hatred here and there within the deep state. He has a pro-America agenda, which is to say, an agenda that hews slightly more closely to the presumptions of liberty that were part and parcel of her founding. He wants domestic policy to reflect individual responsibility and even-handed law enforcement, for example. This is not the policy of the deep state, crafted in tens of thousands of regulations whereby virtually everyone may be persecuted or prosecuted for broken “laws” created by those unelected regulators. Regulators hate Trump, even though he hasn’t struck all that deeply into their regulatory empire. It is hateful enough that he undid some of the “great regulator, Obama’s” glorious flood of executive orders.
The deep, deep state, State Department department hates him because he wants America’s treaties and foreign relations, trade and otherwise, to work FOR the United States and no longer against us. Most presidents make diplomatic noises while the State Department’s deep statists (largely globalist socialists) do what they “know” is best for the world; Trump intends to reverse much of that and make it pro-American. They will undermine his policies wherever possible, like in Ukraine. He has no interest in helping George Soros.
The EPA minions surely detest him because he wants land use to include humans. It may sound silly, but many EPA regulators literally prefer squirrels and other four-or-more legged denizens of Earth over almost any two-legged ones… except for them, of course, and the other climate-change thinkers who, they dream, will wind up taking care of the planet far better than most humans have been, and in deserved comfort – few, if any, America-first conservatives included.
Interior has little use for Trump. The careerists at Interior cannot imagine any wide-open spaces that are not restricted to bears, wolves and armadillos. Humans don’t belong in those habitats, just lizards and beavers and so forth. Any humans already mistakenly thinking they “own” a plot in those open lands can be eased – or forced – out of the “habitat,” and eventually housed in a 300 square foot dormitory space powered by solar panels, vegetables growing on the roof, drinking recycled water. Only by being as uncomfortable as possible could humans – non-ruling humans – ever balance the ways we’ve despoiled all the “habitats.” Trump isn’t into that view of the future.
It is impossible to evaluate the motivations of 2 Million federal workers. The majority are lifers, eventually to retire from their federal jobs. Each has his or her own motivations, personal “profits,” philosophies and biases. No single description can apply to 5 people, let alone to a million or more, but given their similarities of employment, there are obviously some motivations, satisfactions, that they share.
Primary of these is a general approval of government, defined as interlocking bureaucracies within which, and among which, are performed the “real” work of government. Federal government personnel are generally in favor of federal government: perfectly logical. Next, each long-time employee is generally favorable toward his or her own agency or office. Each perceives his or her work as valuable, if not vital. Each, then, is likely to be resistant to any diminution of his or her agency or mission. The managers in each agency are, more than just stability, desirous of growth – growth of mission and growth of personnel numbers. Growth equals importance, promotion, better pay. Built into the 15 executive departments of the Cabinet, are so many agencies that no firm count of them exists!
There are 200 at least, but there may be over 400. These, alone, provide a substantial force for permanence and growth – a force that politicians cannot find the courage to temper. Four hundred or so would seem to be a manageable, or at least a take-controllable number. But it is merely the blueprint. Within them all are PROGRAMS, programs and more programs. Congress creates them. For every one there is an advocacy group that at some time identified a problem that a federal agency/program was not addressing specifically. The good intention of every advocate is probably real. Problems exist. Solutions are often obvious, but rarely easy to effect. So, politicians are scratched at their most itchy spot: re-election. Soon a bill is filed to great publicity, that will finally, after years of Republican inaction, solve this or that terrible problem.
Mainly out of ignorance for some, and out of innate anti-liberty socialist beliefs for the rest, problems, no matter how small or how caused, are federalized. That the federal administrative state is possibly the least effective way on earth to solve problems, only describes the cynicism of politicians who put every problem in the federal lap or on the federal breast. That they do so while the federal budget is $22 Trillion in debt – and more – only describes their utter mendacity and failure, over many terms, to uphold one of the most basic covenants the federal government makes with its citizens. For shame.
Trump, unfortunately, has yet to express a willingness to change federal budgeting.
Still, whether it is because of, or in spite of himself, Trump has caused to be exposed the infidelities of globalists and socialists who prefer a continuing, costly, international policeman role for the U. S. Several have been ejected and more soon will be. But even if all of the untrustworthy DOJ, DOD, CIA and NSA apparatchiks were cleaned out… all of them… the liberty-corroding machinations of the molasses-heads just a bit deeper entrenched in the hundreds of agencies and thousands of programs (did you know there are over 1,000 federal programs “addressing” poverty?), will plod along, inflicting regulations with the force of law, able to strip citizens of their constitutional rights, among other things. It is insidious, yet not corrupt, actually – it’s a way of stultifying, nightmarish administrative life. Blame for it rests on 50 Congresses and a dozen presidents. And on us.
Conservatives like to think that they are upholding the Constitution when they oppose communists, socialists, liberals and other Democrats. They tout principles and vote to increase the debt ceiling like lemmings. They are hated roundly for this, by the “woke” socialists who are not only not awake, but are barely aware of either the Sun or the Son. God help anyone who threatens to cut the budget; only enemies of the Republic would conspire to allow the “government” to “shut down.” It never does.