I have been reading SPQR by Mary Beard in recent days, and in its light I can see that we live in very Ciceronian times. On January 20th of next year we will cross a major threshold as a nation, much as the Romans did when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. What will our transition look like?
We can only see that future right now as if through a glass, darkly. I do not pretend to be able to predict the specific contours of that new land. I would only venture one prophecy: the second presidency of Donald J. Trump cannot, on balance, bring us any good.
How can I be so confident? For the same reason that I was genuinely surprised by the results of November’s election. There is much about Trump over which reasonable people can disagree. Should there be tariffs or not? Is he a loathsome boor or a charming eccentric? These are questions that are open to debate.
But should Trump be president? Emphatically not. There are so many reasons this is true, but one moment that millions of us saw suffices to demonstrate the point. During his one debate with Kamala Harris, when he began ranting about how Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are “eating the dogs…eating the cats,” he showed us that he cannot serve in the office to which we have elected him. Setting aside how gratuitously hateful and destructive those words were, no one who is so careless with the truth can possibly perform the duties of President of the United States in any way that will not be disastrous. That is not a matter for debate or of opinion, it is simple empirical fact.
I do not pretend to know what disaster Trump will bring us. He is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates- you never know what you’re gonna get. Will he cause rampant inflation and economic distress? A global recession or depression? A world war? A fascist dictatorship? Simple garden variety chaos and political distress? Any are possible. All of us will be faced with tough choices as citizens. Resist or flee? Speak out or lie low? Only one thing is clear: we should all hope for the best (which will still be pretty bad), but prepare for the worst.
1 comment:
Hi Andy,
The disaster is only just getting started. From today’s New York Times:
“The Trump administration on Tuesday offered roughly two million federal workers the option to resign but be paid through the end of September, in an effort to drastically reduce the size of the federal work force and push out people who do not support President Trump’s political agenda.
In an email, the Office of Personnel Management, an agency that oversees the federal civilian work force, gave employees the option to leave their positions by typing the word “resign” into the subject line of an email and hitting send. Workers have until Feb. 6 to accept the offer.
The email, with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” said that the majority of federal agencies would probably be downsized and that a substantial number of employees would be furloughed or reclassified to “at-will status” — essentially making them easier to fire. Most people who have been working remotely will be required to work from their office five days a week, the email said, and some physical offices will be consolidated, causing some people to be relocated.
The message also said that “enhanced standards of conduct” would be applied to ensure that workers were “reliable, loyal, trustworthy” and warned that “at this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency.”
The email amounted to a frontal assault on the federal bureaucracy, which Mr. Trump has long derided as the “deep state” and has sought to bend to his will. In making the move, the president was testing the limits of his power, trying to push past the federal law that governs payouts and rules that have long protected the civil service from political interference and pressure.
The move also risked gutting the staffs of a wide array of federal agencies that Americans depend on, though federal unions immediately condemned the offer, and many federal employees viewed it as a trick.
The message echoed an email that the billionaire Elon Musk, a constant companion to Mr. Trump in recent months, sent to Twitter employees after buying the social media platform in late 2022. Mr. Musk’s email shared the same subject line and offered employees three months of severance.
Mr. Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s cost-cutting effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency, does not officially work at the Office of Personnel Management. But the agency has hired several of Mr. Musk’s allies in recent weeks, including Amanda Scales, who until this month worked at Mr. Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, and is now the O.P.M.’s chief of staff.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Mr. Musk’s America PAC said the move to offer severance packages could lead to billions of dollars in savings. Mr. Musk recirculated the post on his social media platform.
Employees who accept the offer will “promptly have their duties reassigned or eliminated,” according to a guidance memo published by the O.P.M. on Tuesday. Workers will then be placed on paid administrative leave until the end of September, or an earlier resignation date of their choosing.
Employees who resign will not be expected to work, except in rare cases determined by agencies, according to a question-and-answer page on O.P.M.’s website. Agency heads can require some employees to continue working for some time before they are placed on leave…”
The ‘fork in the word’ phrase was used by Musk in a recent speech where he performed the Nazi salute, first to an audience made up of Trump supporters and then to Trump, while speaking at a lectern that had the words ‘President of the United States’ emblazoned on it.
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