Up is down. Black is White. East is West. This is what government by nihilist decree does to reality as it carves out space for visceral measures supported for what they destroy rather than create. When…. if this Administration is driven from the scene it will be as if a hurricane finally passed; there will be only assessments of damages, nothing it wrecked will be anything more than destroyed vestiges of what existed before the disaster occurred.
There is a reason “Post-War” usually precedes descriptions of life after a devastating conflagration. Most of what guided routines before the cataclysm is unrecognizable after the event occurred. The choice in America now is whether our institutions, and those we entrust to run them, are capable of moving swiftly enough to preserve what our current pestilence is actively obliterating.
Everything the Trump White House pursues is done with the assumption it has a mandate to destroy what was created and nurtured before it arrived on the scene. The EPA, pollution standards, Global Climate Change initiatives, NAFTA, TPP, NATO, Civil Rights, Human Rights, the UN, Public Schools, the State Department, respect for journalism, respect for the FBI and Intelligence communities, post Great Recession consumer and financial protections… the list is endless. Virtually the whole of what he inherited to supervise, Trump has attacked with the fervor of one looking to raze all before him, Godzilla in Tokyo.
Was this what the majority of Americans wanted, demanded? Of course not. This agenda was slurred out at MAGA rallies in between assurances the system was rigged, his election prospects doomed. That GOP Senators facilitated a list of Cabinet nominees fully nefarious in their intentions toward the agencies they were selected to run, clarifies so much more than a breathtaking failure of leadership, it reveals a disdain for the public trust that’s meant to primarily inform their actions. Now Republicans appear fully subservient to a President reeling from one bombshell revelation about his corruption after another. As the noose tightens there is little doubt he will foist additional demands on the party he has thus far bullied to his liking, gift wrapped as litmus tests for devotion to conservative principles. Anything less than full support will surely be equated with betrayal.
Writer David Ignatius, reacting to the recent attack in Syria that claimed four Americans among the victims, contrasted the targeted town of Mabij before and after ISIS was driven away, which is another way of pointing out what was normal before ISIS ever got there. Instead of only black, women could dress in bright colors. Where there was nothing but tense anticipation of sweeps targeting all who acted in the myriad of manners forbidden by the fanatics, streets returned to the vibrant meeting places they had been, diversity no longer a crime punishable, as almost all ISIS-enforced offenses, by death. Ignatius’ point was to highlight the mission behind the presence of 2000 US special forces operators on the ground there, hastily withdrawn by Trump against the advise of virtually the entire national security community.
No sane person would equate the Trump Administration with ISIS, that would rightly discredit whatever they had to say. Yet and still, the image of a domestic and international community, far from perfect, but in active accordance on a cross-section of critical challenges, imbued with numerous programs guided by ambitious and hopeful mission statements, suddenly faced with the specter of new leadership ignorantly disdainful of their very existence, and willing to actively subvert the basic goals they were set up to pursue, is tragically appropriate. Trumpism has been nothing but a black cloud on progress and cooperation, a catastrophic tsunami of nihilist malevolence, foisted on anything that existed prior to its arrival. The consequences already are frightening.
On the campaign stump Trump had zero policy specifics. His wretched core was fine with that, resentment and grievance can be conveyed just fine with broad strokes. More than anything else, Trump sold an image of a doer, a human bulldozer ready to remove any obstacles to his MAGA inclinations. His way was the only way, and taking his word for it was just going to have to do because, well, look at the alternative. Incredibly, unfathomably, we elected the lowest common denominator based on his dystopian ramblings that things could only get worse if his opponent won.
Example A of nihilism on parade is Andrew Wheeler, the President’s selection to replace disgraced former EPA Chief Scott Pruitt, whose overt corruption exceeded even Trump’s bottom basement standards. The former coal lobbyist appeared confident this week his confirmation hearings were strictly pro forma. In fact, astoundingly, he exclaimed to a rightly incensed Edward Markey (D-MA) that he hadn’t yet felt it necessary to peruse a US government report warning of dire economic damage associated with the Climate Change neither Wheeler or his boss feel is too pressing a concern. Since the report came out in November, Markey was a bit incredulous Wheeler had yet to so much as glance at it. Wheeler, who’s a dead ringer for an age progression of Beevus, seemed smug enduring Markey’s criticism…. like a guy who understood it was already a done deal.
Of course, with the Senate’s current make up, for Wheeler to enjoy such confidence he’d have to be sure vacation state Republicans like Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski and Cory Gardner (CO), not to mention hurricane alley Senators Marco Rubio (FL) and Rick Scott (FL) were reliable yeas. Astonishingly, this group seems more willing to approve Wheeler than they were Pruitt, even though he was Pruitt’s dutiful deputy, and voices even more unequivocal animus toward the agency’s basic mandate, if that’s possible. It’s hard to think of states who benefit more from robust EPA oversight than Maine, Colorado or Alaska. Nor is any state in the union more in the crosshairs of elevated sea level distress than Florida. But the existential interests of the states they represent still don’t carry the day in this GOP. Seems a promise to keep his head down and not bathe publicly in the swamp like his predecessor is all that is required to sail through on Republican majority wings.
Willful destruction requires more than the vapid decrees of one inept man, it’s a team effort. At each turn this Administration’s intentions to stomp on every sand castle in its path have been abetted by a fully complicit GOP. Those billowing black clouds in the sky you see aren’t simply soot and pollutants liberated by relaxed air quality standards, they’re also the figurative menace Trump and his enablers continue to represent to most anything constructive. BC