For those who though the federal government was generally good, well functioning, and effective in carrying out its task, the current changes seem to be a destruction of the country.
For those who thought the federal government was overbearing, oversized, and ineffective in it’s purpose, the current changes seem to be welcome change.
Perspective will shape reaction.
A good house with a few problems may need a remodel and some cleaning. A bad house with more problems than good points may need emptied out, gutted, and then put back in the necessary/good parts.
There are many who think that generally the government was okayish and could use some welcome changes. This isn’t Twitter. There are many aspects of the government that NEED to be changed but need to be changed carefully because of their missions. When you hear that Musk’s staffers will go into the Pentagon to look at their computing systems, you should be dead fucking scared.
It’s a bit like cancer surgery. You need it. You want to remove the tumor, but you don’t do it by putting a grenade in the patient’s mouth.
It is good to remodel a house when it needs it. But you want to have a competent and trustworthy contractor to do it, not one who lies, takes things from the jobsite, and is better at breaking things than building.
Right, but what we generally see is that even though the house needs significant remodel, each administration paints a room here or there and tightens a couple of screws, maybe a furniture change and occasionally a wall is removed/built. IOW, nothing really changes, rinse, repeat over many many years.
People want it to be gutted, and then just put back the stuff that’s needed.
I’ve long thought that we need to do a top to bottom accounting of the government to see what works and what doesn’t. A long thoughtful process to make it more efficient and practical. I am certain that we have many unuseful and redundant entities, laws, regulations, processes, etc.
This is none of that. It is intentionally destroying the federal government by people who don’t believe in a federal government. Then, when it no longer function, they will use the dysfunction as proof that they were right all along.
To further your home renovation analogy, this is the people on youtube who tear out all the walls in a house then figure out some of them were needed when the roof caves in.
Do you think that’s going to be done in any sort of rational way, or are we going to have anti-vaxxer, flat earther, conspiracy types deciding what sort of stuff is needed?
People keep making the comparison to 1930s Germany and personally I feel that’s a bit misleading and sensationalist.
We all know what 1930s Germany lead to, and there’s really only one reason to keep making that comparison. I don’t think modern day america is going down that path.
However, look at modern day Argentina and the sweeping economic and governmental reforms they are undergoing. I think Trump/Musk is attempting some version of that. Indeed, Musk met with Milei in spring of 2024 and has long talked about the financial trajectory the US is on in terms of public spending, taxation, the debt etc.
The one thing nobody knows is how this is all going to play out long term. I think it’s undisputed that at least in the short-mid term “there will be pain”.
That’s me trying to put the daily hysteria aside and be an optimist.
You are not seeing what is going on. It is just not the wanton destruction of programs, departments and institutions. Much more importantly, it’s how it’s being done. Trump is ignoring our constitutional checks and balances. Congress no longer controls the power of the purse. The judiciary only get to restrain the executive if the executive agrees that the power they’re seeking to exercise is illegitimate.
You may be fine with burning down the administrative state. I am not. But if it’s going to happen I think we both would prefer that when the embers cool there will be three co-equal branches of a federal government left overseeing them. That is not what is going to happen. There will be a king and two anachronisms. I can’t believe you are ok with this.
The financial trajectory the US is on is determined by:
taxes
social security
medicare / medicaid
military spending
interest rates
Everything else is window dressing. Trump is on an ideological campaign, not a fiscal one. Anyone expecting our deficit to decrease for all this cutting is going to be sorely disappointed.
Are Trump and Co the right people to do this, definitely not, but the previous many administrations didn’t do it. They didn’t do anything to strip it down, sort, remove and streamline. Nothing.
Maybe a load bearing wall will be removed and the roof will cave in. It’s definitely a risk, but IMO it’s better than just doing nothing and kicking the can further down the road until it dies of it’s own self smothering habits, like a hoarder’s house.
See my post immediately above. When Trump cuts social security, medicare/medicaid or military spending, or dramatically increases taxes wake me up. Everything else is ideological and it doesn’t flatter anyone to fall for it.
I totally agree with this. Off the top of my head when you think of countries that recently made massive and sudden governmental shifts to solve systemic problems like El Salvador or Argentina etc, both required a leader who came in with a “burn it all down” mindset. I honestly don’t think you can turn the massive battleship that is the US government incrementally. Presidential terms are just too short to enact meaningful change. I realize that is a double edged sword as it is meant to be a check on power and to prevent someone from, well, doing exactly what Trump is doing.
Good or bad, it is happening and the next two years and potentially four for sure are going to be fucking nuts.
Not to the same degree as the above two countries, but I think it’s fair to say the US is on an unsustainable financial trajectory. Is it a crisis right now? No. Will it get to Argentina levels before being addressed? I don’t know.
However, his approach is throwing out the baby with the bathwater (to use another metaphor).
And I don’t think Trump et al’s motivations are to have a more livable house for the residents (the US population). No, he’s using this to (re)build the house to his and his friends liking and kicking everyone else out.
