So, we’ve had a lot of fun. Since November 5th most people on our side have had a real holiday from grief. We got to enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas buoyed by the knowledge that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been relegated to the ash heap of history. What a wonderful phrase that is. What an image. There’s this enormous pile of cinders and burnt garbage and jumbled among these things are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris laying there covered with debris and looking extremely sad and confused. So evocative of a better world!
But it’s best not to forget that this victory is just the beginning of a very long and difficult struggle to wrest control of the federal government from the horde of awful bureaucrats that make everything about our government expensive, inefficient and destructive. It will be up to Trump’s cabinet to force a monkey wrench into the gears of government and wreck it. And the question remains; will they do it?
I get the impression that Kash Patel really means to do just that. And the fact that he was a prosecutor leads me to believe that he might have a good idea how to accomplish his goal of disemboweling the FBI. I think of his tenure as the test case. How long will it take for him to get going on the job? And how long will it take before someone like me can tell that it’s working? I’m guessing I’ll be able to tell if he’s having the desired effect if the New York Times and NPR are screaming that he’s destroying the FBI.
Maybe a bigger fish to fry is the purview of the Secretary of Defense. Assuming Pete Hegseth is approved by the Senate he’s going to have an enormous job clearing out all the woke generals and other officers that Biden and Obama plunked down in the military. But almost as important will be his implementation of Trump’s plan to end the Ukraine war. I assume it’s going to be necessary for Hegseth to micromanage the defense department personnel to prevent them from continuing to supply the Ukrainians with endless weapons and money to keep the killing going until the last Ukrainian is dead. He’s going to have to replace the existing supply chain personnel with people loyal to himself. That’s going to take some doing. There’s an enormous amount of money that gets distributed from the billions that go to Ukraine. Shutting off that spigot is going to anger hordes of people and it might even trigger violence. Hegseth will have his hands full. I guess I’ll know that Hegseth is succeeding if the number of Ukrainians being killed falls drastically. Probably the best indicator will be peace negotiations breaking out between Ukraine and Russia.
And finally Trump himself has a big part to play. He has to get involved in the negotiations on the budget. What I’m secretly craving is to hear that he’s managed to slip into the budget the elimination of the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. If this could be eliminated it would put an enormous hole in the funding for PBS and NPR. The elimination of those two toxic waste sites would in one fell swoop elevate the public discourse in this country immensely. Think of it. I might never see Jonathan Capehart’s homely face ever again. For that alone I would consider Donald Trump’s second term in the White House a thunderous success.