The Anti-Government Crowd revisited

I have mentioned in previous posts, that I am in the process of updating all of my posts with a larger font. My process is fairly simple. Whenever I log into my blog, I check the posts that have been "hit" in the last seven days, and I open them if they were created before January 2021, which was when I began creating my posts with the larger font.

Since I began this blog in March of 2010, I clearly have much work ahead of me. But I am enjoying the process, as I read the posts before I update them to the larger font. It is a revealing process, and one which I recently commented upon, as I now realize that the tone of my posts has become much less optimistic. 

Today, I encountered a post from June, 2012 called the Anti-Government Crowd. Here is a link to that post.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2012/06/anti-government-crowd.html 

For anyone who might ask, Joe, our history is filled with people who predicted doomsday scenarios, the vast majority of whom were wrong, what makes you think this time is any different, I would respond with two points.

First, certainly I acknowledge that prognosticating catastrophe is practically a hobby of social commentators. Every major change whether it be the invention of the radio or the internet, the advances of instant hand held communication devices or machines with massive computational abilities, or even the granting of suffrage for women and minorities, inevitably creates both predictions of doom and a backlash to return to "the good old days." 

Combine that with the fact that, like our western societies as a whole, I am aging. Moving inexorably to my final days. If nothing else is true, we often project our deepest fears onto the issues that surround us. The boomer generation, of which I am part, is faced with the dual challenges of relinquishing control of the country, the world, while wishing that the promise of our youth, our ideals, had been better realized.

Second, I am sure that there were people in Germany and Italy who saw Hitler and Mussolini for who they were, who resisted the allure of nationalism, isolationism, tribalism, and every other ism that the authoritarian uses to gain power. Just as I know there were Americans who saw McCarthy as the real threat to democracy, not his overblown obsession with Communism.

In other words, there have been times when the worst was predicted, and that prognosis was on the mark.

So, while I prefer that in some future post I will be able to admit that I was wrong about our slide away from democracy, I truly believe that there are some dark times ahead.

In my original Anti-Government Crowd post, I quote a conservative of the time, David Frum, who was a well known advocate for conservative thought during the Reagan and Bush 1 years. He certainly promoted the reduction of the size of the government, although, as I said in that 2018 post, the actual number of federal workers had remained static since Reagan's presidency, only growing with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which emanated from the horrors of 9/11.

Frum, however, did not support a chainsaw approach to this effort. He acknowledged the need for our government to intervene when the business community abused consumers, when the environment was at risk from polluters, when disasters required a national response to both alleviate immediate pain and suffering, as well as prevent future destruction.

Now, seven years later, we see that Trump, Musk and his billionaire allies are bringing to fruition the years of propaganda that has laid the foundation for wrecking the federal workforce. 

They do not want to reform government, make it more efficient, root out waste. They want to eliminate it. Or to put it more directly, eliminate the structures that protect consumers, the sick, the elderly, the environment, anything that impedes their desire to create a new "gilded" age, as Trump often describes.

Because in the end, a government will still exist. But not a government that works for we, the people. But it will certainly work for people like Trump and Musk.

You only have to look at Russia and Hungary to see how altering the form of a government towards one which provides unchecked power to a particular party or person, does little to help the citizens of that country. 

It's almost comical when certain far right news outlets or commentators praise Putin and Orban. You don't see people flocking to immigrate to those countries. And how about North Korea, whose leader Trump has called a strong leader. Anyone you know talking about moving there? 

A strong leader lifts up the people of his country. North Korea ranks towards the bottom of virtually every category that matters in terms of quality of life. Kim Jung Un is far from a strong leader if your definition of strong is leading a country to prosperity. Same for Putin and Orban.

But that is the rub. Trump bases his definition of strong leader as someone who inspires fear among his citizens. Someone who is saluted as soldiers in tanks parade past him on his birthday. Someone who says Jump, and expects everyone to say How High.

This is the critical point of how the anti-government crowd, at least those who are the most vocal and influential, have changed. They are more anti-democratic than anti-government, because they know how powerful they can be with the resources of the government behind them. 

It is a far cry from the Reagan and Bush 1 philosophy but it has millions of Americans supporting it. Not because they truly want an authoritarian leader, well, maybe partially, but more because they have been sold a bill of goods about how intrusive and ineffective our government has been, so they are willing to try something different. 

Sadly, they are also missing the real motives behind Trump, a man who has nothing good to say about any democratic leader in the world, but is buddy buddy with all the autocrats. Even now, he is meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Emirates, Qatar, all countries with repressive governments. Of course, Trump is only interested in a free airplane, and the promises of huge sums of money for him and his family in exchange for access to American resources.

Ever the transactionalist, he is more than willing to challenge our constitution (I am not sure I have to uphold it, he said during his recent ABC interview), ignore court orders, and govern through executive orders rather than in conjunction with the legislative branch, whatever it takes to gold plate the White House.

The signs are all there. Whether enough Americans wake up in time is still in question.