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After the Progressive Monster is Cut Down, What then?
A second American revolution was the implementation of the progressive myth by Wilson and FDR that governing is best left to a professional managerial class using scientific methods in a selfless, objective fashion. Democratically elected figures should only do broad outlines of policy under this model.
See this great essay by Robert Samuelson James Madison and the Crisis of the New Order in Law & Liberty today.
The progressive model has crashed and burned. American intellectuals have trashed the idea of objectivity and scientific truth (everything is just a language game to achieve power) while simultaneously claiming the privileges and governing roles that were justified only because of a shared faith in objectivity, science and the possibility of non-partisan public service. Credentials are increasingly meaningless but nevertheless guarantee status and power.
The voters have come to understand that the managerial class has combined an express betrayal of science, logic, honor, public service and objective standards with the development of a giant, nakedly self-interested partisan infrastructure that is openly hostile to democracy while absurdly but loudly claiming to be its essence.
Ideally, a post-DOGE federal government would be sufficiently right-sized, transparent and responsive to both presidential authority and far better congressional oversight. Or is that wishful thinking?
Another missing major element of reform is that the professional news media also abandoned the ideal of objectivity and instead actively allied itself with the interests of the corrupt infrastructure. When checks and balances fail because the Executive and Legislative branches are in league to do something untoward, the initial remedy is investigative reporting to generate embarrassing, election-tilting headlines. How do we restore that kind of non-partisan professionalism?
Trump was elected because the second revolution has failed. What should be in its place given that even post-Doge, government will still be enormous and tough to control on Madisonian terms?
Published in General
We used to know about federalism and being self-sufficient. Perhaps we can try that again. But the Progressive Nightmare is far from over. The GOP has such a slim lead in the House that Steffanik cannot quit to be UN ambassador. The margin is so tight that the GOP will continue Pelosi’s budget for a 3rd year just to avoid making waves. It will take a hard work for a generation to move past this Progressive disaster.
Probably, but we have to try.
When the country was started, the press was not expected to be unbiased, but they also were not expected to be uniform in thought. They were also not expected to be huge behemoths who controlled the news in multiple cities.
It will be something new, sort of. What we are seeing is the war between the Second and Third Wave Civilizations. What comes with this new wave could be either good or bad. But the old strictures apply: Keep the government small and weak, and it is your servant.
Wishful thinking, and I’m absolutely in for some.
The media will calm down or be replaced. It’s actually up to them.
It’s also the feeling of many that the umbilical cord between the USA and Israel needs to be fully examined. But before that happens, AIPAC would have to be dismantled. The only person talking about this in Congress is the Hon Tom Massie, R of Kentucky.
We are supposed to be MAGA, not MIGA. The notion that Epstein/Maxwell was a Mossad operation seems to be born out not only because of who Robert axwell, Ghjislaine’s father was, but also by how the lady judge in Ghislaine Maxwell’s case offered her a rather lenient sentence. The judge did not even insist on a quid pro quo. She made no requirement that Maxwell, the procurer of under age women and children, had to reveal a single name on the client list. No quid pro quo, just the assignment of Maxwell to a country club styled prison.
At the time of his suicide, there was footage of the cell block where Epstein was housed. Apparently, according to statements made on one of Tucker Carlson’s episodes, Attorney General Barr had viewed the footage. (Footage we have been told does not exist, as the cameras were not up and operating.) Epstein’s surviving brother has had a lot to say about the situation. If people think that in one of the more secure prisons in New York state, that all relevant cameras are down, guards are unavailable and the outside cameras make it clear no one entered the prison, then Epstein’s “suicide” had to have been accomplished by someone in the prison. But for the elements just mentioned to have come about, the hit man was helped out by a person or persons in authority. The entire matter is swept beneath the rug.
And quite a while before the infamous suicide, we have Hillary Clinton boasting of how due to her position as Secretary of State under Obama, she can help out her buddies in Israel as they request that the USA destabilize Syria. The American public found this out after the Wikileaks dump in the summer of 2016. That dump made Hillary’s massive skew of emails public knowledge. Seth Rich paid the ultimate price for the revelation of this truth about Israel/USA Syria destabilization, among many other truths we are not supposed to know. Should we know those truths, we must forget about them.
I’m good with the relationship with Israel. No, I don’t believe in some fantasy Mossad Epstein controversy.
It’ll take a lot more than hard work. It’ll take answers to the question raised in the OP. It will take people knowing what they’re trying to accomplish.
I still favor mechanisms that will motivate the various parts of the administrative state to watchdog each other. Those motivations should include financial sticks and carrots whereby one agency’s loss is another’s gain. Under the current system they all unite to stand in solidarity with each other against the American people.
Aside from the oddly-focused Jewish Conspiracy ™, and let’s take a pause here to note that it’s standard US boilerplate policy to support democracies everywhere, the real challenge post-DOGE is that you’ll need a permanent DOGE-like oversight because the barnacles will always and forever be attaching themselves to the ship of state.
At first they just slow the ship down, but soon they damage the hull, she starts leaking, and suddenly you’re belly-up in the mid-Atlantic, wondering how much splashing will be required to scare away a shark.
There’s new funding proposed every year. The incentives for politicians to spend far outweigh the incentives to not spend. If re-election is their goal, and not actual service, we will always and forever be scraping barnacles.
That photo is insufficiently disgusting. I’m surprised nobody seems to have made many gifs from the videos I’ve seen, of barnacles on sea turtles etc.
Traditionally, when that happens a new monster rises to take its place. As often as not, the monster slayer becomes the new monster.
The late 80s Soviet film, To Kill a Dragon, made that point and a few more that are relevant to our current situation. (The Wikipedia summary doesn’t cover all of them.)
Israel is a democracy only for those residents who believe as the top Zionists controlling Israel believe.
There are routine “cleansings” of Orthodox Jewish sects in Israel who believe that war is wrong, and those people are spit on, tossed down stairs and beaten. That is not really my idea of a democracy.
On top of that, there is nowhere in The Good Book where God mandates that American citizens from 1965 onwards must fund the state of Israel, must look the other way when the truth surfaces about the US Liberty attack of June 1967, and must look the other way when we find out that not only do we send Israel massive amounts of military aid, enough that some monies most likely make their way back into congressional candidate coffers, we also are legally bound to make the Israeli economy whole should its military activities set the economic course of the nation into the toilet. (That was a line item Federal budgetary legalism going back to the 1990’s.) And currently Israel’s economy is is rough shape.
I expect any money we save from sending to Ukraine will end up supporting Israel. You would think the 350 billion dollars, when adjusted for inflation, that has already been offered to Israel would have been enough, but of course it won’t be.