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Here Comes the Swamp
Jan. 11th, 2025 04:50 pmI saw in the news today that early next week the Senate will begin deliberating on approving President-elect Trump's cabinet pics. What, already? I gasped. He's not even president yet. He's not president until the inauguration on January 20. Can't we have our last week before starting the next 4 years of deliberate, malicious chaos?
And chaos is what we're sure to have under President Trump. He courts chaos. Like the fictitious character Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones who quipped, "Chaos is a ladder" as he sowed lies and discord everywhere, Trump uses chaos to divide his opponents and get ahead.
We saw that already weeks ago when Trump started naming his picks for a number of key, cabinet level positions. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General— who has since withdrawn. Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. Nikki Haley for Director of National Intelligence. All of these nominees have articulated opinions contrary to the missions of the agencies they would be put in charge of. They'd run them off the rails, or at least try to— and that's the point. When you lead with chaos, it doesn't matter if the chaotic things you try to do succeed in and of themselves. They're a success merely if they stymie the normal functioning of the government and distract and tire out opponents and the free media.
Another term besides chaos for what'll be happening with Trump's cabinet picks is Here comes the swamp. In his first term in office Trump railed repeatedly about the importance of "Draining the swamp" in US government. Of course, what he meant by the swamp was the hundreds of thousands of career technocrats across government, all the scientists, engineers, health experts, economists, and lawyers who help make agencies work in fulfilling their missions based on the best evidence and rational administration of the law.
Trump doesn't actually want any of that; he wants people who do his bidding, facts and laws be damned. Thus in a bit of Orwellian language reversal he dubbed the bulk of government "the swamp". But really the swamp is the cohort of utterly dishonest serial liars whose only loyalty is to Donald Trump, the man, who are about to flood into the highest ranks of government. Here comes the swamp.
And chaos is what we're sure to have under President Trump. He courts chaos. Like the fictitious character Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones who quipped, "Chaos is a ladder" as he sowed lies and discord everywhere, Trump uses chaos to divide his opponents and get ahead.
We saw that already weeks ago when Trump started naming his picks for a number of key, cabinet level positions. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General— who has since withdrawn. Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. Nikki Haley for Director of National Intelligence. All of these nominees have articulated opinions contrary to the missions of the agencies they would be put in charge of. They'd run them off the rails, or at least try to— and that's the point. When you lead with chaos, it doesn't matter if the chaotic things you try to do succeed in and of themselves. They're a success merely if they stymie the normal functioning of the government and distract and tire out opponents and the free media.
Another term besides chaos for what'll be happening with Trump's cabinet picks is Here comes the swamp. In his first term in office Trump railed repeatedly about the importance of "Draining the swamp" in US government. Of course, what he meant by the swamp was the hundreds of thousands of career technocrats across government, all the scientists, engineers, health experts, economists, and lawyers who help make agencies work in fulfilling their missions based on the best evidence and rational administration of the law.
Trump doesn't actually want any of that; he wants people who do his bidding, facts and laws be damned. Thus in a bit of Orwellian language reversal he dubbed the bulk of government "the swamp". But really the swamp is the cohort of utterly dishonest serial liars whose only loyalty is to Donald Trump, the man, who are about to flood into the highest ranks of government. Here comes the swamp.
