Photo by Minh Pham
So much going on! Will Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the Department of Government Efficiency succeed in their supposed quests to shut down everything from USAID to the Department of Education to God knows what else?
As the establishment crowd moans and the MAGA crowd rejoices over the sketchy claims of cuts and eliminations, I’m adopting (and strongly suggesting that others adopt) a wait-and-see attitude, a posture of sangfroid rather than swivet or schadenfreude (sorry if you have to look those terms up).
Just because someone associated with the government says X, one needn’t, and probably shouldn’t, unquestioningly believe X.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete,” CIA director William J. Casey allegedly told US president Ronald Reagan at a 1981 White House meeting, “when everything the American public believes is false.”
Nearly four decades later, Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, put it a different way to journalist Michael Lewis: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.”
The fecal matter in question seems to be “disinformation” on an industrial scale. Not just false claims, but conflicting claims and stage magic style misdirection — so much of it all that any attempt at figuring out what’s really going on feels like a 24/7 game of Whac-A-Mole [TM].
Neither of those formulations are really new, nor is the phenomenon limited to Republican administrations. The old saw, “how can you tell a politician is lying? His lips move!” remains perennially popular for good reason.
Politicians, policy-makers, and all too many “thought leaders,” lie.
They lie about their actions.
They lie about the motives behind their actions.
They lie about the effects, both prospective and retrospective, of their actions.
They lie knowingly, they lie constantly, and they lie for the most obvious reason: Telling the truth wouldn’t get them what they want. What they want, of course, is power. Ever more power, over more people and more things, world without end.
It’s not an occasional case, it’s a systemic attribute. As Friedrich Nietzsche noted in the 19th century, “everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
A collective entity built on lies must necessarily be made up of individual liars.
How can we know whether Trump, Musk, and friends are serious about cutting the size, scope, and power of government, or, if so, successful at doing so?
Figuring that out won’t be easy. Neither they, nor their opponents, nor their media hangers-on, are people any sensible American would ask for directions if lost, or leave alone in a room with their wallet.
Question everything. Then question the answers. Then hope for the best.
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