And the identical might be mentioned for the gasoline that has powered the Trump administration’s best misdeeds: its annihilation of the executive state, its rollback of protections for immigrants and the atmosphere, and the systematic razing of social protections and ensures. President Donald Trump could have been the figurehead behind all of this destruction, however everyone knows he wasn’t the particular person sitting on the Resolute Desk till the late hours, personally drawing up plans for deregulating industrial methane use or new asylum restrictions. No, this exercise was powered by folks like White Home adviser Stephen Miller, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, Legal professional Basic Invoice Barr, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Now that the Trump administration is getting ejected from the White Home, these flunkies will in all probability spend a while cooling within the gasoline swimming pools of consulting, huge regulation, and academia; maybe, in time, they may fade considerably from the general public eye and our reminiscences. However you might be assured that their capability for hurt is way from spent. As America prepares to inaugurate a brand new president, it may be straightforward now to dismiss these dangerous actors with a lusty “Good Riddance!” or marvel on the depths of their debasement and sycophancy to an inane and temperamental chief. However, it’s price remembering that to a few of Trump’s underlings, the president was at all times extra of a method to an finish. We are able to take satisfaction in the truth that they received’t be getting 4 extra years to wreak havoc, but when we’re not cautious, they’ll be again, operating for workplace themselves or glomming onto the campaigns of maybe extra competent despots.
THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING
TOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES
QUOTATION
“Wherever forests haven’t been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed of their quiet safety, wherever the earth just isn’t bereft of four-footed life—that to the white man is an ‘unbroken wilderness.’ However for us there was no wilderness, nature was not harmful however hospitable, not forbidding however pleasant. Our religion sought the concord of man together with his environment; the opposite sought the dominance of environment. For us, the world was filled with magnificence; for the opposite, it was a spot to be endured till he went to a different world. However we have been clever. We knew that man’s coronary heart, away from nature, turns into onerous.”
~~Chief Luther Standing Bear, Sicangu and Oglala Lakota
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Each day Kos on this date in 2011—The failure of Austerity:
The present fad is to declare that austerity, within the type of slashed budgets, slashed jobs, a slashed tax primarily based and so forth will magically produce the reverse of all these issues, as rich benefactors rush in to spend all the brand new cash you’ve gotten given them, create jobs creating new merchandise no person can afford to purchase, and, I do not know, begin rebuilding infrastructure out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s by no means clear, and neither is it trustworthy: it’s predicated on the hazard of the Scary Deficit Monster, who was by no means scary in the course of the time he was being fed by these similar politicians and think-tank prophets, however who, like several false god, simply occurs to hate all the identical issues that his worshippers do.
On this case, the Scary Deficit Monster hates serving to unemployed folks, hates rules (no matter whether or not or not they get monetary savings), hates authorities in each type save the army, and particularly hates it when well-off residents are requested to pay the identical charges they did a couple of many years in the past, again in the course of the darkish, practically apocalyptic Eighties or Nineteen Nineties. That’s rattling nuanced coverage for a senseless, frothing Deficit Monster, however it’s constant: the Deficit Monster hates something Democrats would possibly need and simply occurs to like all of the concepts of the Heritage Basis, and many others., and many others. And why not? Even a Deficit Monster ought to like its mom.
