Trump is making many things happen simultaneously. Two of them – transparency of the state and ridicule of the state – perfectly match America’s mood, and will determine her future.
The world is overwhelmed by the rate and depth of the changes the new administration is making. Around 185 million Americans have only really known the Bush 43, Obama and Biden presidencies – all examples of government secrecy and lies, avoidance of press conferences, and canned, often meaningless, statements. Bush and Biden were especially known for misspeaking and getting their facts wrong, and Obama was far more soothsayer than head of state.
Bush 43 gave an average of 31 press conferences and media interviews per year, Obama 71, and Biden 41. Trump 45 beat them all, averaging 117 press events per year, and he’s on track to exceed that in his current term.
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The media’s stumbling incoherence during a Trump 47 press event (while he signed executive orders) on Inauguration Day reveals their lack of practice, and their incompetence. Did they fear, as happened the previous week, that asking the wrong question might be cause for being roughly physically ejected from the press event? Not at all! Out of long habit, they feared asking questions to which they didn’t already know the answers, and being chastened by their editors or blacklisted from future media events. Like chained dogs, they accept their prior condition, and embrace it.
Turns out, in observing our elected leadership, we don’t need professionals to translate, or fact checkers to fact check. The instantaneity and reach of information today provides whatever we need, in whatever volumes we prefer, to figure out if our prejudices and frameworks deliver for us, or need to be adapted. We are our own headline writers. Trump is modeling, imperfectly and with occasional missteps, a kind of transparency that is wholly inconsistent with centralized big government. Mainstream media and the remnants of the modern Democratic Party see Trump’s transparency and public conversations as signs of Trump the Totalitarian. They have it exactly wrong. Transparency and talking things through are the biggest weapons we all have against totalitarianism, oligarchic controls, state corruption and war.
The difference between old and new can be seen in the nature of Trump’s pardons, and those of his predecessor, occurring within weeks of each other. Biden’s are critiqued from left and right as being engineered to hide information, crimes, and suspicions. Trump’s, on the other hand, are aimed at unleashing information, exposing crimes, and openly labeling suspicions, inciting or inspiring an open review of the facts. Will legacy media rediscover journalism, and conduct exploratory interviews with the Trump pardon recipients, to see what their experience has been, to revisit their “crimes” and their “punishments?” While some complain that the BLM and Antifa rioters were treated too kindly in terms of legal penalties, if we wish to see what a big bad government can do to people – in several cases, people not even in Washington on January 6th, 2021 – we need to hear from the recently pardoned.
We also deserve media assessments and interviews with Ross Ulbricht, who spent nearly a decade in jail for writing software. A lot has happened in that decade, and this pardon, like others that Trump has granted, opens to door to a greater understanding of truth – about technology, responsibility, and about the nature of the state.
Trump’s dam-breaking declassification of whatever is left of the JFK, RFK and MLK assassination files, from the CIA and elsewhere, has happened in a way that is impossible to reverse. Transparency empowers people. Trump, by opening the doors and windows of the state to popular review and direct assessment, has lit a fuse and started a countdown that will be hard to reverse.
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The second important thing – in the midst of so many things – is Trump’s consistent modeling of candid and confident contempt for the state. Couched in MAGA – no doubt a statist sounding acronym, nationalistic and aggressive – Trump himself ridicules the state on a daily basis, and his second term actions are bringing that ridicule, sometimes gentle, sometimes direct, to the people in a way that has them agreeing with him more than disagreeing. He openly speaks of a “revolution of common sense” as he trims the federal fat, and kindly reminds the country that working in and for the US government does not make you smarter, wiser, more competent, or more worthy than anyone else. On Fauci’s security detail, and that of John Bolton, Trump points out, “You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for government.” He also mentioned how personally wealthy these recipients are, compounding another well-deserved point of ridicule for government elites. Cancelling financially valuable security clearances on the taxpayer’s dime for retired Flag Officers and Senior Executive Service civilians is also an easy sell to the common sense crowd.
Tax-funded clearances and security details for government retirees are tiny wastes of funding compared to the incredibly insane, stupid and dangerous destruction of national wealth that is conducted every minute of every day by the state to benefit itself and its cronies, engineered to keep the “voter” economically tied down and intellectually impoverished. But exposing these small “wastes” and “frauds” ratifies and energizes the innate contempt for government shared by most Americans. Local government is not held in “as much” contempt as the US Congress, but the gap isn’t as big as you might think.
More than ever, Americans are wondering about the real Return on Investment for local, state and the federal government. These Americans tended to be Trump voters, and he crafted a campaign that heard their complaints, and shared their curiosity.
Of all the things Trump 47 accomplished in his first week, stripping the veil from the state and leading a national mockery of our government are two of the most important. Other changes he will make regarding operations, priorities, and constitutionality of government will be watered down, challenged, delayed and defeated. But it’s impossible to unsee the despicable state he has shown us, and in seeing it, it is impossible not to hold that state in contempt and disdain. Trump wants a revolution of common sense, and “good government” but he may be unleashing far more than citizen watchdogs.
Understanding the bloated and overweening state as it really is, and holding it in fearless contempt makes us all revolutionaries for liberty. What a time to be alive!
