THE DEEP STATE IS REAL, BUT IT’S NOT ALL THAT SPECTACULAR:
On the one hand it's hilarious and pathetic – but on the other it's incredibly instructive – that US corporate media continues to refer to propaganda outlets funded by USAID as "independent media."
Trump and Musk attack "independent media"! (by cutting their US Govt funding). https://t.co/IHoOGIK0nh
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 10, 2025
More like pathetic and dishonest, and kinda cringey.
Related: Your Job Is to Push the Yes Button: The secretaries make the game clear.
Notice when a counter-argument doesn’t describe the argument: I refute (thing I will only vaguely reference). This mode of “argument” is somehow becoming the new normal, quickly.
A gaggle of former Secretaries of the Treasury — Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen — warn in the New York Times today that the President of the United States is interfering with the operations of the executive branch. No, really. It remains entirely true that warnings about the threat to “Our Democracy” are, in fact, warnings about the threat to Our Bureaucracy. Five people who’ve served at the top levels of the federal government can’t produce one clear and reasonable premise between them.
They just want the money to go to their crowd, because it always has and they feel entitled to it.
The administrative state is impartial, honest, accurate, and pure. “Civil servants” are good; political people are bad. But this is how Article II begins: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Our entire system of government is premised on the authority of people who, having been elected to office, are accountable to be the people of the country for their choices. A function of government that “has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants”: not present in the Constitution. Prove otherwise, if you’d like to try. Show me the authority of that “very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants” in Article II, and tell me exactly where to find it.
Five former senior government officials, feeling themselves wonderfully virtuous, have casually upended the entire American system of government without noticing that they’ve done it. Dire warning: The President of the United States is acting like he’s in charge of the executive branch.
More reason to abolish the civil service.
Related: Smashing the ‘rice bowls’ — how elites are lashing out at Trump and Musk’s reforms.