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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33246 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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I wonder. Maybe it's performative, but Trump seems to angrily blurt out things from time to time indicating he believes the deep state tried to murder him. The axe he's been taking to various departments seems to be driven by vengeance. And the array of ideologically heterodox misfits he's arrayed around him have one thing in common, the destruction of various tentacles of the deep state they've spent their lives combatting.

I don't think he's resizing the ring. I think this is more deeply personal than we appreciate. This is Caesar returning to the pirates who ransomed him and crucifying them to the man.

But the ring in the OP's post is the entire federal government not just the deep state. I simply don't see Trump trying to destroy what lets him govern. Downsize it sure, target the bits that have been problematic for him, absolutely. Take a chainsaw to agencies and NGO's? Yes.

But taking the whole thing down? Shuttering every three letter agency? Getting rid of the military, national parks, ICE?

I really do not see Trump as wanting to be the President who essentially ended the United States of America by delegating every single power to the states, including his own, somehow. Does he really want New York or Portland having control of immigration in their state?

Draining the swamp still leaves you with the land under the swamp. If you didn't want that, you wouldn't have to drain the swamp at all, just blow the whole thing up. And I don't see evidence despite much outrage, that he wants to do that.

But taking the whole thing down? Shuttering every three letter agency? Getting rid of the military, national parks, ICE?

Parsing the EOs is impossible but the latest could be read to say that active duty military and ICE is fine but national parks and nearly every single DoD civilian is fired. All the guys who just want to make gun shoot further or missile go faster or armor not break quite so badly and don't particularly care what you do with it.

If people in the deep state tried to murder him how many do you think were involved? Maybe Trump will find out what that sort of thing looks like when he reads all the JFK documents. If it was like ten blowhards then it doesn't make a lot of sense to put strays into hundreds of thousands of people who are otherwise just enhancing your power for no reason other than that you think you can't figure out who the ten blowhards are.

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