How Regime Change happens in America, while too many people misunderstand what Trump and Musk are doing.
By Anne Applebaum
I am on my way to the annual Munich Security Conference, about which more in due course. But before leaving Washington, I wrote about DOGE. Too many people misunderstand what it is and what it is doing. I explained in The Atlantic:
Although Trump and Musk insist, they are fighting fraud, they have not yet provided evidence for their sweeping claims. Although they demand transparency, Musk conceals his own conflicts of interest. Although they do say they want efficiency, Musk has made no attempt to professionally audit or even understand many of the programs being cut. Although they say they want to cut costs, the programs they are attacking represent a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. The only thing these policies will certainly do, and are clearly designed to do, is alter the behavior and values of the civil service. Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation.
Some of the tactics are new. I did not anticipate that Elon Musk would capture the Treasury payments system, and then to use it to block funding of programs that he personally dislikes. But in essence, this is the same thing that we have seen in other countries, over and over again. Hugo Chávez fired 19,000 employees of the state oil company in his bid to consolidate power. Viktor Orbán dismantled labor protections for the civil service to make it easier to fire people who were too fond of the rule of law.
The goal, in Hungary, Venezuela and now the U.S., is the reconstruction of patronage, the spoils system that American reformers, among them Theodore Roosevelt, got rid of in the late nineteenth century
Much of the world still relies on such patronage systems, and they are both corrupt and corrupting. Politicians hand out job appointments in exchange for bribes. They appoint unqualified people—somebody’s cousin, somebody’s neighbor, or just a party hack—to jobs that require knowledge and experience. Patronage creates bad government and bad services, because it means government employees serve a patron, not a country or its constitution. When that patron demands, say, a tax break for a businessman favored by the leader or the party, they naturally comply.
Once you understand the goal, then the rest of their tactics make sense. Before a patronage system can be resurrected, the administration will first have to break the morale of the people who believed in the old civil-service ethos. Purity tests will be used to choose a new team
Some will seem silly—are you willing to say “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico”?—and some will be deadly serious. Already, the Post reports, candidates for national-security posts in the new administration are being asked whether they accept Trump’s false claim to have won the 2020 election. At least two candidates for higher positions at the FBI were also asked to state who the “real patriots” were on January 6, 2021. This particular purity test is significant because it measures not just loyalty to Trump, but also whether federal employees are willing to repeat outright falsehoods—whether they are willing, in other words, to break the old civil-service ethos, which required people to make decisions based on objective realities, not myths or fictions.
Eventually, the new loyalists become suspicious of anyone who still remains from the past, and will need informers and spies to ensure they don’t step out of line. This process is also underway.
Already, the Office of Personnel Management has instructed federal employees to report on colleagues who are trying to “disguise” DEI programs, and threatened “adverse consequences” for anyone who failed to do so. The Defense Health Agency sent out a similar memo. NASA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the FBI have also told employees who are aware of “coded or imprecise language” being used to “disguise” DEI to report these violations within 10 days.
Once the civil service is destroyed, other institutions will follow, starting with universities. Unless this is stopped.
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The full article provides more nuance. Here is a gift link to read it.
Big Tent USA
A few days ago, I took part in an online event organized by Big Tent USA, a non-partisan, nationwide “moderate, inclusive, and collaborative community empowering citizens to take action.” Katie Couric and I discussed current events and took questions from the audience. Listen here, and do have a look at their website. They have a newsletter, they participate in campaigns and they suggest actions people can take if they want to take part in the political conversation. If you are feeling helpless, this is a good resource.
English Edition
Elon Musk and the Decline of Western Civilization
