Idiocracy By Design

The Republican Party doesn't believe in government. 

Which is odd, considering it's currently in charge of our government. But what we see in this administration's ongoing train wreck is that those in charge are put in those positions for a reason: to wreak havoc on our institutions. Trump 2.0 has shown us that decent, competent individuals no longer exist in the Republican Party. Instead, what we have is a symphony of sycophants, all given a role in the administration because they were either key campaign donors or sweet-talked their way into Trump's good graces. Regardless of how they got there, what has kept them there has been a continuing commitment to be as incompetent as possible in their role. This is by design, and the reasons behind that design tell us all we need to know about the modern Republican Party.

Some of us are old enough to remember Grover Norquist. Norquist, the founder of Americans for Tax Reform, is most famous for this quote: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Norquist was a key figurehead of staunch economic conservatism beginning in the Reagan era. When Norquist was asked about his economic philosophy, he replied simply with the less-than symbol, meaning he wanted less government, less regulation, and lower taxes. Republicans have taken Norquist at his word, and this has been their North Star for the past 40 years. Ronald Reagan was famously against "welfare queens," which was a direct attack on black and brown communities and resulted in a 60% reduction in federal assistance to local governments. George W. Bush signed two major tax relief packages in his first term, arguing that the excess money should go to the taxpayers and not to support government programs. Norquist's own no-tax pledge became a requirement for each and every Republican aspiring to take office during the Tea Party wave of 2010 that ended up being a direct rebuke against Barack Obama and the creation of the ACA. Norquist was a central figure in the 2012-2013 fiscal cliff debate, doing everything in his power to prevent any sort of "grand bargain" that would raise taxes on the wealthiest 1%. Norquist expected Republicans to cut government when in power and vehemently oppose any potential government expansion or tax creation when Democrats were at the helm.

While the effectiveness of Norquist's philosophy has been undermined by Trump's idiotic tariffs, there still remains the fundamental expectation for each and every Republican administration to try to shrink the size of government. Hence, the Trump administration's efforts to empower Elon Musk to try to identify government waste through DOGE. Not only did Musk fail to eliminate $2 trillion in fraud as he promised, but even the $110 billion amount that he claimed has come into question. One of Musk's own DOGE engineers admitted that he was "surprised" by how efficient the government actually was. Yet, despite no actual proof, Musk and his team of flaccid frat boys ended up purging nearly 300,000 individuals from the government payroll in an effort to try to justify the department's mission and existence. Never mind that the programs they cut, such as USAID, were actually extremely efficient and saved millions of lives. Elon Musk was tasked with reaching the conclusion that big bad government was bad no matter where the facts actually took him and his DOGE team. The ending was written before the story even began. 

Suffice it to say, this is why we have jerkoffs like RFK Jr. in the positions that they're in. The United States absolutely requires a Secretary of Health and Human Services. But by putting RFK Jr. in there, we have seen the gradual reduction of government employees in charge of regulating public health and safety. This is exactly in-line with Grover Norquist's vision. The countless public health and food outbreaks are a small price to pay for a pro-life party committed to eliminating as much of the federal government as possible. It's why roughly 50% of the Department of Education was fired during Trump's first two months in office. It's why Sean "Real World" Duffy has been axing the workforce of the DoT. It's why the White House is currently in the process of cutting thousands of TSA jobs. Anything and everything to reduce the number of federal employees. All to adhere to a 50-year-old philosophy that smaller government is better. 

The next Democratic president will have to do their damnedest to undo this mess. To do so, they will have to rehire tens of thousands of competent government employees. This will conveniently play into Republican hands about the Democrats being the party of big government. Of course, these hires will make our food, public health, education system, and even vulnerable immigrant communities safer and more stable, but that won't matter to Grover Norquist and his ilk. They'll return to their tried-and-true argument that American government is too big when Democrats are in charge. Fox News will point to the "ballooning" size of the federal government, conveniently leaving out the fact that so many jobs are being added because they were removed during the Trump administration. It won't matter that so much will actually be stabilized; all that matters to Republicans is that Democrats once again are ratcheting up the size of the federal government in a way that will inevitably undermine their own personal liberties. 

Republicans hate government, but more importantly, they hate good government. They hate when Democrats are in charge and pass health care reform, infrastructure upgrades, and address the rising costs of inflation. When Democrats are in control of the House, Senate, and White House, life is infinitely better for all Americans, regardless of ideology. The fact that so many Republicans continue to worship at the altar of ideologues like Grover Norquist tells us all we need to know. That is simply that Republicans cannot be trusted to govern at any level, and especially should not be given the White House and Congress. A party that doesn't believe in government shouldn't be given government jobs. Everything we're seeing today at the federal level is perfectly in line with a Republican Party that doesn't believe that it's the government's job to do the most amount of good to help the greatest number of people. The result has been a cabinet full of RFK Juniors, where we are now at the whim of the most unqualified administration in American history simply because one of our two major parties doesn't believe it's their job to do a good job. Their overarching belief in the concept of less is why we ended up where we are today. 

And it's why we need way fewer of them in government come November.