W B Yeats, one of my all-time favorite poets, wrote the title line of this diary in “The Second Coming” just after World War I. We have managed since then to patch up the world a few times, but each time the damage is larger, the clean-up becomes harder.
Start with yesterday’s assassination of the CEO of United Health Care. Heather Cox Richarson’s letter yesterday lays out the parallels to the 1870s:
After the Civil War, most Americans applauded the nation’s businessmen for the support their growing industries had provided to the Union, but by 1872 the enormous fortunes the railroad men had amassed had tarnished their reputation. At the same time, big operators were starting to squeeze smaller enterprises out of business in order to control the markets, and popular anger simmered over their increasing control of the economy. . . .
Together, they redefined late nineteenth-century industrialists, with one painting Fisk as a representative businessman who with just “an hour’s effort,” could “gather into his clutches a score of millions of other people’s property, impoverish a thousand wealthy men, or derange the values and the traffic of a vast empire.”
In case someone missed her point, she makes it explicit:
In view of today’s news about healthcare, it’s probably worth remembering that Musk has called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and that Project 2025 has called for making Medicare Advantage—the privatized Medicare in which UnitedHealth specializes—the default enrollment option for Medicare. This would essentially privatize Medicare for the 66 million people who use it, but since Medicare Advantage costs taxpayers about 6% more than Medicare, this would not create the savings Musk is supposed to be finding.
There has always been an imbalance in the way the courts treat corporations and individuals. In theory, anyone can sue for redress of wrongs done; in practice, large corporations have endless resources and their victims generally have none. This is where the government is supposed to step in, as advocate for the people as a whole. That was the purpose of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: to put the wronged individual on a par with the wronging corporation. Other governmental agencies such as the EPA and the SEC serve the same purpose: to give power to the powerless against the powerful.
For several decades after FDR’s New Deal and World War II, the United States was working toward this balance. And for all those decades, the powerful have sought to reverse this progress. (Not for nothing was FDR called a “traitor to his class.”) Now the voters have been persuaded (bamboozled, to be precise) into putting the wild boars in charge of the hen house. (Sorry, foxes are too mild an analogy; besides, they’re cute.)
Corporate and billionaire greed isn’t the only catastrophe Trump is about to unleash. There is his racism. While we can’t really say whether racism elected Trump, his election gave him license to unleash his racism without bothering to disguise it. The racist ‘one-drop rule’ lives on in how Trump talks about Black politicians and whiteness in America. And it gives others license as well. Laura Ingraham: Trump Makes It Cool To Be Openly Racist And Homophobic Again.
Ditto for his attacks on women: Donald Trump’s Second Administration Will Be As Women-Hating as Ever. And, again, his election gives others permission: ‘Your body, my choice’: Attacks on women surge on social media following election.
Then there are the religious fanatics who have backed Trump because they see him as their instrument to gain both political and cultural power. 'Anointed by God': The Christians who see Trump as their saviour. This one has the potential to trigger a conflict between fervently religious Catholics and equally fervent fundamentalist Protestants; see my earlier diary: A Recipe for Religious War.
Corporate greed. Racism. Misogyny. Religious intolerance. (That’s a partial list.) In case there was any doubt, Trump’s cabinet picks make it clear that these are his priorities — The Creep Cabinet Is No Accident; Project 2025, Mar-a-Lago and Fox News: What Connects Trump’s New Staff Picks — at least to the extent that they satisfy his base and keep him in power. Pete Hegseth embodies all of them.
Any number of pundits and commentators have brought up the overall incompetence of the people Trump is choosing to help him run the government. But if they think that is a disqualifier, they miss the point: Trump chose them to help him run the government — into the ground, either through sheer incompetence (Hegseth, Gabbard) or else through competence at screwing the public (Musk, Ramaswarmy, McMahon). They will try to destroy the balance we have been working toward, leaving them free to exploit it without any interference from the government or the people the government was supposed to protect.
The Washington Post almost got this: Trump has assembled an uber-wealthy Cabinet, raising risks of ethics conflicts. It’s not a risk; it’s a certainty, and that’s why he picked them.
Yeats sums up it up in his usual incomparable way:
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
