Breaking the Government
At the end of 1968’s Planet of the Apes, there is an iconic scene in which Astronaut George Taylor (no relation) encounters the dilapidated Statue of Liberty and realizes that he has been on Earth the whole time (sorry: spoilers!). He falls to his knees in anguish and mutters, “You finally, really did it,” before shouting, “You Maniacs! You blew it up!”
Watching the Trump administration on a daily basis feels like watching them blow it all up in slow motion, and makes me want to yell at the maniacs who are blowing it all up (and, quite frankly, those who voted to give the keys of the federal government to an obvious maniac).
I could choose a number of items as the basis of this post. For example, Trump’s attempt to subvert the entire structure of the Federal Reserve system is high on the list. We have already seen USAID, a clearly important foreign policy and humanitarian tool, utterly destroyed.
Or, this story in today’s WaPo fits: Trump, Gabbard fired top CIA Russia expert days after Alaska summit.
In the days leading up to President Donald Trump’s Aug. 15 Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of the CIA’s senior-most Russia experts worked grueling hours, helping Trump and his team prepare for high-stakes diplomacy over Ukraine and making sure they were adequately briefed, according to a former agency colleague.
Four days later, the CIA officer — whom The Washington Post is not naming for her protection — was at work at the spy agency’s Langley headquarters when she was abruptly ordered to report to the security office. She was informed that her clearance to look at classified material was being stripped. In a span of minutes, her 29-year career in public service was essentially over.
[…]
The memo, posted on X, listed no specific infractions, but to many current and former officials it looked to be a revenge-driven loyalty purge. Among the 37 people whose clearances Gabbard publicly revoked were senior U.S. intelligence officials, including the CIA officer.
Since I am a reasonable person, I will grant that any given individual might be worthy of dismissal. After all, I don’t know all the facts. However, the public removal of 37 intelligence officers is a signal that people in government had better watch out, or they might lose their jobs. And almost certainly, these people were removed because they have said, or are willing to say, things that Trump doesn’t like.
This administration would rather blow up expertise and capacity to ensure the right kinds of silence and compliance.
Or, I could note this story from earlier this year this week from the NYT: FEMA Suspends Staff Who Signed a Letter Criticizing Trump.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday suspended around 30 employees after those workers wrote to Congress warning that the Trump administration had gutted the nation’s ability to handle hurricanes, floods and other extreme weather disasters.
Of the 182 FEMA employees who signed the letter to Congress, 36 attached their names, while the rest withheld their identities for fear of retaliation.
Those who used their names received emails on Tuesday night saying they had been placed on paid administrative leave “effective immediately, and continuing until further notice,” according to copies of the emails reviewed by The New York Times.
The emails did not provide a reason for the decision. Representatives for FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The signal is clear: this administration would rather punish people who criticize Dear Leader than be prepared for hurricane season.
You know, this guy.
Here’s the text.
After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.
Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents — something I know something about. We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again.
Speech will never be used against political opponents, unless, of course, they criticize Trump.
Back to the NYT article.
The Trump administration has taken other actions against employees who have spoken out.
In July, the Environmental Protection Agency placed 144 staff members on administrative leave after the workers signed a letter accusing the administration of politicizing the agency. The E.P.A. also opened an investigation into whether the workers signed the letter while on the job using government equipment.
And the Homeland Security Department, the parent agency of FEMA, has ordered some employees to take polygraph tests to help determine whether they leaked information to the news media, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
But the most proximate cause of this post is the following, as reported by the NYT: White House Says New C.D.C. Director Is Fired, but She Refuses to Leave.
The White House said late Wednesday that it had fired Susan Monarez, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after a tense confrontation in which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to remove her from her position. A lawyer for Dr. Monarez said in response that she was refusing to step down.
Dr. Monarez, an infectious disease researcher, was sworn in just a month ago by Mr. Kennedy, but had clashed with the secretary over vaccine policy, people familiar with the events said. Four other high-profile C.D.C. officials quit en masse, apparently in frustration over vaccine policy and Mr. Kennedy’s leadership.
[…]
The four high-ranking agency officials who did resign are Dr. Debra Houry, the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who ran the center that issues vaccine recommendations; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who oversaw the center that oversees vaccine safety; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, who led the office of public health data.
Some cited an increasingly tense environment within the Trump administration that had become intolerable.
“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” Dr. Daskalakis wrote in an email to colleagues, adding that they “continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession.”
Dr. Jernigan was deeply involved in the agency’s response to anthrax, swine flu and Covid; Dr. Daskalakis helped the nation cope with an mpox outbreak; Dr. Layden established the Covid strategic science unit; and Dr. Houry built the agency’s opioid response program.
Former C.D.C. leaders said the departures would harm the agency and the nation.
All of this is because Trump put an unqualified conspiracy theorist in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Mandy Cohen, who ran the agency during the second half of the Biden administration, called the officials “exceptional leaders who have served over many decades and many administrations,” and warned that “the weakening of the C.D.C. leaves us less safe and more vulnerable as a country.”
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the C.D.C.’s principal deputy director until her retirement in May 2021, called them “the best of the best.”
“These individuals are physician-scientist public health superstars,” she said. “I think we should all be scared about the nation’s health security.”
None of this is making us safer or healthier.
Instead, Kennedy has caused the new COVID vaccines to be of limited availability. See the following from PBS: Looking to get a COVID shot this fall? Here’s why it’s likely to be more complicated. For what it is worth, I am open to expert advice on which shot to take or not to take. Under normal times, if the federal government had made these recommendations, I would have likely accepted and moved on. But I do not trust the RFK, Jr.-led HHS.
Late last week, H.H.S. confirmed that a vocal Covid vaccine opponent had been appointed to lead a subcommittee reviewing the safety of the shots, upsetting public health experts.
And he continues his baseless crusade concerning autism.
In addition, Mr. Kennedy has gone against the consensus of many scientists and public health experts by announcing new efforts and funding for research into whether there is a link between vaccines and autism, despite years of studies that have not found evidence to support his belief.
In recent weeks, the C.D.C. has been under pressure from Mr. Kennedy’s allies to grant access to a large database called the Vaccine Safety Datalink that is managed in part by large health systems around the United States.
Mr. Kennedy brought in David Geier, a widely discredited researcher who has published studies using the database and purporting to show a link between vaccines and autism.
Mr. Geier’s team has been seeking the data from the C.D.C. and other corners of the federal health bureaucracy for the work seeking a tie between vaccines and autism.
Mr. Kennedy previously complained that officials were blocking his access to federal data. But in a presidential cabinet meeting on Tuesday, he suggested that his staff was likely to have a preliminary answer to the cause of autism soon.
The maniacs are blowing it up right in front of our faces.
********************@
Remember Grover Norquist? About 25 years ago he said it out loud, that he wanted to break the government down, and if necessary, drown it.
Trump is the perfect front man for the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 ‘Abolition’ Project. His personal revenge and retribution tour dovetails nicely with the Heritage Plan to destroy the federal government as we have known it since 1933. Trump is a destroyer, he rarely makes anything better, and Heritage doesn’t care about ‘better’, in the sense of improvement and reform. The folks at Heritage, Like Ginni Thomas, believe it is ‘better’ to slash and burn and make it so that there is no chance any Congress will soon bring back that which was deleted by Musk and Trump.
It doesn’t look like ANY Republicans are interested in the Federal Government at all – except perhaps to be like those fans who attend NASCAR races to watch and cheer the spinouts into the infield or the crashes into the banked walls.
Republicans have spent decades amping-up how bad and wasteful government is. None of these people will ever admit they were wrong. Did Elon Musk find waste, fraud, or abuse? Nope. Well that just is government being deceptive and smug.
We hear endless stuff about how smug leftists are because they start saying unhoused. Maybe that’s true. But nobody craves being right more than the guy who has spent the last twenty-thirty swallowing every lie about big government, regulation, and climate change being fake. Expose these lies and this guy doesn’t say my own thinking led me to be wrong. He just gets angrier and more resentful and more sure, at least in public, that he’s right. A loon like RFK Jr talking about SSRIs is the end product of that guy.
The lackadaisical reaction to all of this by the general American public is irritating AF. It–again–points to the gross lack of understanding of the necessary role government plays in the proper functioning of a society. My hunch is that most people have yet to be DIRECTLY impacted by this shitshow, so they don’t care (yet). They probably also think “well, the next president will fix whatever is broken and we’ll move on.” The problem with that, of course, is that it is far FAR easier to break things than it is to fix them.
I genuinely don’t know how we come back from this. It’s going to cost a sh!t-ton of money to rebuild and rehire people. My plan to win the lottery and flee was not successful last night. I will try again for Saturday’s Powerball.
Gabbard also dismissed a large number of Intelligence analysts.
What does all of this mean?
Turns out that when you’re making shit up out of thin air you don’t need all those people looking over your shoulder.
@Jen:
This is key. It will take time for all the damage to be done. Indeed, it will not surprise me if a lot of the damage isn’t felt until well after Trump is gone, and whoever is in power at the time will get the blame.
Immunity and vaccines are a hideously complex topic. Still, a simplified explanation can help.
Viruses in particular need to get inside cells to do damage. They do this by matching one or more of their surface proteins to receptors on the cell membrane. Antibodies prevent this by binding with the surface proteins instead.
The way antibodies do this is often compared to inserting a key in a lock. This is a bit misleading. It’s more like matching the protein’s shape enough to be able to bind with it (there’s a matter of electrostatic charges involved, just so complicate matters further). Therefore antibodies produced for an earlier variant, be it through vaccination or infection, may match well enough with the latest variant to stop it from infecting many cells, or to slow it down while newer antibodies emerge*.
On the other hand, having more sets of antibodies from several variants increases the odds more of them will be effective. Therefore the updated booster shots for the latest variants, for viruses which mutate a lot, like the trump virus or the flu virus.
There are other factors involved, too. Maybe the latest variants are not so virulent that they are likely to endanger most people, so an updated shot isn’t needed. But then, vaccines cost so little and have miniscule risks that taking them just in case makes sense.
*BTW, throughout all this the innate immune system still works, even if the adaptive part is already on the case. This is what causes most symptoms.
Hey America, time to ratchet up the outrage meter to at least a 2, don’t you think?
@Steven L. Taylor:
To a large swath of America, Democrats will get the blame. Some blame, any blame. Not Republicans, no no.
@Jen: @Steven L. Taylor: But the way our system currently functions makes “the people” getting fed up damn near irrelevant. I have two Democratic Senators and a Democratic U.S. Representative. So far as I can tell, they’re doing fuck all about any of this. Granting that they’re in the minority party, they aren’t even engaging in the kind of performative things Corey Booker did for BBB, much less throwing sand in the gears in the way Tommy Tuberville did for military promotions.
@James Joyner:
This…x 1,000.
RFK is not merely calling for more research into the supposed vaccine-autism link, he claims the answer has already arrived.
You could cross out the word “autism” in the above quote and replace it by literally any medical condition, and RFK would come off sounding like a charlatan. This is simply not the way medical research works. There are diseases and disorders that have been studied for far longer than autism, where we still don’t have a definitive answer for the causes behind them. There is almost never one singular cause, anyway; it’s always going to be a complex combination of factors.
And all that’s putting aside the well-documented evidence of a strong genetic link in autism, as well as the significant changes over the past 30 years in how autism is diagnosed.
I was almost ready to call him a quack, except that’s a term usually reserved for people who at least claim to be physicians. He isn’t even a medical lawyer, and I frankly wouldn’t even trust anything he has to say on his actual professional background of environmental law.
@reid:
Nah, bruh. It is self-evident that the Cracker Barrel rebrand, Sydney Sweeney’s ad echoing a Saved by the Bell joke that was better executed by the tween show*, and the totally extant Epstein list are far more pressing concerns than military personnel patrolling American streets, masked goon squads, a supine Congress, a corrupt and cynical SCOTUS.
*Yeah, the TV show played it straight. Telling the audience, “here, laugh at the teacher who is the only person who doesn’t recognize the pun for what it is—shit.” The ad seems to treat the joke as highly original.
@Jen:
Will you need a pool boy? I look hot shirtless, fitness model esque. Comfortable in speedos, like all obnoxious Instagays.
@James Joyner:
Good for them, because Booker is a clown whose self-aggrandizing performative grandstanding is not a model for anybody.
Americans are insane. They drive down Democratic approval with constant whining, crying, complaint and criticism — nary a word of appreciation or credit. Then they vote out Democrats out power. Then when Republicans start taking away the rights, services, and laws that Democrats gave them, here come the demand Democrats fix the problems caused by the Americans’ preference for failed rightwing policy.
I don’t think so. Voters broke it, voters own it. We wanted to touch the stove, let us burn. Womp womp.
The root of the problem is not only that destroying something is far easier than building it, but that even attempts to stop or slow down the destruction are being impeded or removed, largely by the fixer court.
So implementation of a blatantly unconstitutional move by El Taco cannot be delayed by a temporary stay any more, so says the fixer curt. And clear rules and laws about appropriations and personnel in federal agencies don’t apply if the so-called administration doesn’t want them to, so says the fixer court.
Pretty much he just goes and does what he wants, and it takes anywhere from weeks to months to stop it, while massive damage is being done. And even then, the fixer court can step in and let it go ahead anyway.
Suppose El Taco announces a reelection bid sometime in 2027 (suppose?). What happens then? I estimate most red states will put him on the ballot. First on the primaries, because these don’t elect a president, and then on the general election because that’s whom his party nominated. Blue states, most of them at any rate, won’t go along. This doesn’t really matter, as those states are out of reach for the GQP.
What about swing states?
There’s the rub. I can picture some going along, some refusing, and the matter would play in the courts. A quick appeal to the fixer court after the first district judge says “Of course this is unconstitutional, El Taco cannot be on any presidential ballot, would likely end in either 1) letting the appeals process run through, despite specious reasoning that amounts to “because I really want to,” or 2) a decision that waterboards logic and facts to yield something that allows it just this once and just for this person.
@reid:
Because only Democrats have agency, duty, or responsibility, as well known from long ago. This is how modern American politics works:
Option 1. Who did thing? Republicans. Was it good or bad? It was bad. “Why did Democrats let this happen?! Fuck the Democrats!”
Option 2: Who did the thing? Democrats. Was it good or bad? It was bad. “Fuck the Democrats!”
Option 3: Who did the thing? Republicans. Was it good or bad ? It was good.* [*Rarely happens anymore, and when it does, mostly by accident or broken-clock default] “Why didn’t Democrats do it first???! Fuck the Democrats!”
Option 4: Who did the thing? Democrats. Was it good or bad? It was good. “NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!! Fuck the Democrats!”
That’s all. And why we are where we are.
@James Joyner: There are many, many people behaving very strangely right now. Not conformant to any sense of motive or habit that I may have formed about them.
I have a few hypotheses.
1. They are helpless and depressed.
2. They are doing things, but we aren’t hearing about it because of media fail/capture
3. They know something that we don’t. There are important things being kept from us.
Yeah, this is very conspiracy oriented. I’m looking for evidence and logic, and I’m not seeing much.
Can the Congressional recess account for the current state of things, maybe?
@DK:
While I often wish we had a parliamentary system, we don’t. Seventy-five million people voted for Kamala Harris. Democrats have 45 votes in the Senate, which is enough to stop pretty much anything outside of reconciliation. Even with gerrymandering, voters sent 215 Democrats to the House of Representatives (3 of whom, alas, have since died). They have less power, but they can effectively demand that the 218/219 Republicans vote for any bill by refusing to cooperate.
The awfulness of Trump 2.0 has, ironically, demonstrated that there were in fact some good, decent people in Trump 1.0 – people who couldn’t resist the allure of power, but could and did resist the nihilistic aspect of his narcissism. Nothing says “I don’t care” like larding the Cabinet with clowns, frauds and grifters. Trump is mentally ill, but the media won’t go there. The true reprobates in the slow rolling coup are spineless Republicans and the corrupt Supreme Court.
It’s rather stupid of the GoP, all things considered.
They are effectively rejecting the entire concept of the modern state, using experts and operationg according to both laws and “conventions of behaviour” in a predicatble manner.
What Germans meant by “rechtsstaat”; the English term is “rule of Law”, but that does not entirely express the sense of a system founded on orderliness, procedure, rationality, predictability, and known rules.
Above all on beeing sensible.
As opposed to corrupt autocracy, revolutionary disorder, or, more recently, the arbitrary politics of power of the fascists and communists.
(NB: a “rechtsstaad” is NOT necessarily democratic.)
The indications of comparative history are that rationally ordered states tend, over time, to be less prone to failure than ones ruled by pure interest and whim.
@James Joyner:
Anything referring to what? What is the bill that Senate Republicans are trying to pass that Democrats should stop but aren’t stopping?
Would make sense if Trump weren’t wrecking things by executive order and Supreme Court silliness.
“But lack of parliamentary system” is just another lame excuse to deflect from the real problems here, which are Americans’ identitarian bigotry we continue to downplay and deny — and the deficiencies of ethics, morals, common sense, decency, and critical thinking that prompted 77 million of us to endorse having a manifestly unfit pathological lying career criminal pedophile ruin the economy a second time.
If Americans were serious about fixing our problems, we’d be having a come to Jesus on why we refuse to call the Jan 6 terror attack “a terror attack,” which is because the terrorists were white and nominally “conservative.” That racist and ideological double-standard, which anti-Trumpers here participate in, speaks to the root problems behind the return of the thug who incited said terror attack.
It’s easier for us to blame politicians than to look in the mirror and confront our own complicity in the destructive white supremacy blocking the US from full potential.
This argument that Democrats “should be doing something to stop Republicans” reminds me of parents scolding an older sibling when the younger one is acting up.
Why aren’t we DEMANDING that Republicans get themselves in order? Stop sucking up to Trump? Stop hiding from their constituents? Stop the destruction of our institutions? Stop using the National Guard as a trash service? Stop destroying the CDC? Why on Earth are we blaming Democrats for this Republican mess?
@Jen:
To deflect from the fact it’s our fault and up to us to fix it (and ourselves). Much like most of my therapy clients: if your unhappiness is somebody else’s fault, then you don’t have to change.
When you don’t want to admit you are sexist or complicit in sexism, you can’t admit the root cause of Hillary loss is America’s irrational, irresponsible, and destructive sexism. Because to do the latter would require modern American men to stop playing victim, stop pointing fingers, and be better. This many of us cannot do.
But they can’t pull the wool over my eyes, because I am a man, my best friends are men, I was the popular guy in a USC fraternity etc. So, they can go lie and deny to someone else.
I thought I was an oddball til I a) left exurban Georgia and especially b) started traveling and living part-time overseas, in countries that eventually polled as preferring Harris to Trump at a 70-90% clip. Because, duh, it’s called normalcy and basic emotional intelligence.
@DK:
It really puzzles a lot of Europeans, even many conservative Europeans, that Trump could be seen as preferable to either Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris.
(Note the polling figures: the prefence for Harris is way more than normal left/right polling)
I wonder how well a serious “right-of-centre” female politician would fare in the US?
Compared to, say, Thatcher in the UK or Meloni in Italy?
(I omit Sarah Palin, on the basis that she was never very serious)
@JohnSF: You people elected Boris Johnson, so surely you must have some idea why bumbling, incompetent, evil oaf is attractive to part of the population.
And Johnson mostly played at being bumbling and incompetent. Trump is authentic.
@JohnSF: Europe has a far right, but it also has actual conservatives. The US has no conservative movement no more: Donald is demanding stakes in private companies. Of course normie European conservatives preferred Harris to Trump. Trumpism is not conservative.
To be conservative in Europe 2025 is to support Ukraine (as Thatcher would) and universal healthcare, but argue Europe’s thousand-year-old cultural heritage is unique and should be protected from unchecked, non-assimilationist migration.
To be “conservative” in the US now is to despise Zelenskyy, take Medicaid/Medicare from millions, and live in fear of cat-eating woke Haitian DEI migrants getting trans operations in prison. It’s not the same. Why many here are exiled Republicans.
Meloni, this week:
Meloni Offers Plan to Aid Ukraine in a Day If Russia Resumes War (Bloomberg)
Her stance is in defiance of the furthest right flank of her coalition. Contrast that with the USA’s do-nothing, lazy, permanently-vacationing veep, JD Vance — the primary Putin-puppet in the current regime, the frontrunner for the 2028 Republican nomination. Many European conservatives are looking at those guys and singing “They not like us.”
@DK: Have you seen slide 14 of this?
https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%20Research%20Retrospective.pdf
It’s the results of tracking polling showing how much Americans trust each party on various issues and how important they think that issue is.
On the issues people care about, Democrats are trusted more only on healthcare.
Democrats also do great on LGBTQ+ rights, which is the issue that Americans care the least about. (Aside, my current thought regarding the Dems who think we will win if we just throw queer folks under the bus a little harder is this: if my community isn’t safe, why should anyone else’s be?)
@Gustopher:
Yes but:
Johnson was an arse, and a self-serving, incompetent arse, at that.
But he was not an idiot.
Clever, but lazy.
And in all honesty, much as I dislike Boris, I’d not peg him as “evil”; merely overly ambitious, self-seeeking, short-sighted, treacherous, and a buffoon.
It must also be remembered, he was up against Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Labour, possibly the most stupid, malignant, and incompetent leader of any political party in the UK in the last 100 years or so.
Both Cameron and Milliband have so much to answer for in terms of screwing up their parties, and the country, in order to appeal to the “enthusiastic” nutters.
Trump is more like Farage.
But even Farage (and heaven knows how much it pains me to say this) has more grip on reality than Trump.
@DK:
I heartily dislike Meloni in many ways.
But only a fool would not see she is a very effective politician.
Who actually has a concept of the Italian national interest, and is prepared to work with the key Italian state/social actors, and to co-operate with the main other European deciders.
Unlike 5-Star, or the League, she’s not interested purely in the politics of protest and section, but national governance.
And willing to face down her party “headbangers” to do so.
She’s an operator.
I don’t like her politics, but I can appreciate that she is a serious politician, not a clown.
@DK:
This.
In Berlin and London and Rome the current undercurrent is: “So, De Gaulle was right after all.”
Which is a painful thing to think, all things considered.
Cue spectral laughter from Colombey des Deux Eglises
Per the Guardian
Am I wrong to expect that this would have the effect of not approving Covid vaccines for anyone?
@DK:
Not much to add – I just wanted to copy all that so I could read it again.
Though I am discomfited by your use of “us” here and elsewhere in these comments (As I’m proudly one of the 75 million who demonstrated ethics, morals, and decency by voting for Harris.), I heartily agree you are pointing to a problem more real than weak liberal messaging or Democratic congressional maneuvering. It’s core societal malfunction – truly daunting to solve made impossible by refusal to acknowledge.
@Gustopher:
Slide 14 raises the most important question – why the f*ck would anyone trust the Republicans more on Cost of Living, The Economy, or Inflation considering recent past results based on data/evidence. We’ve been a Republicans screw the pooch, then Democrats fix it, then Republicans screw… cycle for most of my voting age life.
This is just another example of the deficiencies of common sense, decency, and critical thinking in a plurality of the country that DK points to. Vibes and propaganda win the day in a shallow society. And I agree with you that it makes no sense for Democrats to then care less about issues that Americans trust Ds the most on. Rather, the project is to disabuse Americans of the trust they have in Republicans on every issue.
Reality favors the Democrats.
America is the wealthiest, most powerful nation in history. No other country even comes close. Apart from a handful of very small nations, Americans enjoy the highest per capita GDP in the world. The United States has led the world in science, technology, popular culture, education and promotion of human rights for a century or more.
So it’s been quite something watching a third of the country rage that they hate what it has become, and install a regime intent on tearing it all down, while another third of the population sits passively letting it happen and the rest seem too confused and gutless to stop it. It makes lemmings jumping to their deaths look rational by comparison.
@Ken_L:
Well, I’d argue that before the idiot Nazis f@cked up central Europe, Vienna, Berlin and Budapest were at leat on a par as centres of culture.
And Paris and London still have their claims.
Europe, and arguably Japan, are also still near-peers in terms of science and technology.
And of improved living standards for the general population
What has been unique about the US has been mating that to both Superpower status, and popular culture.
I grew up rather adoring America; as did many of my genration, and my parents generation likewise.
It really hurts me to see it being brought low by squalid, silly, petty, people.
RFK, Jr. has stated clearly that he wants a CDC that enacts the Trump agenda. I was listening on my car radio, but I think I am not misquoting him. I don’t know exactly what the Trump agenda is. It might be gilt decorations everywhere. However, I wish that we had a government agency dedicated to monitoring and preventing disease as its primary objective. Watching the fulsome a**kissing that starts Cabinet meetings having one government member who sits quietly and works for should be enough for anyone’s ego.
@Scott F.:
Data/evidence? We’re talking about the American electorate here.
FDR was really lucky. The Great Depression started in Hoover’s first year. The electorate had three years to get used to Hoover owning it. Obama and Biden caught W and Trump’s recessions early enough the voters associated them with The Ds, not the Rs.
Fun fact. Every Republican prez has had a recession start in his first term – going back to 1900. Is this Trump’s second term or his second first term?
@Gustopher:
Hopefully someone with real expertise will chime in, but my understanding is that the FDA clearance is for the safety of the vaccines and the ACIP guidelines are what insurers use when they decide to cover them. So, technically the Covid vaccines have been determined to be safe and effective for those within the guidelines that were issued. However, ACIP’s guidance is what is actually used to administer them.
So, yeah. Not good.
@JohnSF:
I suspect David Brooks has it about right in labeling it right-wing nihilism.
https://multiculturalmeanderings.com/2025/08/25/brooks-the-rise-of-right-wing-nihilism/