Heerlen           This is going to be interesting.  From the looks of the early pronouncements from the new imperial government about potential appointments, it appears there are actually two criteria for President-elect Trump’s choices.  The first is absolute fealty.  The second is a commitment to work to undermine the department of the government that they will be running in some significant measure.  This seems thus far an exercise in winning power in order to run a government that will be less powerful.  It’s a novel political theory.

We have a potential Attorney General who has just resigned from Congress, minutes before a House investigation committee released a report that he was involved in sex trafficking with teenagers in Florida.  This is the same flamethrower who initiated the coup that took down one Speaker of the House and then several pretenders to that throne all in the name of a so-called Freedom Caucus, that also seemed to distance itself from some of his tactics.  At one point, the potential nominee has argued that the FBI and other so-called “three-letter” agencies be disbanded. In the deputy secretary and additional key positions within the Justice Department, Trump has now indicated he is going to appoint three of the lawyers who tried to defend him from various criminal and civil charges, not always successfully, but sufficiently to delay most proceedings until after the election.  Some of this seems like an in-kind payment of his personal legal bills, but who is to know.  It is clear that their mission is less justice and more revenge.  Unable to prosecute whoever got his goat in his first term, he’s looking to totally weaponize the country’s legal apparatus as a revenge squad.

His projected appointee to head the national intelligence operation has been critical of all of these operations, including the CIA.  She has also fingered them for various incredible conspiracies.  Failing to get the military to act as a domestic police force against his enemies and immigrants, he has appointed a secretary of defense whose main qualification seems to be that he will say “yes” to whatever the president might suggest.  The always confusing and contradictory, Robert Kennedy, Jr., has been a critic of public health and leading anti-vaxxer, and is now positioned to direct the 80,000 federal employees in the Health and Human Services department whose job is to protect our public health.

How can this turn out well?  These are appointments for a wrecking crew.  One wit opined that Trump was recruiting for a reality shown, not a government.  In fairness, not all of his proposals are about dismantling.  In some cases, he seems to be subcontracting and outsourcing entire agencies.  With the appointment of the governor of North Dakota to the Interior Department he is turning the agency over to the oil and gas industry via his liaison to these donors.  He is recruiting an anti-labor, business executive to run the Labor Department to subcontract worker affairs to their bosses once again.  With the wide and expanding role of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, he seems to be turning over the world.

The secondary target, if you can call it that, is all federal employees and the so-called “deep state.”  I don’t know if there’s such a thing, but I guess we should all hope so!  Anyone who has ever run any kind of operation knows that the person at the top is little more than a talking head unless they can get the people at the bottom to line up with their program.  Not jumping to join a White House announced search-and-destroy operation directed at their jobs, co-workers, and agencies where many have spent their careers in service to the country may mean that a lot of the federal government employees may not be in a hurry to genuflect.

Here’s hoping.