Coup des adultes
A month ago, I speculated on the possibility that we are in the midst of a soft coup in the United States. Now, an opinion piece written by an anonymous member of the Trump administration for The New York Times has answered that question in the affirmative. The author declares early on in the piece that “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.”
The rest of the essay expresses the author’s pleasure about carrying out the less than worst planks in Trump’s platform: “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.” Regulations that keep the planet an environment in which human beings can thrive or require manufacturers not to allow poison to slip into food, cutting taxes that oblige the wealthy to pay back for the benefits of a civilized society that they enjoy, and throwing missiles at an empty runway in Syria are today’s version of keeping the trains running on time, it seems, but getting cosy with Vladimir Putin is reckless, beyond what the author can tolerate.
I agree that expressing a liking for autocrats ought to be an obvious disqualification for the presidency of the United States, and I will acknowledge that I am having a political debate with the policy changes that the author celebrates, rather than the cause of a constitutional crisis, but the author does not show any understanding that Trump comes as a package, and while a part of that might have a good effect by accident, the totality is insane. I can disagree with ordinary Republicans and still work with them when they have similar goals — Rand Paul’s opposition to warantless spying comes to mind — but when a madman has possession of a spatula, a paint brush, and a butcher’s knife, it is no good to say that he could cook a chicken-fried steak as he redecorates the kitchen.
The author claims that use of the Twenty-fifth Amendment was contemplated in the early days of Trump’s term, but that members of the cabinet decided that they “can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.” That being said, a…
