I found this fascinating. For the most part, the headlines about potential Trump cabinet configuration are sensationalist readings of a fairly normal process. However, Trump has unique challenges since he favors loyalty above all else - expertise is seen as a threat.

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[www.dissentmagazine.org]

As listeners might have noticed, 2024 is a presidential election year, and already the prospect of Donald Trump returning to power is looming over the campaign and the media’s coverage of it. In a second term, Trump has promised to weaponize the Justice Department to punish his enemies, deconstruct major portions of the administrative state, and mobilize the largest deportation force in U.S. history—to cleanse the nation of immigrants who, as Trump says, “are poisoning the blood of our country.”

This episode explores how movement conservatives are refashioning the “conservative pipeline” for an anti-establishment era—through their efforts to recruit, credential, and train political professionals for a second Trump term. The question is: can these initiatives overcome the candidate’s own erratic style, his weakness for sycophancy, his preference for hiring devoted courtiers over disciplined ideologues? If push came to shove, would Trump submit to the Heritage Foundation’s plans for his presidential transition? Or would he resent being managed by these self-understood “adults in the room”?

In other words, can the eggheads of the conservative movement clean up the mess that is MAGA? Or is that just another intellectual fantasy? After all, as we often say on Know Your Enemy: “MAGA is the mess.”

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2024 09:27PM by mattkime.

I'd counter that the MAGA movement is so rife with enabling, Dunning-Kruger deplorables stoked by a narcissist to violence against competence that we might see an atrocity in the US on the scale of China's Great Leap Forward. My nightmare is these people are actually empowered to purge the "woke" institutions they so hate, and exterminate people who have degrees of higher education from anywhere reputable.

In other words not only can the eggheads not fix the mess they've brought about, but they may soon be devoured by it, but not likely before the mob has consumed all the rest of what was good.

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g=

We've fought it once, we can fight it again. But yes, that's the fear.

Remember that "Only the best people" have a short lifetime in his administration before they encounter the underside of a bus.

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GGD
Remember that "Only the best people" have a short lifetime in his administration before they encounter the underside of a bus.

The problem with that picture is that Trump would never insert the knife himself.

He is too much of a coward.

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mattkime

In other words, can the eggheads of the conservative movement clean up the mess that is MAGA? Or is that just another intellectual fantasy?

Well, it’s not intellectual, but it is a fantasy, and one that was pushed throughout Trump’s single term. Various groups (including some of the press) kept predicting that the job itself would somehow make him “presidential”, and he repeatedly proved them wrong right up through the end. If anything, he got worse and worse.

So, no. There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.

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Lux Interior

Quote
GGD
Remember that "Only the best people" have a short lifetime in his administration before they encounter the underside of a bus.

The problem with that picture is that Trump would never insert the knife himself.

He is too much of a coward.

what?!? Daddy is a big, tough, macho man who will defend the American Way at all costs. and pad his bank account while doing it. Smart!!!

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So get back to work and sweat some more
The sun will sink, and we'll get out the door
It's no good for man to work in cages
Hits the town, he drinks his wages
You're frettin', you're sweatin'
But did you notice you ain't gettin'?