If you want to ante up to a paid subscription or drop a few dollars in the Doom Coffee Fund, I sure would appreciate it. There’s a lot of news lately — I know, it’s summer and we’re supposed to be relaxing — and I’m tracking a lot of things. Election denialism and rampant authoritarianism within the government are combining to present some very real threats to democracy that the seasons care not about. More on that later. Now, on to some news…
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Republican lawmakers in Texas passed on providing more funding for the kind of emergency alert systems that might have saved some of the more than 100 lives that were lost at Camp Mystic in Kerr County. As usual, Republicans in the Lone Star state — goaded on by their largely conservative electorate — were worried about keeping their belts tightened. This, despite a $24 billion budget surplus that the state enjoys.
But the failures don’t end there. Local officials allowed the camp to build a group of new cabins in a federally-designated flood zone — the exact type of thing that happens when anti-regulation Republicans are put in charge of local governments.
This is what electing Republicans gets you. I say this with no pleasure: kids are dead, families are in mourning, tragedy abounds. Making matters worse, much of this tragic death and destruction looks like it could have been avoided if competent, well-meaning professionals who care about more than the money in their pockets had greater power in Texas. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
It’s helpful to think of what happened in Kerr County as a preview of the future for the rest of America, should Republicans continue to be allowed to carry out their minimal-government philosophy thanks to a majority in Congress, possession of the White House, and strong numbers across the judiciary.
You get what you vote for — and in this case, Americans are getting a political party that sees the destruction of government as its biggest selling point and primary goal.
Contrary to popular Republican belief, it’s not big government that is inherently corrupt, it’s small government, like the kind our federal bureaucracy is being made into under the second Trump administration. When everything has to go through the person at the top, nothing really gets done. That’s why Trump is effectively clueless as to what’s actually happening within his own administration, as Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out Wednesday night.
When confronted by a reporter with the fact that Trump wasn’t aware that munitions shipments to Ukraine had been suspended, Trump lied — or bumbled, or more accurately, rambled his way through an answer that ended with saying that he’d “most likely give the order” if something like withholding weapons shipments to an ally were carried out.
“I’d most likely give the order.”
When a president and a government only have to answer to the feelings of less than one-third of Americans — the percentage of the population that voted for Trump — how can any of us expect that government to perform effectively? It cannot.
A government run by the few will be inherently corrupt because it limits the amount of stakeholders from across society from contributing their expertise and manpower. A government run by an even more select few — like the coalition of hard-right authoritarians and unbelievably wealthy businessmen who populate the Trump administration — will be even more corrupt. It will only be effective in achieving things that benefit those people, which is to say, Trump’s government will never help out the average American — even if that American voted for Trump.
Sadly, the people of Kerr County have learned this lesson in the most tragic way possible. Whether they, all of Texas, and the rest of America will learn that lesson, will begin to become more clear next year.
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