Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Saturday, February 22, 2025

Garrett Graff: I've long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of wanna-be dictator Donald Trump if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we're used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority.

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I think Graff is on to something with this approach, which is very well-executed:

Across the capital, the new regime accelerated its sweeping removals of government workers, evoking comparisons to the disastrous "De-Ba'athification" movement that the United States instituted in Iraq in 2003 that removed huge swaths of civil servants after the country's invasion. That move is now widely considered one of the greatest mistakes of the occupation, though it now appears that Musk and Trump are seeking equally disastrous results in the capital at home.

While traditionally a small number of political appointees turn over in a new presidential administration, Musk's coup has been followed by massive, disorganized, and chaotic firings at many government agencies and ministries. Last weekend, DOGE mercenaries actually blindly fired a large chunk of the agency that secures the country's vast nuclear weapon stockpiles before attempting to reverse their mistake.

Other firings appeared equally ill-conceived and executed"including the removal of veterans working on suicide crisis lines, public health staff combatting bird flu, and medical workers supporting the country's indigenous populations. Inexplicably, the mass removals also included more than 400 engineers, technicians, and personnel who help keep safe the nation's airspace, which has long been the envy of the world but under the Trump regime has already suffered a series of troubling incidents.

It's increasingly clear that the mass firings and reprisals are less a thoughtful exercise in management or efficiency gains and instead a wholesale effort to dismantle the long-respected administrative state's capability and regulatory structures have might hem in the ambitions and profits of the nation's oligarchy, which has been emboldened since November by Trump's surprise electoral victory. The country's banking regulators, now firmly in the regime's control, made clear in a series of actions this week that they would look the other way amid egregious abuses by the cryptocurrency industry, an electronic financial system favored by Musk and criminal groups.

#1 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2025-02-22 09:50 PM | Reply

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