RIFFS: The arsonist-to-firefighter administration
RIFFS: The arsonist-to-firefighter administration
On Trump's appointments
A defining feature of our age of increasing oligarchy is the widespread, and widely believed, idea that people who cause problems should be tasked with solving them.
Not only is having caused a social problem no longer viewed as a disqualification for joining the solving brigade in many circles. It is viewed as the qualification itself.
Looking for a firefighter? Who knows more about fires, their ins and outs, than an arsonist! Hired! Looking to protect hens? Talk to foxes. How they know about hens!
This is the logic that allowed billionaire tech bros to pillage the common good and the information architecture of the society, and then cosplay as democracy saviors — whether Mark Zuckerberg on the Democratic side or Elon Musk for the Republicans.
This is the logic that allows slash-and-burn industrialists to reinvent themselves as philanthropists. Sure, they might have yanked inequality wider by offshoring jobs and skipping out on their taxes and raiding pensions. But wouldn’t you want someone who knows how to do things like that in charge of making the victims’ lives easier? Why do you want to harm those victims by depriving them of an arsonist’s fire know-how?
Well, this arsonist-to-firefighter logic, which I have spoken about for some years now, appears to have found its culmination in the still-forming new Trump administration.
If one principle would seem to be guiding Trump, it is this: This administration will not be staffed by people who are not personally culpable for causing the ills they will now be tasked with solving. If you haven’t befouled, you’re not invited to the clean-up.
So only a man who has regularly voted against environmental legislation can be head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Only a woman who has trafficked in conspiracy theories can be in charge of synthesizing facts as director of national intelligence. Only a congressman who has faced investigation for sex crimes can run the Department of Justice. Only a man involved in the disastrous and inhumane immigration policies of the first Trump administration can take on the border now.
And, of course, only an oligarch who has made a fortune from government largesse can sweep into town with a mission to take on and slash government waste.
The Trump team claims to be besieged with job applications. But applicants be warned: if you want to be part of the solution, you’ve got to be part of the problem.
As Gandhi did not say, Be the problem you want to pretend to solve in the world.
The Ink, I hope, will be essential to the thinking and reimagining and reckoning and doing that all lie ahead. In this dark moment, I want to thank you for being a part of what we are and what we do. And I promise you that this community is going to find every way possible to be there for you in the times that lie ahead and be there for this country and for what it can be still.
Sweet-bitter irony! In the vein of Swift's "Modest Proposal." I have a feeling more people who voted for Agent Orange need to hear or read this message. Be sure you circulate it widely, please.
Exactly as you said. I understand the pattern better now that I read this. I’m proud to say I am not qualified based on the hiring criteria. In these dark times, thanks for creating this community