A friend and I were discussing the current state of affairs and the Donald Trump assault/Project 2025's aggault/Wyoming Freedom Caucus on the government. We both are pretty conservatives fellows. We both served in the Army. We both are lawyers. Both of our fathers were Korean War veterans.
We're both horrified.
In part we're horrified as it clear that a huge portion of Trump's base absolutely hates their own government. Just hates it.
In the discussion, something occurred to me.
The world the MAGA/Populist/Project 2025 people wish for is one they've never seen nor experienced. A lot of them, quite frankly, don't have the capacity to grasp what it was like.
More than a few of them don't have the capacity to live in a world like that either.
No American born before 1932 lived in the world these people imagine as perfect. That means, in my case, as a member of Generation Jones, and even more so for the Baby Boom Generation, the last people they know who experienced it was their grandparents.
Or more likely, their great grandparents.
And our grandparents are all dead.
There's no living memory of it at all.
Nobody has one, at all.
The first President I voted for, as noted here, was Ronald Reagan in the 1984 Presidential election. I thinking of it, the first Presidential election my father could have voted in, when the voatin gage was 21, would have been the 1952 Presidential election. The first Presidential election I can remember, although only vaguely, is the 1968 Presidential election, when I was five years old. If that held true for my father, the first one he would have remembered would have been the 1936 Presidential election, at which time FDR was already well into establishing the government that Musk and Trump are destroying.
It was the Great Depression that brought the government into people's lives in a major way, although that it was going to happen was foreshadowed by the Progressive Era. Theodore Roosevelt was really the first "imperial President" who was willing to broadly act with executive orders. Franklin Roosevelt expanded the government enormously, however, in reaction to the extreme economic distress. That gave us the government we have today, but World War Two and the Cold War expanded it.
FDR, of court, brought big government in, and with World War Two proving that it was necessary to retain it, and the Cold War building on that, we've had it ever since. But we might be able to state that modern American government goes all the way back to 1900, before Theodore Roosevelt really started to bring in the progressives and the concept that the government was supposed to make things safe and fair for average people.
The generation that had lived through the Great Depression and the war were grateful for the larger Federal role and accepted it. It wasn't until the late 1960s that things began to be questioned. Even by then most Americans had no real memory of a day when the Federal Government was only active nationwide to a limited extent.
Nobody has that memory now.
What will this all mean?
Well, assuming that Must/Trump pulls it off, starting here in a few months, a real schock. And the best evidence is, so far, that Musk/Trump will have enormously wrecked the Federal Government in that time period, no matter what happens with Trump himself (and there are growing signs that Trump isn't really going to be around that long).
And the shock that will ensue will be in everything from what amounts to minor irritations to body bags.
Wyoming is going to have to pay for its own forest fires, and fight them on their own for one thing, snarky comments from Cowboy State Daily imported columnist aside. The State's going to have to pay for its own highways as well, which it can't afford. Things will just burn, and the highways decay.
And we'll be at the tender mercy of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which seemingly hates state government as well. Municipal services are really going to take a hit, to include police and fire fighting.
Education, which the WFC basically opposes, as students might learn the world is older than 5,000 years and God might not be limited to the restrictions people who can't imagine a world older than that would demand to be placed on, will be gutted.
Benefits provided to all kids of people through the Federal Government, from Veterans benefits to Medicaid, are in real danger.
A Federal and state government that makes sure your food, water, and living conditions are safe, won't be there.
Robber Barons, however, will be there once again, for the first time in well over a century.
The truth is, most people won't like living in a United States that's a third world nation. But the rich will, as the rich have always profited in the third world. And that, not some sort of rugged paradise, is where we're headed.
Calvinist believers were psychologically isolated. Their distance from God could only be precariously bridged, and their inner tensions only partially relieved, by unstinting, purposeful labor.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism
As part of that, the National Conservatives and the populists seem to outright hate government employees. That's already come up in of comments about them, one being how they'll go into "more productive" work. This group has a very Protectant Work Ethic view of life, in which your Calvinist purpose is to prove your worth by working harder and longer and for less than the value of your work, and never retire.
Many street level conservatives have hated Federal employees for years. I've heard them complain about how they're all lazy as they didn't do the correct Protestant thing and choose to go into the rough and tumble of the free market, by which they mean the corporate controlled market.
This is sometimes stated by people who actually depend on the government in spades themselves, and can't recognize it. For instance, if you are truck driver, you are living on the government dole, Mr. Knight of the Road. Fortunately, in this instance, truckers will soon be out of business as highway subsidies will end and railroads will take back over, which is a good thing.
More than one of the NC/Populist crowd who holds this view also abhor retirement. The comments are out there, people just refuse to recognize it. The push in this crowd, short term, is to raise retirement age to 69, but the real push will be just to do away with Social Security in the end. That neatly solves the Social Security crisis.
So, anyhow, like driving on Interstates?
Get used to your state funding them, and they won't.
Like safe air travel?
Notice how many air disasters there have already been since Trump took over, they're likely not his fault, but you probably ought to get used to that too.
Miss polluted air and water?
Well, it'll be back.
Come to expect the Federal government to be there if you are black, or Catholic, and can't get hired?
Well, lower your expectations.
Looking forward to retirement?
Forget it.
Injured and need assistance?
Well, you have your family to turn to. Or the church.
Lose your job and need help?
Well, move in with your parents, or your children.
Miss the days when the Marine Corps was used to make sure American economic interests weren't harmed in Central America and around the world?
Well, you'll get to live out the nostalgia.
Like living in a country where the rich get richer, the poor get dead, and the middle class are on the verge of poverty?
Well, you'll get to.
Welcome back. . . to about 1900 really.
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