VDH: Trump, His Disrupters, and a Chance to Return to Normalcy?

Trump, His Disrupters, and a Chance to Return to Normalcy?

Many of Trump first-round picks share some common themes.

One, many, who were in the past victimized by government bullies and cowardly bureaucratic grandees, or proved sharp critics of the administrative state, are…

— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) November 16, 2024

Trump, His Disrupters, and a Chance to Return to Normalcy? Many of Trump first-round picks share some common themes. One, many, who were in the past victimized by government bullies and cowardly bureaucratic grandees, or proved sharp critics of the administrative state, are now, in karma-style, in charge of the very agencies that hounded him. So, Elon Musk, perennial target of government regulatory functionaries, was once policed, but now he polices the bureaucratic police. Robert Kennedy, Jr., proposed overseer of government health programs, was often blasted as a crank by the subsidized scientists and the administrators within HHS whom he will now direct. Pete Hegseth fought the military DEI machinery while a solider in the ranks and wrote a book about the corruption of the Pentagon. He will now, if confirmed, run the Pentagon. Tulsi Gabbard was improperly put on a national security travel watch list as a supposed security threat—and now will be a guardian of our security as Director of National Intelligence. Tom Homan was derided by the Biden administration and its Homeland Security minions as a fanatic border hawk; now he will run ICE and deal with the detritus of Biden fanaticism on the border. Two, none of these appointments are traditional swamp creatures. Few rotate from the think tanks. This time around there are no retired “Wise Men” or retired four-stars. Few are Uniparty magnificoes revolving back into high government from their DC university or New York corporate and investment waystations. None are DEI, cover-our-identity-politics-base candidates. By design, their past government service resumes are thin—few past undersecretaries of these or special assistant to those. And there are not a lot of suffixed alphabetic letters or prefixed long-winded titles that adorn their names. In other words, they are vaxed from the sort of acculturated administrative state mindset that has alienated and terrified the citizenry. Three, they all share a reputation from the mainstream media, bicoastal elite, or administrative state guardians as a little “out there” or even “crazy” and “nuts”, whether RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, or Pete Hegseth. So, their opponents rightly fear they are immune from mainstream media disparagements, the usually leftwing generated hoaxes, and beltway tsk-tsk scorn. Fourth and finally, they are not radicals or nihilists. Rather, they are reformers who are trying to trim or eliminate bloated government machinery, or return institutions and agencies to their normal functions and original missions. In contrast, the last few years of Biden governance chaos and near insurrection were abnormal—and dangerous. Destroying the border and breaking the law to allow 12 million to enter illegally were nihilist. Stealthily routing government cash, to circumvent the law, to a communist Chinese-run viral gain-of-function engineering lab is beyond the belief. Creating a commissar system in the military that demanded ideological orthodoxy over meritocracy, or the Chairman of the JCS secretly communicating with his People’s Liberation Army counterpart to warn about his own commander-in-chief’s stability was insurrectionist. Weaponizing the DOJ by performance-art swat home raids on opponents, and collusion lawfare waged by local, state, and federal indictments against a former president and presidential candidate were un-American. Asymmetrical prosecutions and FBI fusion with social media to censor the news were sheer government anarchy. There are legitimate questions about the confirmability of Matt Gaetz, or his prosecutorial experience, or some of his alleged past excesses, but his very accusers were mostly quiet about the weirdos, creeps, and revolutionaries in the Biden administration—accused of stealing women’s luggage at airports, or lying that a subordinate “racist” border patrol whipped in slave-master fashion innocent would-be immigrants, or trying to fix a felonious presidential son’s sentencing to avoid the accustomed legal consequences of his criminal behavior. In sum, the currently loud censors have zero credibility given the unprofessional, weaponized, and nihilist  examples they have bequeathed.