Real Progress Or Brownian Motion
By
Leonard Zwelling
Any thinking person in the United States at the present time, particularly one who did not vote for Donald Trump, has got to be marveling at the amount of action being taken by the new administration.
First, it appears that all of Mr. Trump’s major appointments will pass the Senate. Most votes are along party lines. That is too bad. One would hope that the majority would go like Marco Rubio’s. Alas, most of the appointments are not up to Mr. Rubio’s caliber. Nonetheless, even Bobby Kennedy looks like he is going to make it through. (He did.) Pete Hegseth required a tie breaking vote by Vice President Vance. Tulsi Gabbard is still a question mark, but the odds are on her side. (She made it after I wrote this.)
Next there is Elon Musk firing as many people as he can get in his sights. Entire agencies (USAID) are gone. The FBI is taking big hits as may the CIA. Attorneys in the Department of Justice are suspect just because they were doing their jobs prosecuting Mr. Trump after legitimate indictments. These firings seem unwise, but the winner gets to decide. It may be that anyone who prosecuted any suspected January 6 perpetrator may be looking for work as well.
Finally, there is frank lawlessness on the part of the President in ignoring the Fourteenth Amendment (Birth right citizenship) and not notifying Congress about his plans to fire Inspectors General. So far, he seems to be getting away with it and other than CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times, no one seems to care.
Trump’s argument is this is what he was elected to do. Many of his supporters agree. Some have written me telling me so. Even I am stunned at what he is doing. But is he accomplishing anything? Is this real progress or just Brownian motion, the random jiggling of particles in a fluid?
I believe it’s a bit of both.
There can be no doubt that the daily and substantive news conferences by Karoline Leavitt are a marked change from the Biden era. So is having a competent President with all his faculties behind the Resolute Desk. BUT, I don’t see the overall plan just yet.
Yes, the Executive Branch is getting smaller and saving money, but will the country run better? That remains to be seen.
Yes, Congress is passing legislation and doing Trump’s bidding. But is that what the Founding Fathers had in mind for our government when they wrote the Constitution? Each of the three branches of government is to be independent of the other two. With Congress simply rubber- stamping what Trump wants, the only check to Trump’s power is the courts. So far, some lower courts have voided Trump’s decrees, but whether the Supreme Court will uphold the lower courts remains to be seen.
Yes, there is the realization that our military needs to be built up, but recruitment of troops and Naval seamen is far below quotas. A lot of that is due to volunteers who cannot pass the physical or intellectual screening to join. Our shipbuilding is far behind China’s. What’s Secretary Hegseth’s plan to fix that while he is carousing around the southern border.
I would like to see President Trump give an outline of his plan for the nation that eschews platitudes and has some real details into how he’s going to get us closer to where we need to be.
It’s still a dangerous world out there. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea still pose enormous threats to our understaffed and under-armed military. The price of gas and eggs is on the rise. What’s the plan for the economy? Finally, what is the plan to contain Elon Musk, the unelected governor of America?
At one hundred days I would like to hear that. Wouldn’t you?
