Trump the ‘disrupter’ moves quickly to burn down the system; but will disruption turn into chaos?
Will closing the Department of Ed, USAID, and other agencies actually lead to less government intrusion in our lives? Or will they be replaced by something more sinister?
If we listen to the conservative press, billionaire globalist technocrat Bill Gates is in “panic mode,” making the rounds in the corporate media to push back against Elon Musk’s latest cost-cutting move, folding USAID into the U.S. State Department. But is Gates, who seems to have President Trump’s ear, really all that worried?
It’s been widely reported that the shake-up would give Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversight of the agency, a scenario that could put an end to USAID’s lucrative funding pipeline for Gates’ pet projects.
Appearing on NBC’s Today Show, Gates insisted that USAID’s work is not at all politically motivated.
“Elon doesn’t understand the importance of USAID’s mission,” he said. “It’s about global development, not politics.”
Global development? Now that’s something that is music to President Trump’s ears.
While Gates may be concerned that he is going to lose some government funding, he can make it up elsewhere, no problem. And Gates’ Microsoft AI juggernaut is already listed as one of the beneficiaries of Trump’s Stargate project to blanket America with massive AI data-collection centers.
Gates, contrary to what many conservatives believe, is not on the outside looking in. As a billionaire technocrat, Gates is already part of the “in” crowd with this White House. He requested a meeting with the new president a few weeks ago and he got what he wanted, three and a half hours with Trump. His AI partner, Sam Altman of ChatGPT, then surfaced a few days later as one of Trump’s main partners in Stargate.
Trump, if we’ve learned anything from his first two weeks in office, is attracted to technocrats and billionaires. He likes to build things and he likes to be seen as on the cutting edge.
Trump, like his biggest billionaire technocrat backer, Peter Thiel, also prides himself in being a “disrupter.” While some amount of disruption may be needed in a country as wayward as the United States, too much disruption delivered too quickly will simply plunge the nation into chaos. And chaos can then be exploited by the very globalists Trump says he is against. If Trump ends up declaring martial law to rein in protests, the globalists get their way with him again. Just like they did in his first term with Covid lockdowns. This can be seen as part of Trump disruption policies.
While I fully support the idea of reducing the government’s bloated footprint on our lives, we’d better be careful what we wish for. What if entire government agencies are shuttered, not to reduce the size and scope of government authority, but to replace that authority with a more efficient AI-driven surveillance system?
Who needs 2 million federal employees if AI is on the cusp of taking over their duties anyway? A government run by algorithm could be so terrifyingly efficient in its tyranny that we will one day wish we could bring back those old inefficient and incompetent bureaucrats.
Some of Trump’s policies, such as those involving the Department of Education, seem aimed at causing disruption. However, they might be seen as Trump disruption policies instead.
For example, Trump came out this week and said he will continue U.S. funding of the war in Ukraine as long as the U.S. can lay claim to Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals. So, the same bloody war he said on the campaign trail he would end within the first 24 hours of his presidency, he now wants to keep going, under the condition that the U.S. gets to take a spoil. These have become central to Trump disruption policies.
Also, Trump’s Feb. 4 announcement with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding the U.S. “taking over” Gaza is loaded with unanswered questions and fraught with risks. “We’ll own it,” Trump said. This is yet another example of his Trump disruption policies.
The White House sent out a clarifying statement 24 hours later on Feb. 5 saying that Trump’s plan to relocate the Palestinians would not be permanent but would only be “temporary.”
This Gaza deal strikes me as a grave mistake. The art of the deal is sounding more like the art of destruction when you consider that any redevelopment project in Gaza must start with a military project. How else are you going to forcibly remove all the Palestinians, level the buildings and de-mine the land? This goes flatly against Trump’s long-stated policy of focusing on “America first.” Why spend years working to redevelop a war-torn strip of real estate overseas when we have places in America that look almost as downtrodden and desperate? Gaza was wrecked by kinetic war, bombs falling out of the sky. After decades of economic war waged by Americans against Americans, we have ghost towns throughout the American South and Midwest that have been hollowed out by disastrous NAFTA-type trade deals — deals that outsourced our jobs to Mexico, China, Vietnam, etc., leaving behind empty shells of industrial structures that dot the landscape like the decaying bones of a once-healthy person.
I predicted that 2025 would be a year of chaos and confusion but even I am having my mind blown by the pace of the news cycle these last two weeks.
Will Trump deliver just the right amount of disruption to fix our sick and dying republic? Do we just need to “trust the plan?” Or, will he go overboard, overstep the constitutional boundaries set for his office and be used to drive an already divided nation into the realm of chaos, with civil and economic upheaval? I’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
