A murder of crows
Who is the most despicable character in the Trump administration?
Trump.
That is obvious but still remarkable. Donald Trump has assembled around him a whole army of Darth Vaders, and still he is the worst of the lot. Early on, Time magazine referred to Trump’s cabinet as “the wrecking crew.” It is still that, although some of the faces have changed because Trump chews through top aides like a wood-chipper. Wrecking government institutions so they can’t function is one way to change the country without having to bother with the messy democratic process of passing laws and securing the consent of the governed. But wrecking crew doesn’t quite capture the essence of the supporting cast Donald Trump has brought together and what they are doing to the country.
Abraham Lincoln assembled around him a “team of rivals” that, despite their differences and the bloodiest war in American history, worked together to keep this country one and free of slavery. To further divide the nation, Trump has put together a bunch so awful on so many dimensions that it deserves being called a murder of crows, murder being the word used to refer to a group of crows.
When they are not pecking out the eyes of their fellow crows, the murder is working its beaks furiously to do much more than just selectively undermine institutions. (Selected for destruction: institutions that help and heal people. Selected for support: those that more than occasionally kill people: the military, the police and polluting industries.) If that were not enough, on the way to dismantling everything that has been built over decades to make this a more just, decent, rational, and kind society, Trump’s posse is trying to discredit the very idea of governance to mine the ground for anyone who in the future might try to put the pieces back together.
The murder is perpetrating outrages faster than a crow can fly. Monday net neutrality was officially killed. The Trump blackguard tasked to un-level the internet playing field by killing net neutrality is Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai. Turning the internet corporate—the internet, created through publicly-funded research, a medium for the free flow of communications, an incubator for fresh ideas and novel entrepreneurship—is a crime. It’s a big deal in a world in which the internet has become integral to virtually every aspect of life, from business to medicine, from entertainment to love. But it is typical of the perverse capacity of the current administration to turn foul what once was fair.
As awful as elimination of net neutrality is, Ajit Pai is at best a low-ranking member of the murder. It’s a tough club to join, this collection of self-enriching bureaucrats, foxes in charge of the hen house, enemies of the environment posing as its protectors, inversely-charged Robin Hoods enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor, education leaders who don’t believe in public schools, scourges of the outsiders and best friends of the insiders.
Start with Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, who does everything possible to undermine public education. Supports vouchers. Supports charter schools. DeVos, who doesn’t have to stoop to the vulgar corruption many of her peers practice because her family owns a fleet of planes and helicopters, drives a tough bargain with those who borrowed money for college. That includes those gypped by Trump’s pseudo-university, Falwell Jr.’s non-profit Liberty University, which spends on education only a fraction of what it collects in tuition, and many other predatory for-profit, alleged institutions of higher learning. But DeVos is soft on alleged campus sexual predators and on institutions that discriminate against the handicapped by, for instance, not designing the university website so it is accessible to the hearing or sight impaired.
Move on to Mick Mulvaney, who took over in a coup (now facing a court challenge) the agency created to protect consumers against predatory financial institutions. His job there is not doing his job and driving the agency down a cliff. Then he also runs the Office of Management and the Budget (OMB), which produces delusional estimates of deficits and of the tax benefits for the middle class of the Trump tax cut.
Then there’s Steve Mnuchin, a Treasury Secretary who likes to show his wife and himself surrounded by currency, their deity. Mnuchin guards our money so well he used a military jet to fly on his honeymoon at huge taxpayer cost.
Too new to have done any known damage yet is John Bolton, but just wait. He is the worst of the worst, potentially.
Right now, though, my vote for the worst in the murder of crows is Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I usually reserve my emotions for personal tragedies, but on Earth Day last Sunday I felt a mixture of sadness and outrage at the fate that has befallen this proud, professional, and progressive agency. Pruitt has turned the EPA mission on its head. So, along with the logo of the agency, which Pruitt is changing in one of his many petty moves, he should change the name too: Environmental Predation Agency. Pruitt has so many scandals going at the same time, and fresh feces keep hitting the fan all around him all the time, that Trump may finally decide he doesn’t want to be distracted any more by a Secretary with almost as many scandals going as he does. Plus, as James Comey writes, Trump acts like a Mobster and those around him bow and scrape rather than trying to act as if they are badder than the Boss.
Trump may whack Pruitt. That would be good riddance.
