After receiving texts from friends about the process surrounding the freezing of property taxes for those of us of a certain age, one couple called to tell me about their experience. They related how helpful and friendly the employees of the collector's office had been. I was shocked. How could it be that workers from the deep state could be anything but a hindrance to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Of course, "deep state" is MAGA made-up nonsense and doesn't actually exist in any form in real life. MAGA ideas (in the form of Project 2025) are not meant to make your life easier or make government run smother. It's straight from the standard MAGA playbook that seeks to return to power those who actually deserve to be in power: straight, white, Christian men. The "deep state" epithet is about anyone who might push back against MAGA-inspired stupidity or criminality.
Few of us long to go to the license bureau or have a conversation with an IRS agent. MAGA speaks out against the FBI and the Justice Department, anything actually, that could hold them accountable. Each and every department that Project 2025 seeks to shrink or eliminate (they call it the administrative state when not calling it the deep state or woke), has had and will continue to have, a positive impact on your life.
At every level of government, we need workers that have institutional memory: workers who know how to do their job. This institutional memory is what enables our system of government to function. That's right, we need the deep state.
MAGA's brilliant framework for redesigning every facet of your life, Project 2025, seeks to upend that continuity by reclassifying thousands of jobs. Our new rulers want to ensure that the incoming administration can replace everyone with workers who have received their training from a Heritage Foundation PowerPoint presentation.
Nothing in Project 2025 is about making your life better. It's all about gutting the system of checks and balances that have made America great. There's a reason that MAGA Man speaks admiringly of Putin and Victor Orban. They have imprisoned journalists and political opponents. They have suspended the rule of law and have stacked courts in order to remain in power. If you don't think MAGA Man lusts for that type of power you are not paying attention.
MAGA Man is loyal to one person only. Steve Bannon and the rest of the MAGA storm troopers should heed the words of Martin Neimoller, who was an early supporter of the Nazis in Germany. "First they came for the Socialists but I did not speak out for I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out ... Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." Dear Leader won't hesitate to throw them under the bus. Totalitarian enterprises always end up eating their young and they certainly never care one iota for the people they rule.