Letters from an American - February 20, 2025

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

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February 20th, 2025. On Monday, James Marriott of The Times, published in London, noted that the very stability and comfort of the post-World War II liberal order has permitted the seeds of its own destruction to flourish. A society with firm scientific and political guardrails that protect health and freedom can sustain an underbelly of madmen and extremists, medical skeptics, conspiracy types, and anti-democratic fantasists. Our society has been peaceful and healthy for so long that for many people serious disaster has become inconceivable," Marriott writes. Americans who parade around in amateur militia groups and brandish Nazi symbols do so partly

because they are unable to conceive of what life would actually be like in a fascist state. Those who attack modern medicine cannot really comprehend a society without it. And Marriott adds, those who are cheering the rise of autocracy in the United States have no serious understanding of what it means to live under an autocratic government. Marriott notes that five Texas counties

that make up one of the least vaccinated areas in the U.S. are gripped by a measles outbreak that has infected at least 58 people and hospitalized 13. It may be, Marriott writes, that the paradise of fools is coming to an end. The stability of the U.S.-backed, international rules-based order apparently meant that few politicians could imagine that order ending. When President Trump threatened to take the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, a key guarantor of global security, Congress responded by passing a law in December 2023 that prohibits a president from withdrawing the U.S. from NATO without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate or separate legislation passed by Congress.

Then Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican of Florida, was a co-sponsor of the bill. Now, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio overseeing the dismantling of U.S. support for our allies and a shift toward Russia, Republican senators appear to be discombobulated. As Joe Perticone reported Tuesday in the Bulwark, there appears to be consensus in Congress that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, NATO is critical to European and global security, and the United States has led the common defense. But Republicans just backed a presidential candidate and voted to confirm several key cabinet officials

who do not accept those realities. Confronted with the consequences of their support for Trump and votes for his nominees, Perticone notes, Republican lawmakers are apparently shocked. At home, the relative stability of American democracy in the late 20th century allowed politicians to win office with the narrative that the government was stifling individualism, taking money from hardworking taxpayers

to provide benefits to the undeserving. Although the actual size of the federal workforce has shrunk slightly in the last fifty years, even while the U.S. population has grown by about 68 percent, the Republican Party insisted that the government was wasting tax dollars, usually on racial, religious, or gender minorities. That claim became an article of faith for MAGA voters and reliably turned them out to vote. Now, political scientist Adam Bonica's research

shows that the firings at the Department of Government Efficiency are a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as left-leaning. But the Trump administration's massive and random cuts to the federal workforce are revealing that the narrative of government waste does not line up with reality. According to Linda F. Hersey of Stars and Stripes, about one-third of all federal workers are veterans, while veterans make up only about 5% of the civilian workforce. In fiscal year 2023, about 25% of the federal government's new hires were veterans,

and they have been hard hit by the firings that cut people who were in their first year or two of service. Let's call this what it is. It's a middle finger to our heroes and their lives of service," said Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat of Illinois, who sits on the Senate Veterans Affairs and Armed Services committees and is herself a disabled veteran. Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported today that Republican lawmakers are panicked over this weekend's firings, concerned about the fired veterans and the firings of USDA and CDC employees who were dealing with the spreading outbreak of bird flu that is threatening the nation's poultry, cattle, house cats, and humans. Since Trump took office just a month ago, cuts to government spending have also hit Republican voters hard, and those hits look to be continuing.

In June 2024, Ellen Nelson and Renee Rigdon of CNN reported that nearly 78% of the announced investments from the Inflation Reduction Act in initiatives that address climate change went to Republican congressional districts. Today, the Financial Times noted that House Republicans are in the position of cutting the law that brought more than $130 billion to their districts. Now Republicans are talking about cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and supplemental food programs, although Republican-dominated counties rely on those programs more than Democratic-dominated counties do. Yesterday, on the Fox News Channel, Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick praised the Department of Government efficiency because it was, "...going to cut a trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse. Lotnik told personality Jesse Waters,

you know Social Security is wrong, you know Medicare and Medicaid is wrong, so he's gonna cut one trillion. The administration and the Department of Government Efficiency insist they are getting rid of massive waste, fraud, and abuse that they claim has lurked in the government for decades. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana,

said that Congress has not been able to make those cuts in the past because the deep state has hidden it from us. In fact, neither the administration nor the Department of Government Efficiency has produced evidence for their claims of cutting waste. Instead, fact-checkers have pointed out so many errors and exaggerations in their claims that observers are questioning what they're really doing. Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who ran the Social Security Administration under Biden,

told Jane C. Tim of NBC News, There's unelected people that are being given powers to go through and rummage through our personal data for reasons that nobody can quite figure out yet. It's not for efficiency. Indeed, federal government spending since Trump took office is actually higher than it's been in recent years. Finally, it appears that the strength and stability of American democracy have also meant that lawmakers somehow cannot really believe that the U.S. is falling into authoritarianism. Today, in a 51-49 vote, all but two Republican senators voted to confirm Cash Patel as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Senators Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska,

voted with all the Democrats and independents to oppose Patel's confirmation. In a 2023 book, Patel published a list of more than 50 current or former U.S. officials that he claims are members of the deep state and are a dangerous threat to democracy. Opponents worry he will use the FBI to target those and other people he thinks are insufficiently loyal to Trump. The reason Americans created the government that the Trump administration is now dismantling was that in the 1930s they knew very well the dangers of authoritarianism. On February 20, 1939, in honor of President George Washington's birthday, Nazis held a rally at New York City's Madison Square Garden.

More than 20,000 people showed up for the True Americanism event, which was held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform, flanked by swastikas. Just two years later Americans went to war against fascism. Over the next century they worked to build a liberal order, one that had strong scientific and political guardrails. and political guardrails. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts.

Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.