I'm very opposed to DT and Musk's operations for what I feel are reasons I've seen validated over time.
At the same time, I wholly agree about the CIA and USAID; my introduction was migrating several web systems for some USAID-funded groups which led me to look at what they were doing.
As far as I can tell, the groups just generally were doing what they were putatively trying to do, mostly education and disaster relief. Which seems to me to be much softer than, say, attempting the assassination of a Lamumba, Castro, or Sankara.
What gives me pause in celebrating what appears to be a rather large attack on the CIA is that I generally don't trust Trump, either his motivations or his political abilities, in dealing with these kinds of institutions.
I worry that even if he disbanded the CIA and FBI the function of the foreign and domestic secret police agencies will still need to be performed by someone or other, as they seem like the kinds of functions that a lot of folks have naturalized as being part of the modern capitalist state. And it may be the case that a modern capitalist state cannot work without its secret police.
In any case, it seems likely that whatever they replace these groups with, new institutions won't have the same cultural commitments as the existing groups, which at least have a pretense of supporting "US Democratic Principles". For all the internal contradictions that allowed those folks to justify commiting crime after crime, my feeling is that replacing them with some post-truth nihilists will result in the naked application of authoritarianism.
That's my worry, but hey, I get stuff wrong all the time and there are 3-5 points where my analysis could be off.
Part of Project 2025 was to purge those who would not swear feality to the new GOP regime. That is especially true in intelligence agencies like CIA and FBI. They want as many of those who are loyal to democracy to quit/get fired as possible so they can be replaced with brown shirt like cronies.
At the same time, I wholly agree about the CIA and USAID; my introduction was migrating several web systems for some USAID-funded groups which led me to look at what they were doing.
As far as I can tell, the groups just generally were doing what they were putatively trying to do, mostly education and disaster relief. Which seems to me to be much softer than, say, attempting the assassination of a Lamumba, Castro, or Sankara.
What gives me pause in celebrating what appears to be a rather large attack on the CIA is that I generally don't trust Trump, either his motivations or his political abilities, in dealing with these kinds of institutions.
I worry that even if he disbanded the CIA and FBI the function of the foreign and domestic secret police agencies will still need to be performed by someone or other, as they seem like the kinds of functions that a lot of folks have naturalized as being part of the modern capitalist state. And it may be the case that a modern capitalist state cannot work without its secret police.
In any case, it seems likely that whatever they replace these groups with, new institutions won't have the same cultural commitments as the existing groups, which at least have a pretense of supporting "US Democratic Principles". For all the internal contradictions that allowed those folks to justify commiting crime after crime, my feeling is that replacing them with some post-truth nihilists will result in the naked application of authoritarianism.
That's my worry, but hey, I get stuff wrong all the time and there are 3-5 points where my analysis could be off.