Yes, the headline should intentionally remind of left-wing journalist John Reed’s account of the Russian Revolution. But there is another revolution afoot in America and this one has nothing to do with empowering the state or emboldening the forces of tyranny. This isn’t about a bunch of Bolshevik tyrants imposing their will on you; this is about a revolution in how government can be smaller, kinder, better. This is about empowering individuals to take back their lives and take back their country.
The first seven days or so of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition have been almost mind-boggling. It’s like Trump was serious about changing the government; like he meant it when he said he was going to deport illegals; like he has every intention of breaking the back of the Deep State and permanently changing the channel in Washington. The only question mark is why Trump nominated Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as secretary of state. Rubio is not in sync with Trump’s other nominees and he's the wrong choice to stop funding the debacle in Ukraine and the festering sore in the Middle East. Is this Trump's nod to the withering Republican establishment? Or will Rubio simply embrace the MAGA tenets and repudiate his neo-con convictions? He's a politician. He will adapt. Ultimately, he will have to follow Trump's orders and directions. So the outrage might be much ado about nothing.
On the same day that Rubio's nomination was confirmed, Trump announced that former Rep. Tulsli Gabbard (D-HI) was his choice for director of national intelligence. That was wonderful. Gabbard represents the unity of common sense Republicans and Democrats who have transformed the GOP into the majority party. She will oversee 18 intelligence agencies that need to be pruned down to at least half that number. It's not just that these competing agencies have overlapping responsibilities, the problem is that they have become more adept at spying on Americans than foreign enemies. But nominating Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as attorney general? That was inspired. He has been a faithful Trump supporter during the darkest days of Democratic persecution and was himself a victim of FBI malevolence. He could someday soon be telling America's politicized, fractured and failed national police force to get back to pursuing criminals and not opponents of Democratic presidents.
But Tom Homan as the border czar? Now that’s Donald Trump in action. This is a classic example of putting somebody in charge of a department who actually knows how it functions and what to do to keep it functioning. Homan is not some bureaucrat who will have to feign and posture to convince the rank and file that he knows what he’s doing. He is a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who has the credibility, knowledge and experience to get the job done. Trump is more than two months away from his inauguration yet Homan is already out doing the interviews and making the announcements about sweeping deportations. He’s already told the cursed sanctuary cities to assist the authorities or get out of the way. My God, he’s even told the illegals to self-deport, as he noted that people who are illegally here should not be feeling protected by state and local governments but should be entirely uncomfortable with their illegal status! That’s the sort of common sense thinking that has been absent from government for the past four years when you had a border czar named Kamala Harris who failed to stop one illegal from entering the United States and could not deport any once they were here living the life of Riley, or shall we say the life of Biden? We had a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary who played dumb and pretended there was no border crisis. How many times did Alejandro Mayorkas sit in front of Congress and lie about the disaster at the border? How often did he appear like a man incapable of telling the truth or just a bureaucrat without a thought in his head?
If you think Homan should have replaced Mayorkas at DHS, think again. He’s exactly where he should be. Fixing the border will be a massive job requiring immense dedication and single-mindedness. Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) will be fine at DHS but she will be distracted from the border because her department has become so unwieldy and overreaching. The border is a full-time job and Homan is the man to do it.
Hopefully Trump has told Noem that he wants DHS reeled in and reduced to an organization that is not focused on taking away the civil liberties of Americans. Ideally, Noem should be a transitional secretary who oversees the demise of her own job and the end of DHS.
You say, “But that’s impossible. No cabinet secretary has ever terminated his own department! Government just keeps growing.” But that’s the difference with Trump. He wants to roll back the government and put the emphasis on the individual and not the state. That’s why he’s even talked about eliminating the income tax. That’s why he’s talking about creating an America First military that isn’t supporting hundreds of bases around the world and spending trillions of dollars killing people on foreign battlefields. It didn’t used to be this way. I really believe that’s why President Dwight Eisenhower made those comments in the twilight days of his administration about the dangers of the Military-Industrial Establishment. Here was a former five-star general who masterminded D-Day warning about a coming day when US governments would lose their control over discretionary spending because the defense department would require such overwhelming upkeep. He remembered when it wasn’t that way. He knew it wouldn’t be that way anytime soon when he spoke those words but he imagined that it might be so again.
That time is now. The Cold War ended 35 years ago but America never experienced a peace dividend because the warmongers found new enemies, new military objectives, new slogans – all with a view of perpetuating the killing and the spending. Somebody is benefiting from these foreign wars but it’s not the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines or American people; it’s the stockholders at McDonnell-Douglas. The people who want to demonize Russia to the point of creating a nuclear war are quite honestly insane and beyond functioning normally. Trump wants to get America on track with a military that can defend the nation from attack and a federal government that spends money American needs.
Which brings me to the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense. Is it crazy to put a former US Army major in charge of the largest department in the American government? A Fox News host? No, this is, again, inspired. Hegseth comes from the middle management of the military that most despises the woke ideology that has contaminated its combat capability. Hegseth was never part of the defense establishment and probably never aspired to get a job with or sit on the boards of directors of the defense contractors like Raytheon who hire so many ex-generals. Hegseth would be there to clean house in a way that only a former senior officer – and not a general officer – could do. He could remove the DEI nonsense, the Critical Race Theory indoctrination, the chronic lowering of training standards to accommodate political objectives and not military needs.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy leading the new Department of Government Efficiency? Brilliant. Of course, this is no surprise. We have been waiting for this. What makes this a perfect fit is that neither of these men needs a government job. Musk is literally the last man on earth who needs a government job because the private sector has made him the richest person on the planet. Ramaswamy is another guy who got into politics to make government smaller and to work for average Americans. Appointing these two entrepreneurs to the task of reducing the role of government in our lives is emblematic of what Trump is obviously trying to achieve with his cabinet: a return to an America where ordinary Americans were in control and where ordinary Americans could become extraordinary Americans because there were virtually no limits on individual initiative and where hard work could take you.
Get ready for the ride of your life. But don’t sit back. Stand up and get ready to move. Because America is going forward.
