Unqualified, Unethical, and Unmitigated Disasters for the United States

Trump’s Cabinet Picks

Today, like yesterday was a day when the hits from Trump at Mar-a-Lago kept coming in rapid-fire succession. The Trump machine was firing out unqualified, incompetent, corrupt, and treasonous people to fill key positions, especially those dealing with national security and law enforcement, while setting up a faux department of “Government Efficiency” led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to gut the entire government, especially anything that remotely concerns written in the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Note: those proposals include gutting Veterans medical care and support, even for disabled veterans. However, Trump doesn’t want disabled veterans near him, so this is no surprise. To him, veterans, even those that supported him and voted for him are “losers and suckers”.

But then with Donald Trump, upholding the Constitution has never been a priority, in fact destroying it is his raisin d’être. Why shouldn’t we have expected this? Oh, wait, lots of us did, but too many people were concerned with the price of eggs to care about such trivial and esoteric things. To quote the first officer of the Akula class attack submarine sent to sink the Red Oktober. When the Captain removed the safeties from his torpedos and, after they missed the Red Oktober, they circled back at them, “You arrogant ass! You've killed us!” Trump led the way, but we wouldn’t be here without hid cult, the complicit corporate media, the “normie” Republicans, and those who voted against Harris for a number of reasons, but all of the have combined to try to kill us, and that is not a metaphor, it is their intention as they work to destroy our Constitutional government, the ideals of the Declaration and the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, and the sacrifices of military personnel, civil rights leaders and activists, labor unions, and patriots from the founders of our nation until today.

His first announcement was America’s version of Josef Goebbels, Stephen Miller, to by his Deputy Chief of Staff, giving him a wide portfolio of tasks where he can help rid the country of people that he and Trump call “vermin,” or less than human.

It was completely disheartening to see Tom Homan named “Border Czar” in order to forcibly deporting millions of people, including citizens from the country. His policies in 2018 led to thousands of children being separated from their parents and locked in cages without beds or blankets inside warehouses with no climate control, few sanitation facilities, and little food before shipping them off to other places in the country, and even today many of those children are unaccounted for.

Likewise, Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota to lead the massive and incredibly diverse and complex Department of Homeland Security. She is most infamous for writing about shooting her puppy in her autobiography, and ignoring almost every public health precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic. She will head a department with nearly 20 times the number of people in all of South Dakota’s departments. Let’s not forget that that all nine Indian tribes in South Dakota have banned her from their lands.

Then there was Pete Hegseth, nominated as Secretary of Defense. He is a former junior National Guard and Army Reserve officer who is known for helping Trump pardon a convicted war criminal, and being a host on the Fox News weekend edition of Fox and Friends. He has been a cheerleader for firing Generals that he considers “too woke.” He has never led anything larger than an infantry platoon and has no higher military experience or education, making him the least qualified nominee for that position since it was established in 1947. He wants to remove every General and other officers that he considers “too woke”, including the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and recalling former high ranking generals to active in order to prosecute them for speaking out against Trump during the campaign, including General Mark Milley, and Trump’s form Chief of Staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly. Lord knows how many will be on the commission he heads will make that list.

He also nominated Senator Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State, but Rubio is a foreign policy lightweight with little experience in diplomacy, and few relationships with foreign leaders. The only thing that he seems to have a strong passion for is allowing Israel to destroy Palestinians and embolden Benjamin Netanyahu. Mind you, I am a supporter of Israel, and many of its actions against Hamas and Hezbollah, but he seems to relish the thought of mass murder, deportation, and annexation, none of which are helpful to American foreign policy. Then we have Mike Huckabee, the fundamentalist Christian pastor, speaker, and former governor of Arkansas who was nominated to be Ambassador to Israel. Huckabee doesn’t even acknowledge Palestinians as a people, even the Christian ones. Likewise, though he is a “strong supporter” of Israel, his support is because of its place in his theology of the End Times, where it is the trigger for the events that lead to the return of Jesus Christ. Key to those are his one way tickets on Rapture Airlines, which allows him and Christians like him to escape the Great Tribulation in which the AntiChrist, a world leader leads a war including a worldwide genocide which kills two-thirds of all Jews, before Jesus comes and the bedraggled Jewish survivors turn and convert to him. What a friend of Israel and the Jews.

Then there is now former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, once the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department for the alleged human trafficking of underage girls, who resigned due to a House Ethics Committee hearing to deal with those charges. Now, Gaetz is Trump’s pick to be the Attorney General.

Last, but certainly not least among the big picks was Tulsi Gabbard, to be Director of National Intelligence. She is an Army Reserve officer, commissioned through the now defunct, part-time Alabama National Guard Military Academy who has no higher military education, and nothing beyond a bachelor’s degree, in nothing related to anything involving national security or intelligence. Likewise, she was a big supporter of Syrian dictator Bashir Al Assad, and completely supports Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

All of these people are unmitigated disasters with no redeeming qualities. they are lawless people with no integrity or morals, who have no loyalty to the Constitution or Country. All are vastly unqualified for the offices for which they have been nominated, some might not even be confirmed by the GOP Senate, even after it holds the majority. However, that is no problem because Trump will simply make them recess appointments once the Senate goes into one of its frequent breaks or vacations.

This is all by design. Trump wants a cabinet that is only loyal and accountable to him, and his rapid-fire picks are designed to overwhelm the ability of his opponents or anyone to comprehend what is happening and to divert people for thinking just how bad of no nominee or person any single one is.

Milton Mayer wrote about a German university colleague of his in his book, They thought they were Free: the Germans, 1933-1945. His colleague said:

“Your friend the baker was right,” said my colleague. “The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?“

Truthfully, Trump and the GOP propaganda machine don’t want us to think. They want to wear us down until we stop resisting, until we stop speaking out, until we stop writing. They are already being successful in the corporate media, and in much of the major corporations, and with the wealthiest people in the country and world. After all, who wants to think or take responsibility outside of their own personal lives?

Sophie Scholl, the 22 year-old leader of of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany wrote:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

So do I. Please, be safe, but don’t stop speaking out.

By the way I am in the process of slowly moving my social media accounts to Bluesky, where my handle is SDundas. A number of other much more notable Substack writers are already there.