My Turn: Trump’s kakistocracy cabinet
Published: 01-13-2025 10:04 PM |
Words matter. Some I wish I didn’t need to know.
For example, late last month I encountered the Economist magazine’s 2024 word of the year: kakistocracy.
A kakistocracy, I learned, is a government run by the worst people. The worst people apparently encompass two groups of miscreants: 1) the callous and the corrupt, and 2) the unqualified and the incompetent, although those categories often overlap.
The etymology? Two Greek words: kakistos, meaning worst, and kratos (which gives us the suffix cracy) meaning force, strength, power or government. Think demo(Greek for people)cracy.
Donald Trump’s appointees, all sycophants, hit every mark. Some sport vacuous resumes devoid of relevant education, training and experience. Others are masters of malevolence. Accordingly, Trumps’ Kakistocracy Museum will sport two main sections: the Wing of Inept and Unqualified Appointees and the Gallery of Evil Ideologues.
As for the latter, consider Stephen Miller, the incoming Homeland Security adviser and deputy chief of staff. Miller will oversee mass deportations and the destruction of immigrant communities and families. Miller is salivating over his proposed concentration camps and family separation plans. This past week a legal group he founded threatened Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey with prison and financial ruin because she had stood up for immigrants.
Likewise, Tom Homan, the former ICE director and Trump’s “border czar”-in-waiting, who fully intends to bludgeon immigrants. The consensus on Homan: a hard-driving, hard right-wing ideologue with plans.
True, Trump’s mass deportation plan could backfire politically by inflicting economic pain across the board. Without the employees needed to harvest crops and produce milk, meat and poultry as well as provide health care, work construction and staff the hospitality industry, corporations’ bottom lines may plummet and inflation could skyrocket. Trump and his advisers’ devotion to their authoritarian and racist policies may blind them to their consequences.
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Let’s return to Trump’s Kakistocracy Hall of Shame, where visitors will be greeted by holograms of no doubters like Matt Gaetz. Remember him, Trump’s first attorney general nominee?
Gaetz regularly paid women, including a 17-year-old, for sex and purchased and used illicit drugs in his congressional office and all-around was a total lawbreaking creep. His behavior so grossed out three or four Republican senators that his confirmation appeared unlikely, so he withdrew.
His replacement? Former Florida AG Pam Bondi, a Trump sycophant who showed up to support him at his New York hush money trial. Bondi is an adamant 2020 election denier. She’s promised to prosecute people Trump holds a grudge against. She’ll find a crime to charge them with.
Of course, some appointees are just plain bonkers as well as dangerous. Think RFK Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. Bring back polio — really?
Kennedy will mesh marvelously with the nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. David Weldon. Weldon insists that vaccines cause autism.
Meanwhile, back at the kakistocracy ranch, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who sports tattoos associated with white supremacy, has no experience that would qualify him for this job. But what the heck, we’re only talking about the lives of 1.3 million active-duty American service personnel and perhaps the future of the human race and the earth.
Hegseth hosted a weekend TV show on Fox, a primary qualification for nomination by Trump. After his long-standing abuse of alcohol came to light, Hegseth pledged to not drink on this job. Given all this, what could go wrong?
Thanks to Trump, after kakistocracy, we’ll need to familiarize ourselves with still more words needed to describe our country — words such as kleptocracy (a society or system ruled by the wealthy, corrupt and dishonest); chrysocracy and plutocracy (rule by the rich); androcracy (rule by men); and oligarchy, rule by a small elite.
Over time we’ll learn the nuanced differences. Our brains will have space for these words because under Trump many more familiar ones will fall into disuse — words such as decency, honesty, honor, integrity, humility, diversity, dignity, compassion, inquisitiveness understanding, knowledge, selflessness, righteousness, humanity, ethics and equality.
Conjuring these words makes me, and I believe many of us, even more deeply mourn the passing of former president and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jimmy Carter.
These words also bring to mind, as we anticipate with trepidation the Trumpian sword of Damocles now poised to sever the arteries of democracy, the words of Benjamin Franklin. When asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention had created Franklin answered, “A republic — if you can keep it.”
The 20th Amendment specifies that the presidential term shall begin at noon on Jan, 20. MLK Day is, by law, the third Monday in January. These events occurring on the same day is rare but not unprecedented.
When Trump swears to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” he will be, as we all know, lying. What will be uplifting that day is our commemoration of the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — his historic vision, towering accomplishments, undaunted courage, and his magnificent, memorable and inspiring words.
Bill Newman is a Northampton-based civil rights lawyer and co-host of Talk the Talk on WHMP.