• Public

  • Public
  • Network
  • Groups
  • Featured
  • Popular
  • People

Expect a flood of executive orders, policy announcements and personnel appointments all pointing in the direction of chaos and revenge. There will be healthy doses of self-enrichment and spoils delivered to his friends old and new alike. And, of course, there will be lies. Big lies, small lies, clever lies and obvious lies. As dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned in 1974 about the Soviet Union, "the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State." So too here, it will be a pillar of Donald Trump's second term. Most importantly, pay attention to democracy's most important guardrails being dismantled individually and altogether. Expect attacks on the professional civil service in general and specific departments in particular. He will try to replace nonpartisan government employees with partisan operatives. I expect him to gut the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and turn it into a grotesque version of itself. Among Trump's first tasks will be the perversion of our criminal justice system. He will pardon his loyalists for their crimes on Jan. 6 while directing the power of his government to pursue his political opponents who stood for democracy.