The Grover whom I reference above is Grover Norquist, the long time anti-tax activist and inspiration behind the group … Americans for Tax Reform. His lifelong passion has been to lower taxes as far as feasible and then  beyond that. This seemed an impossible dream for decades as the demand for government help inexorably expanded, even during those periods when Republicans held the White House. With the emergence of the MAGA movement, the DOGE invasion of Washington, passage of Trump’s so-called big and beautiful bill, and the Supreme Court’s recent lifting on a stay of the summary termination of many federal employees, that peculiar vision of the good society is a step closer to reality.

The world according to Grover and his ilk, many of whom crafted the 2025 Plan, is simple. Government is bad. The resources needed to fund government activities is outright theft from citizens and a burden on an unfettered free market system essential to maintaining American exceptionalism. He (they) do allow for several unavoidable public functions … assuring a monetary currency, a judicial system for deciding legal disputes, the protection of the public against crime and threat, and the protection of the nation against foreign menace. Virtually all else is left to the private sector and private contracts. Draconian indeed!

Okay, it is difficult to take this extreme view of limited government seriously but it has served as a vision, a driving purpose, for much of Republican domestic policy for over five decades. The modus operandi (MO) of the right has been to starve public functions of financial support and then criticize government as being unproductive and thus wasteful when under-resourced agencies cannot perform miracles. Though a rather obvious ploy, it can be effective.

Musk and the MAGA movement must appear to be a gift from the gods to folk like Grover. Sure, the promise of $2 trillion in savings proved total BS but all that savaging of existing federal jobs and workers, including those fleeing civil service in despair, has the holy grail of extremely limited government within reach, or at least a lot closer. In their view, all that untapped potential, now relieved of burdensome taxes and overreaching regulation, will result in unparalleled growth … a virtual paradise on earth.

Better still, it is fair (by their logic) … you get to keep all you earn. This must be a good thing. After all, Grover (and every other politician working for the interests of the uber-wealthy) has told us so … ad nauseum.

The currently favored MO of the MAGA crowd is to keep the political outrages coming at a fast pace. Thus, it becomes difficult for progressives, and surely average folk, to assess the true effects of Trump’s revolution. The next blow comes before the effects of the last one are realized, or even appreciated. A former colleague of mine holds a top administrative position at an R-1 research university. She told me that they routinely try to anticipate the next blow from Washington, which usually arrive on Friday afternoons, so that they might get a head start on a defense. But the attacks are relentless, making a coherent defense quite difficult.

Why Trump has targeted our research universities, which have been the center of global advancement since the 1930s, remains a mystery. Perhaps if his son, Barron, had been admitted to Harvard, all would be different. On the other hand, Fascists typically attack intellectuals first. After all, they tend to think for themselves. That cannot be good for those seeking total control.

Nevertheless, the loss of expertise and numbers in the federal bureaucracy might already be manifesting itself in disturbing ways. The flash floods in Texas have taken a horrendous toll in lives (well over 100 deaths), especially among children at summer camps. It is likely that blame can be assigned across the board. It is now known that delays of 90 minutes existed in getting initial warnings out and any meaningful response as the situation rapidly deteriorated.  But it cannot help that the National Weather Service (NWS) lost some 600 positions in the early DOGE cuts. The San Angelo and San Antonio offices had several key vacancies. Who will protect us in the future as this first line of defense against natural disasters is further decimated.

Of course, all such emergency situations are complex. Some local communities lacked warning sirens because, according to some, ‘the taxpayers didn’t want to pay for them.’ On the other hand, others assert that the NWS was targeted early on for cuts due to ideological concerns. The MAGA crowd, particularly the authors of the 2025 plan conflate the NWS staff with propaganda efforts to promote human -facilitated causes for climate change. That was treason to the Trump crowd since any suggestion of climate change is, by definition, fake news.

Or take the medical care provided veterans (VA). The VA is the largest public integrated health care system in the country. It operates some 1,380 facilities across the nation while providing a range of medical services to some 18 million veterans, about 6 percent of the population. Even as Trump began his wholesale attacks, this system was short some 66,000 staff.

So, what does Musk and Trump do? They immediately cut another 2,500 staff and encourage another 14,000 retirements. These losses include almost 2,000 nurses and doctors. If all the ‘hoped for’ DOGE cuts were to be realized, some 83,000 additional personnel would be eliminated. It takes a lot of firings and forced retirements to pay for another tax break for the wealthy.  Make no mistake, you cannot savage a system to that extent without suffering and death among the population served … in the VA case, those who sacrificed much for the very nation that now has turned on them.

If you recall, the USAID program was one of the first to feel the wrath of DOGE. Virtually all existing contracts and initiatives were canceled with some residual initiatives being transferred to the State Department. Wild assertions were made about waste and corruption in the program, claims that were undocumented or based on misinformation about how the program functioned. What was conveniently overlooked is the fact that, according to research published in the prestigious Lancet Journal, some 92 million lives had been saved through USAID efforts in the two decades after 2001.

But saving lives has no meaning to the new regime. Everything is transactional to them. If a dollar cannot be made, the effort is not worth it. And we all know that poor and dying children across the globe cannot come up with cold cash. Since the early round of cuts, it is estimated that some 350,000 amenable deaths have occurred. More disturbing, observers fear that an additional 14 million could perish over the next 5 years if the recisions are not restored, including some 4.5 million children. Unless others fill the void, the scourges of AIDS, disease, and malnutrition will continue to exact their deadly tolls.

This is just the tip of the ugly iceberg. Virtually every federal agency (except Homeland Security and Immigration) is struggling. The Social Security Administration is rushing field reps to man telephone lines in a futile attempt to keep the system afloat while calls are disconnected during long waits and their web site repeatedly crashes. The IRS, on the other hand, likely will forfeit billions in uncollected taxes since fewer agents are available to collect what is due. The list of potential breakdowns is endless.

We are now beyond administrative efficiency. We are now facing unimaginable human costs. With enactment of the big, beautiful budget bill, we authorized draconian cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits, initiatives that will hurt the disadvantaged at the same time that inflation, further enhanced by Trump’s ill-considered tariffs, will adversely impact the purchasing power of the poor. Already marginal lives will become more desperate, perhaps beyond reach if the AI revolution next eliminates those jobs envisioned by many to disappear as machines are substituted for human effort. But not to worry, as Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture has argued, we can force able-bodied Medicaid recipients into the farm fields to pick crops in 100 degree plus heat now that ICE has rounded up immigrant workers. Now, there is a well considered plan.

And dont forget that we have the highest rate of measles in decades. Unfortunately, our front line of defense has been decimated by the politics of the absurd. Robert Kennedy Jr has bought into every anti-science and crackpot theory to replace our once advanced disease detection, prevention, and response infrastructure to protect us from global catastrophe. Well, we can always drink bleach when the next plague strikes.

Yet, for Grover Norquist, Elon Musk, Donald Trump and many of the economic elite, little of the fallout is of much concern. In fact, Grover continues to push for additional tax cuts. His latest scheme would ease the ‘burden’ on capital gains income by appreciating the original purchase price of stocks by the rate of inflation since the time of sale. This would reduce the amount of taxable income, another boon to those at the top of the income pyramid. As I’ve argued earlier and often, we have less a spending issue than a problem stemming from an unwillingness to pay our bills. Relative to our peer countries, we spend proportionally less (normed to the size of our econony) and clearly collect far less in taxes (again, when normed to economic size). We already have starved our public sector even before the DOGE invasion.

One might think that policymakers would pause to consider the human costs to decisions now being made so casually. But no, the value of human life continues to be debased, particularly as technology replaces humans for both physical and repetitive cognitive tasks. For some of the elite, too many people now represent an inconvenience. Perhaps we just don’t need as many any longer. So, a few million deaths here and there might just be a positive thing. It will mean fewer redundant humans to worry about.

The elite among the MAGA crowd are not that far from ante-bellum thinking in our feudal Southern society. That was a hierarchical world where those at the top (slave owning plantation owners) felt they were destined to rule by virtue of their superior qualities while the mudsill elements (servile blacks and the destitute) were consigned to their lot in life … laboring long and hard for the benefit of the elite.

Many in the billionaire class evidence similar feudal instincts. Their wealth and power confers upon them rights and immunities not applicable to mere mortals. When Jeff Bezos can arrive at his Venice wedding in a $500 million dollar yacht for an event extimated to cost $250,000 per guest, it is easy to feel you belong among the gods. In their world, all that counts is that those in the elite have total freedom to dominate and acquire ever more resources and power. When finally considering themselves to be beyond human constraints, they will determine who will live or perish, and who might benefit from the public’s concern, if anyone.

Recently, I ran across a piece by an educator in Ohio who split his time between an academy for the privileged and an after school program for inner-city kids in Cleveland. The school for the wealthy (which cost $45,000 plus per year) offered every advantage imaginable, including buffet lunches replete with fresh, organic offerings. He would then bring bananas and juice boxes to his inner-city kids since, for many, this would be their first meal of the day. A compassionate government would acknowledge that the starting line in life is wholly unequal, that ensuring the American dream meant adjusting that line to give all at least some possibility of seeking success. Otherwise, the game is fatally rigged.

What has MAGA done? It has decimated the Department of Education and the modest efforts we had made to alleviate inequities at the start of life’s journey. We are returning to the horrors of Charles Dicken’s Victorian England … a struggle for the survival of the fittest. The problem with that is that such a struggle has never been a fair fight, not unless we retain a public role as the great leveler.

It is a dystopian perspective I share. While I’ve never been pollyannish, I’ve also never harbored such dark sentiments before. This time, in this moment, they seem appropriate … if not inescapable.