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WHAT hath the make America great again movement wrought? I doubt the archest of Donald Trump’s arch-enemies ever imagined that in his second term he would take things this far in the direction of dangerous or dumb or both.Ìý

To be clear straightaway, Trump’s full-frontal attack on the deep state and the liberal authoritarians who collaborated to subvert his first four years in the White House is wholly warranted.

In particular, purging the justice department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation while exerting some measure of civilian control over the intelligence apparatus are not only well-grounded undertakings: they are necessary if the foundations of the decadent republic are to be restored after the wanton misuse of these institutions during the Biden years.

But let us be clear in all directions: a lot of what Trump is getting up to this time merits principled objection in the name of reason, decency, democracy, and a genuine global order — but not, I add immediately, in defence of liberal ideology and (its close cousin) an imperium that conducts its business in a more cosmetically acceptable fashion.

Ownership of the Gaza Strip? Wresting control of the Panama Canal from the sovereign Republic of Panama? I read that Trump has issued yet another executive order on February 7, this one to halt aid to South Africa and offer the country’s notoriously racist Afrikaner farmers refugee status as victims of a ‘massive human rights violation,’ as he put it in a social media post — adding that he considers them ‘racially disfavoured landowners.’Ìý

Just when you think you’ve heard everything, Donald Trump says something else. As in every day at this point in the proceedings.Ìý

On February 10 Trump said in an interview with Fox News that the Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip will not be permitted any right to return home after he turns it into some kind of glitzy West Asian version of Palm Beach. ‘I’m talking about building a permanent place for them,’ he told Fox’s Bret Baier.Ìý

‘A permanent place’: Trump just confirmed he is on for the ethnic-cleansing of Gaza he previously proposed in all but name. The force required to get this done, and the direct role he plans to play in executing the project, will make the president of the United States guilty, by all internationally accepted definitions, of crimes against humanity and very possibly war crimes.Ìý

As Joe Lauria, Consortium News’ editor-in-chief, astutely pointed out in a conversation the other day, during Trump’s first term the more thoughtful of our independent media were so taken up with defending him against the anti-democratic fabrications of the Russia-gate hoax that there was neither the time nor the column inches to attend to all that was objectionable or condemnable about the Trump of 2017 to 2021.

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Writing off the wall

NOW, as Trump and his people pounce with ferocity on the liberal authoritarians and their various totems, icons, and virtue-signalling programmes, there is some sorting out to do. Nothing makes the plainer than the running battle in Washington over the life or death of the US Agency for International Development.

The USAID case is worth some consideration. In it we find … the bluntness of Trump and Musk, the blindness of liberals.Ìý

USAID’s fate has been a cause célèbre since Elon Musk, who runs Trump’s government efficiency program, said publicly earlier this month that he had the president’s agreement that ‘we should shut it down.’ It has been tears and the gnashing of teeth ever since.

Musk, who I count the most dangerously anti-democratic figure in the cabal of the mostly mal-intended Trump has gathered around him, sent a team of underlings from his department of government efficiency into USAID’s building, a few blocks from the White House, shortly after he declared the president’s assent to begin closing the agency.

Employees were locked out of their offices and email accounts and told to stay home; USAID websites were blocked or taken down. All full-time USAID people were placed on leave and orders went out to recall the thousands of people USAID has in the field around the world. The New York Times reported on February 6 that the White House’s intent is to cut USAID’s staff from more than 10,000 to fewer than 300.

The USAID case now seems headed for court. A federal judge, Carl Nichols of the district court in Washington, issued a restraining order at the end of last week temporarily blocking parts of the Trump–Musk plan. This was in response to a lawsuit filed by two unions — one representing federal employees and the other foreign service officers.Ìý

But there is a telling detail here that is not to be missed: Last weekend a variety of mainstream media — NBC News, The New York Times, and others — published a photograph of a federal government maintenance worker high on a ladder as he chiselled off USAID’s name above the entrance to its building at 1300 Pennsylvania avenue.

The writing, let’s say, is off the wall. I do not see America’s premier dispenser of foreign aid and humanitarian assistance surviving Elon Musk’s Storm Trooper-esque sweep — not as the agency has long been known.Ìý

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And how has USAID been known? This is our question. It is what makes this case worthy of some scrutiny.

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Kennedy’s idea

IT WAS John F Kennedy who established the Agency for International Development in 1961, his first year in the White House. He gave the state department authority over it, gave USAID a generous budget, and sent it forth in the world to address the countless problems of others we can file under the heading ‘underdevelopment.’

Kennedy was no stranger to self-interest, but this project, like the Peace Corps, was in some good measure an expression of the altruism we find threaded through many of his speeches and policies.

(Can self-interest and altruism co-exist in the same mind, the same heart, the same institution? It seems a contradiction in terms, given altruism is defined as selfless concern for others, but I give Kennedy some rope on this question:

The evolution of his vision and understanding in the course of his thousand days was decisively in the direction of an America that could finally reject its idea of itself as an empire. He paid for this evolution with his life, let us remind ourselves.)

Social and economic development programs, health and nutrition programs, irrigation and drainage projects, disease eradication, environmental remedies: Kennedy wanted USAID to make lif