Donald Trump’s proposals for Cabinet posts and agency heads is one of he most alarming trends starting to take shape in the upcoming new administration. Most analysts have noted how totally unsuited these candidates are for the posts they have been selected for, and how many will be rejected outright, either for constitutional reasons, or because the personalities and policies of the candidates are so offensive to even the most loyal GOP sycophants.

I disagree. These choices were deliberate and carefully planned. All are designed to quickly pervert and bring to heel the purposes of the agencies they will be leading, and to place Trump loyalists in charge of them. These are not just people who support Trump policies, (every new President has that right), they are individuals who can be counted on to follow White House orders regardless of how they might evolve in the future.

Although constitutional safeguards themselves are less likely to hold any weight in a Trump administration, these nominations have additional consequences even if they are blocked in Congress or in the courts, from the Left or Right. Let me count the ways…

(Not in any particular order)

1) This is a way to test the waters, to see just how far he can go before he meets resistance. Anyone rejected outright for one of these posts will soon be replaced by a candidate slightly more acceptable–by the time the process is over all the posts will be filled by someone just barely tolerable to the opposition; someone still totally loyal to Trump and ready to do whatever orders come from the White House later on down the line. They will, of course, all lie to vetting committees just like the Trump Court nominees did.

2) Democrats who lead any opposition to any of the candidates will immediately wind up on Trump’s shit list, enemies of the MAGA movement. The machinery of the Deplorable press will be mobilized against them even more so than they are now.

3) Republicans who stand with those Democrats will be immediately characterized as RINOs and traitors, and will quickly be replaced or threatened with political oblivion.
Support of these candidates will be a litmus test to identify and ensure loyalty to the Trump program.

4) Any candidate surviving whatever objections the opposition can muster will be pretty much able to do whatever he wants once he or she is in charge of CIA, DOD, AG, DOJ, EPA, NOAA, FDA, ATF, the FED, NLRB, OSHA etc. And “whatever he wants” will be pretty much whatever Trump (or his influencers) wants.

One thing the rise of the New Right has shown us is that the checks and balances of constitutional government become increasingly ineffective as the number of power centers controlled by fascists increases. Congressional and judicial forces are good at stopping and controlling the occasional rogue agency head, but tend to be totally inadequate when confronting a bureaucracy in the pocket of a President with near-dictatorial powers and a get-out-of-jail-free card. No one wants to end up on the Presidential shitlist, and even Democrats will be rewarded if they learn to cooperate, or even just look the other way.

The next four years will see a systematic effort to dismantle as many institutions, public or private, (schools, press, media, academia, the church) and replace them with agencies under centralized control. It may not even be necessary to have our own Reichstag fire. The major exception will be the business community. They’ll be able to get away with pretty much any goddam thing they want. And I personally predict an otherwise totally unexpected development: an effort will be made to enlist additional supporters to the MAGA ranks (blacks, Latinos, the economic underclass). After all, no matter how much illegal aliens are dehumanized, we still need millions of them to help keep salaries down.

A fascist America won’t necessarily resemble Germany or Italy in the 1930s and 1940s. We may not have Kristallnacht, death camps and a World War, and bigotry may be encouraged along religious, financial and class (as opposed to ethnic and racial) lines. It will be sold as the Dictatorship of the Middle Class, but it will most closely resemble a gangster state run by oligarchs and plutocrats. There may still be elections and political parties, but they will be in name only.

America will start to look more and more like Russia, or China. But at least we won’t have Soviet-style Communism.