Americans of a certain age There’s a tendency to throw around the term “Orwellian” casually. But this phrase really fits the bill to describe the actions of a president-elect who has been impeached twice for felonies.
From George Orwell’s classic novel 1984The dictatorship, represented by the all-powerful ‘Big Brother’, dictates a reality that citizens must adhere to, no matter how confusing it may be. Official slogans include “Ignorance is power,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “War is peace.”
In this context, another slogan comes to mind: “Drain the swamp.”
Trump did not invent this populist rhetoric, but he made it a centerpiece of his first campaign. In other words, it was a pledge to rid D.C. of the harmful influence of special interest money, lobbyists, and more. Of course, politicians of both parties have long criticized, often not very credibly, the anti-Washington special interests and the U.S. Supreme Court’s repeal of campaign finance safeguards, which has actually created a cesspool of oligarchic influence that cuts across party lines in Washington, D.C.
It’s not the slogan itself that’s Orwellian. The Orwellian part is reminiscent of the swamp, with Trump reappointing foxes to guard the federal chicken coop. It’s trolling against the libs, but it’s trolling with potentially dire consequences, and it’s a sign that our government is more openly for sale than ever before.
Exhibit A: Trump chose Chris Wright, CEO of a Denver hydraulic fracturing services company called Liberty Energy, to be Secretary of Energy. Wright has no government experience and no experience with nuclear weapons, where oversight is a critical part of the DOE role.
Meanwhile, as is typical of Trump’s cabinet picks to date, Wright’s other qualification for the job is his use of Orwellian “Newspeak.”double plus defect.
No one noticed that the first thing Trump considers when assigning key positions is loyalty to the boss. For attorney general, they chose inexperienced lawyer (but fierce loyalist) Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz has been accused of sexual impropriety (no charges have been filed) and is notorious for foisting videos of himself bedding women on his House colleagues. Trump chose Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Tulsi Gabbard is a former congresswoman whom my colleague Dan Friedman described as “a uniquely bad choice.” That said, she lacks intelligence experience and is so aligned with Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine that her nomination was even celebrated on Russian television. To oversee White House communications, he chose the man who dropped a bombshell in the UFC. In the health field, he chose Robert Kennedy Jr., who had no academic expertise in the field he would oversee and whose views and priorities were far from the mainstream, my colleague David Corn reported . (Ignorance really seems to be power in this government.)
Wright is a loyalist too, but this choice feels decidedly transactional.swampy. After all, Trump met with top fossil fuel CEOs several times during the campaign, promising them rich rewards if they paid him to help get him elected. Wright’s denial of the climate crisis and outright dismissal of America’s clean energy transition is strangely the industry’s reward, as it is progressing well despite the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to hinder it. Just like Trump’s choice for Secretary of the Interior, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgham, who has advocated for expanded drilling on federal lands.
that new york times Wright’s wife Liz co-hosted a Trump fundraiser in Montana, and the couple reported donating a total of $350,000 to the Trump campaign committee. Most notably, Wright was the preferred choice of oil billionaire Harold Hamm, a major Trump donor and co-host of gatherings in which the candidate wooed oil executives with suspicious-sounding language, as if he were paying them.
Hamm has been playing the political money game for a long time. like before mother jones In an early profile of the oil company, reporter Josh Harkinson wrote that Hamm began supporting political causes in earnest in 2007, founding a group called the Domestic Energy Producers Association (slogan: “Good things flow from American oil”) and donating millions of dollars to it. I did it. Presidential candidate and right-wing movement supported by billionaire businessmen Charles Koch and David Koch. That includes nearly $1 million to support Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 bid for the White House.
Harkinson said that in its rush to develop North Dakota’s Bakken shale, Hamm’s company, Continental Resources, in 2012 “ran roughshod over environmental laws…
Documents obtainedProPublicaThe company has spilled at least 200,000 gallons of oil in North Dakota since 2009, far more than any other company. That year, in one of the few official citations against an oil company, the state Department of Health fined Continental $428,500 for poisoning two streams with thousands of gallons of brine and crude oil, but later reduced that amount to $35,000. Around the same time, four continental waste pits overflowed during a thaw, spilling toxic soup onto the surrounding land. The Industrial Commission said it would fine the company $125,000, but ultimately reduced the amount to less than $14,000 “because wet conditions created conditions unforeseen by Continental.”
Hamm stepped up on Trump’s behalf in 2016 and exerted influence during Trump’s first term, securing a VIP seat at the 2017 inauguration ceremony. at washington post:
In early 2020, he lobbied Trump to end the price war that drove the price of oil below $0 a barrel, causing Hamm to lose $3 billion in just a few days.
The efforts seemed to be paying off. In April 2020, under pressure from Trump, OPEC members, Russia and other oil producers agreed to the largest production cut ever negotiated – nearly 10 million barrels per day – as oil demand collapsed during the pandemic.
This time around, Hamm, Continental’s chairman, and his fellow oil and gas executives want to see some of the onerous environmental regulations, including fines imposed on drillers spewing waste, go away under President Joe Biden’s inflation reduction law. In particular, it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and a major component of so-called natural gas, into the atmosphere.
The goal of regulating the fossil fuel industry is to ensure Americans have clean air and water and at least some hope of avoiding the worst harm from global warming. Eliminating these regulations and preventing new ones that cost donors is a big part of what this second Trump administration is trying to deliver, not to mention the U.S. Supreme Court making decisions that cripple the autonomy of federal agencies.
Call it Swamp 2.0.
