flood the zone

the blueprint to durably dismantle leviathan

back in a prior piece i spoke of the impending “flooding of the zone” by the incoming administration, a move on all fronts at once to undo the manifold harms of the brandon administration and its wild regulatory forays into every aspect of economic and social life.

DC is going to feel like it’s being invaded by an entire bestiary of mythical monsters with magical powers who can see through walls and huck immovable objects over the horizon.

they will come from every side at once. they will replace thousands of federal employees right from the start, you’ll be fighting against the outside and the inside. they’re going to transfer and move those permanent staters they cannot fire. have fun in topeka or guam. they’re lovely this time of year.

they are not going to play nice or play fair.

they are going to get things done.

well, here it comes and frankly, an awful lot of it looks very promising in the vein of “move fast and break things” and a relentless bias toward action.

they are going for it with gusto.

it’s happening so fast that the media cannot even keep up with it.

the defenestration of DEI and 100 other ignominious insults to rights and reason has begun and unlike the last trump admin which was tepid and soft at the start and had little to no idea how to navigate DC, this time they have hit the ground at full sprint.

and unlike last time, they were ready for the response and the stupidity and the cupidity.

the typical tricks were being tried

but look to have been anticipated and headed off.

and many of the administrative swamp dwellers were upset about the new reality and went online to (without a hint of irony or self awareness) yap about how they were not just yapping to yapp but were so busy with all the new rules to do any work (but had plenty of time for tiktok) the whole thing is just picture perfect.

but amidst this noise and alleged confusion, the thesis is really quite clear: business as usual just got shut down and we’re not re-opening it until we have a good look at it and see a good reason to do so. it’s coming straight down from the office of personnel.

this is the way.

shut it all off and see who squawks. there’s no way that 30-50% of government and government employment is not just out and out waste and fraud. this flips the script and makes it their responsibility to come department leaders and gold givers and make a positive case for funding whatever it was they were doing.

it forces a look at everything.

if there is a good case, great, but i will bet you that mostly there isn’t and million dollar federal funding festivals to dose dogs with LSD and ketamine to see if it turns them gay are about to become a thing of the past.

the vast “grants for cronies and DEI devotees” program has been curtailed. the next step is to pull the NIH and CDC most or all of the way out of science. they should not be funding any of this. it crowds out real work and generates a dependent class of useless researchers grifting from grant to grant and making whole careers out of low or negative value work/science flavored propaganda to prop up prevailing regime predilection.

this is not the proper role of the state or of science.

never was.

afuera!

but amidst the dizzying winds of change, some things were becoming clear:

the useless and damaging work of anti-meritocracy is being unwound at speed.

and nature was healing.

this is critical work. vital work. by the simple emergent evolution of A’s hiring A’s but B’s hiring C’s in order to avoid risks to their position all systems not actively and explicitly run as meritocracies will inevitably devolve into anti-meritocracies.

the return of merit will start to upend and re-vamp these agencies and levers of levithanian lechery, but this is not enough.

here’s the real goal and the real question:

how do we make this permanent?

it seems to me that this must be the pole star of these undertakings. it’s great to do it, but how do we make it stick?

setting up a world where every 4 years there is a new round of this and the rules of the road for america risk radical alteration and inversion is an untenable idea. no one can live in a world like that. you cannot plan, you cannot build. the ground beneath you will never be trustworthy and solid.

if trump and DOGE want a lasting legacy, this is what they need to solve for, this is the question that must infuse all actions.

congress can help but, frankly, this bumptious bunch of bureaucratic bozos seem to be veering right back to sausage making as usual.

the porkulous roars in indignation at the idea of fiscal responsibility!

this is why the GOP has been such a failure as a party. they run on small government without any intention of ever providing it.

this renders them little more than the propaganda wing for the uniparty creating the illusion of choice where no choice exists.

this needs to be laid plain and rooted out or nothing will ever change.

and change needs to happen.

and that likely means going to the courts.

i suspect the way to get the great reduction of federal power to remain the law of the land is through a huge number of court cases against regulatory agencies challenging their powers under chevron and W VA v EPA and corner post.

the door is open in a way that it never was before.

if the agencies were going to fight, this would never work. too slow, too cumbersome, too uncertain.

but they do not have to fight.

they can agree.

they can settle and stipulate.

it just takes putting people in charge of them that want to tear them down.

and we’re getting a fair few of those.

they just need to say “yup, we agree. we should not have that power. it was never granted and we’re not allowed to interpret our own major questions without clear congressional guidance.”

this becomes precedent and legal canon. it cannot be overturned without acts of congress or further court action.

it’s a one way ratchet to eviscerate the regulatory state that may not easily be undone.

it’s a path to a safer future.

LFG.