Our three musketeers had once again joined up in their favourite corner of their favourite cafe after working hours.
They said goodbye to Christine who submitted herself to the coffee respirator and embarked on her own journey to the chair farthest away. Gerald and Miranda subserviently took on the role of hospital staff diligently restocking the girl on essential nutrients.
The calm settled and Miranda looked at Gerald who reciprocated her self-confident look. NOW they knew what they were doing with the 2025 Project.
G: “Starting with the USAID debacle, I read the report’s recommendations.”
M: “Striking coincidence, so did I!”
G: “Let’s set an agenda: First I want to unravel the intricacies of whether Trump follows the report or not. But as you likely have noted, that small matter widens out into a much larger debate about, ehm, …”
M: “I have a gazillion thoughts on that ’ehm’ part.”
Obedience to 2025 Project? Or a useless document?
G: “On that score, let me come out of the closet right now: Trump doesn’t need that document at all! Why? Because frankly the document refers to Trump’s solutions more often than providing him with actual new material.
That verdict may change if I can find time to read the entire thing. USAID recommendations are certainly brimful of:
»Trump should do in his second term what he did in his first term«.
Originality is not their strongest suit. Perhaps the project is addressing a lack of prioritised focus in the conservative world, kind of a lens through which to harmonise conflicting conservative interests.”
M: “The way I read the chapter was with an eye on the conservative value system. I know I digress from your plan at this point. You want to get to that part later in the evening. But just one observation: One can hardly ignore the constant attempts at amending Trumps actions with a Christian-conservative rationale.”
G: “I would have said that MAGA are on a different course than the GOP. Let’s discuss that later. I do find the thought interesting: A bunch of Christian ideologists trying to rectify the rampant bull who holds the reins to the country.”
Observations
G: “The report treats USAID as an institution that was once bipartisan or non-partisan. They give the impression that political affiliation was a private matter. Biden’s DEI goals meant putting incentives in place to increase the DEI score.”
The upshot has been to racialize the agency and create a hostile work environment for anyone who disagrees with the Biden Administration’s identity politics. This pursuit of ideological purity threatens merit-based professional advancement for staff who do not overtly conform, hyperpoliticizes what should be a nonpartisan federal workplace environment […]
M: “Couldn’t they be exaggerating? Hostile sounds like a strong word.”
G: “Outside this project book I have seen reports on disturbances and protests within the organisation. He made it sound like the waves were running high.
I’m more interested in the takeaway that this author is aware that USAID consists of all sort of political affiliations just like any other work place. Worth pointing out, because shutting down the entire USAID was perhaps never the point. Layoffs will be the order of the day now.”
M: “From what I can gather, there are two major themes in Max Primorac’s chapter on the aid agency:
- Make an incision in wieldy agency running endless projects.
- Reorient the agency’s values to be pro-religion, favouring reachable goals, bipartisan and neutral with respect to partisan ideas.”
G: “The report is not specific on its stance with respect to economic cutbacks. They talk about scaling back to pre-COVID budget levels.”
Wasteful budget increases requested by the Administration and appropriated by Congress have outstripped USAID’s capacity to spend funds responsibly, and U.S. foreign aid has been transformed into a massive and open-ended global entitlement program captured by—and enriching—the progressive Left.
G: “Primorac vividly portrays the mounting inefficiency, and yet, I still come away with a feeling that the agency is ‘alright’, so to speak, it just needs to rid itself of Leftist influence and let people go back to their earlier ways.”
M: “Be careful, Gerald. You give them the benefit of the doubt. Max Primorac harshly rebukes the state of USAID in a recent article on Heritage.”
The degree of political tone deafness in the aid community is stunning.
With conservatives now controlling the White House, U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, it’s clear the aid establishment made a bad ideological bet. Now USAID is being eliminated.
G: “Understood. Perhaps I confound the positive attitude towards USAID as a necessary tool in today’s opinionated world with a largely negative attitude towards the policies that have taken hold in the agency and are treated like an illness.
I prefer concluding that the broader conservative movement was not entirely inimical to USAID. He at least says this in the 2025 chapter:”
Bureau personnel suffer from “mission drift,” burnout, and a lack of vision. New directives, social agendas, and extra layers of review have obscured core activities and caused talent to leave the agency.
G: “To me it sounds like he hasn’t given up on them.”
M: “May, maybe not. We can say that foreign aid is a tool in the hands of the government to shape the current policies which is turn originate from the notions of the world which are held by the people in power.”
G: “An example: The policy to transition to green energy. It originates in liberal beliefs about dangerous manmade climate changes which are certainly not shared by the author. The report lambasts USAID for stifling development in Africa and Latin America by betting on clean energy and not coal.”
The aid industry claims that climate change causes poverty, which is false. Enduring conflict, government corruption, and bad economic policies are the main drivers of global poverty.
[…]
USAID should cease its war on fossil fuels in the developing world and support the responsible management of oil and gas reserves as the quickest way to end wrenching poverty and the need for open-ended foreign aid.
G: “Irreconcilable viewpoints, those. Will hard work and perseverance change a society’s poverty or will attention to systemic disadvantages? Will sound use of natural resources contribute little to ongoing climate change or will it tip the balance? Those are two fundamentally different approaches to reality, so deep that I would almost call them different faiths.”
M: “Except there is nothing irreconcilable about them! We are perfectly well able to perform actions that adhere to no religion at all. If we can avoid provoking those itchy sentiments, we can easily invest in different approaches at the same time. Outside fanaticism, what would be wrong in building both windmills and solar farms next to coal power plants? Or replacing archaic phrases with ties to old racism with new neutral ones all the while we exercise complete disregard for ties to a slave trade that historically savvy people will know goes hand in hand with existing architecture and institutions. We can do it all at once, as long as we don’t insist on something specifically.”
G: “That is exactly why I dislike claims such as these:”
The next conservative Administration must champion the core American value of religious freedom, which correlates significantly with poverty reduction, economic growth, and peace
G: “At least there is a very good chance he is in unison with Trump on that score. I can’t help feeling that he is just another stuck-up judgmental protestant who is looking to have his religious life investment vindicated.”
M: “… Or he could be right! Don’t make war, plough a field. Sell the produce, live off the proceeds. I’m not making claims as to the validity of either viewpoint. But we are all in a constant battle against our own oversimplification. I distinctly remember that one of Trump’s new ideas was a task force that should investigate why so many Americans suffer some kind of illness — the declining health problem. That team has less than 100 days to come up with an explanation that doesn’t involve any of the ideas that they have spent much time throwing out the window. What is left is a very limited set of explanations.”
G: “You and I can afford being laissez faire about ideologies, but politicians or anybody else who takes on the job of managing society or anything big, must have something that guides them, directs them. Something they hold above the heads of the rabble.”
Values
M: “That is a very psychological idea. The saving grace that is bigger than our own selves. It lifts us up as humans and bestows meaning to our lives.”
G: “Perhaps. To me it doesn’t sound like these people. Or if so, they have a public version that is devoid of personal feelings. He spends most of the chapter talking about the price one pays for not investing in instilling Christian virtues.”
Yet years of foreign aid have failed to bring peace, prosperity, and stability to the hemisphere. Poverty, joblessness, and social unrest have led to leftist electoral victories from Mexico to Chile.
G: “From what I can skim from the chapter, these are the core ideas that could be called emotion-driven values:
- Invest in family values.
- Invest in local, faith based aid organisations.
- Private enterprises should aid through trade in foreign private sector.
- Be proud of being the world’s greatest provider of aid. Be proud of being Americans. Let the world know about American aid.
- Know who your friends are. Don’t invest in countries harbouring anti-American feelings.”
G: “And of course, battle against China. But that is not an ethical value.”
M: “Like amongst Russians traditionalists, American conservatives are tired of the ubiquitous presence of guilt that prevails today. It sickens them to the bone.”
A deeply embedded culture within the foreign aid bureaucracy views public recognition of U.S. assistance as secondary to a larger philanthropic mission and is embarrassed by the American flag.
M: “I can’t stay for much longer tonight, but what is the conclusion so far? Was the bad reputation of the 2025 Project justified? I was claimed to be an indication of what would happen if Trump were to take office.”
G: “In my humble opinion it should have been worded differently: Is there a coherence between Trump’s America First mentality and the conservative desires? I think the answer is yes. But in truth Trump has probably not even seen the document. As a script it is worthless. If anything, it will furnish him with a lot of options to avoid. He wants to be shockingly original.”
Miranda looked at the clock. This was one of those night where she did not properly settle down at all. She left and packed up Christine and her gear and out the door they both went.
Gerald returned to a lot of tabs on his screen.
He hated being served a false problem, and everything in the American public space seemed to consist of sham debates. Embattled rhetorical trench positions that would be abandoned in a whim if the line of contact should move a mile in any direction.
He emptied his drink and his head and left for an empty home.
/ПРИЗРАК