Anti-Trump Republican Senators will face difficult primaries

The effort to ensure that Donald Trump gets a Cabinet which would sabotage rather than carry forward the agenda for which he was elected is clear.

- M.D. NALAPAT

The principal Cabinet picks chosen by President-elect Trump are each in the same mode as the incoming 47th President of the US. They seek not to tinker around at the edges of present policies and support structures, but to replace them with versions which they believe better meet the needs of the citizens of the US. What is named the establishment or the status quo has not remained so for decades without cause.

The status quo has delivered substantial benefits to its principal backers, while discriminating against the rest. Those championing the rights of the rest, which constitute the overwhelming majority of citizens, have been dismissed as "fringe" elements. Robert F. Kennedy Jr would like to end the dominance of hyperprocessed foods in US supermarkets, a change that would boost public health significantly. He has raised questions about the efficacy, not of all vaccines (as his detractors falsely claim) but of the Covid-19 vaccines that were developed in a great hurry. The longer-term effects of such vaccines are only now becoming clearer, effects such as an otherwise unexplained rise in the incidence of pulmonary or cardiac complications, and yet RFK Jr is derided as a "conspiracy theorist" who is only a short step away from being qualified to enter a lunatic asylum as an inmate. Tulsi Gabbard was the only public official to resign and opt to serve in the military on active duty, in the challenging circumstances of Iraq during the chaos witnessed since the defeat of the much weakened conventional forces of Saddam Hussein.