For every program the administration attempts to dismantle, there is a network of organizations, states, and local governments who form a potential defense constituency. Attempting to destroy the submerged state only reveals its benefits and expands the conflict. And yet…(1/2) - ThreadSky

philiprocco.bsky.social • 21 days ago

For every program the administration attempts to dismantle, there is a network of organizations, states, and local governments who form a potential defense constituency. Attempting to destroy the submerged state only reveals its benefits and expands the conflict. And yet…(1/2)

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aliz1.bsky.social•21 days ago

And that we “are here” sickens my soul.

philiprocco.bsky.social•21 days ago

And yet the programmatic politics of “group liberalism” is vulnerable because it is divisible. Remove the threat to a program and its constituents recede from the wider fight. Play that logic out and you can see how coalitions can be pitted against one another and countervailing power defanged /2

philiprocco.bsky.social•21 days ago

Then factor in what will happen if and when organizations, states, cities are politically isolated, upbraided at court, and finally threatened within an inch of their programmatic life. The most noble imperatives of civil society orgs will confront their basest underlying aversions to risk. /3

philiprocco.bsky.social•21 days ago

To put this together, however necessary programmatic constituencies – the raw materials of group liberalism – might be as nodes in any kind of countervailing political network, they will soon be presented with a matrix of choices that has the potential to disorganize and neuter them. /4

philiprocco.bsky.social•21 days ago

A political party worthy of the name is the only entity capable of resolving the kind of collective action problems the programmatic constituencies will surely face. Because the Democratic Party has been the vehicle for loosely organizing these group interests in the past, one might imagine... /5

philiprocco.bsky.social•21 days ago

that it could take up the mantle of focal point. And yet the very looseness of the integration is the problem. Without a political narrative grounded in mass material concerns, it is impossible to summarize in brief compass the effects of switching off trillions in funds to programs. /6

philiprocco.bsky.social•21 days ago

Absent an integrative political formula, it will be all too easy for OMB to use whatever apparatus of "review" it evolves to divide and rule the thousands of programmatic constituencies with opprobrium for "woke" and "waste". /7

lucastosborne.bsky.social•21 days ago

📌

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