Recovery

The shadow knows...

The current administration of Republicans and billionaires are clueless about the purpose of government and how it works, and are destroying what they do not understand.

Here in the UK we have a shadow cabinet. They watch what their opposite number in the ruling party does and respond, and hopefully will get to know their subject well enough that they can hit the ground running if their party gets into power. Timothy Snyder is one person who has suggested that America does the same. It would certainly help break down the task of dealing with the firehose of Trump & Musk atrocities into more manageable portions.

But here in the UK we can (so far!) rely on civil servants to keep the day-to-day running of the government going. New cabinet members do not have to rebuild their departments after an election. But in the U.S., the people in power are actively 'deconstructing' (destroying) the government which America has built up over the decades.

So, I am suggesting that the American opposition needs to create a whole shadow government.

Shadow government

Obviously this shadow government would not, for the most part, be carrying out any of the functions of government. Rather, it should collecting as much data as possible on what the government should be - and was - doing: the who (with permission), where, what, when and why. It should be rescuing as much knowledge and data as possible and organising it. It should also be educating the people as to what government was doing for them. An awful lot of what government does is out of sight and/or out of mind. As Anna Massoglia points out, Government data is disappearing before our eyes.

As a result, it will not be a physical organization but will be entirely online. In some ways it should function like a think tank, only focusing on practicalities rather than ideologies.

It should be non-political. Anyone with relevant knowledge should be able to contribute to it regardless of political affiliation (and even some lobbyists!), so long as they believe in the purpose of the portion of government that they are contributing to (e.g. that the EPA is about PROTECTING the environment, not destroying it for the benefit of big oil).

What it should do

It should build up an online map of all the functions that government was carrying out before the coup. The next step would be to identify what is already being saved, and to include links to the organisations doing it in the map. While duplication is important for security, so nothing is lost, the most urgent task is to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

It would be a good idea to think about how government could be built back better (e.g. less fraud & corruption, less waste, less vulnerability to the likes of Trump and Musk), but again the top priority should be to capture as much of the current workings as possible. Discussing and planning improvements takes time, and the Democrats have already written and introduced bills to make improvements, e.g. corporations are not people and money is not speech. Congress is, or should be, the best place for such discussions.

One change I would make is to plan to remove as much hardware and software from the government as possible that has been provided by those billionaires, countries, etc., who have been complicit in the coup. Identify companies that could take up the slack, though more work should be done in-house where practical.

Keep track (with permission) of where the people with relevant skills are now.

Work out how to shrug off accusations that it is preparing for a coup itself. Keeping out of politics is essential for this.

What you can do

• If you were (or still are) a federal employee, or government-funded, make copious notes about what your department did. Write articles for the public (if there are no security issues) and how-tos for the shadow government. If you make videos, make some of people talking about government. Write books. Educate the public on what government can do for them, so they will support the recovery.

• If you are a user of any service that the government provides, write about how you use it.

• If you are a former federal worker, or have relevant skills gained elsewhere, register your willingness to advise the shadow government and perhaps to join the new government when the dictator is ousted.

• If you are a web professional, help build the web site. Particularly if you are a cyber security expert.

• If you can afford it, help fund the project.

• If you are a great organiser, help organise the project.

• If you are an auditor, you can contribute too - real federal auditors are horrified.

However bleak things look now, things can change. Sometimes they can change rapidly (though destruction usually is faster than construction or reconstruction, as America is finding out). And the sooner a shadow government is set up, the quicker the recovery can be and with the least permanent loss.