The opposition to Trump is spilling across partisan and ideological boundaries as the realization grows that the awesome power of the U.S. government, its mass surveillance and law enforcement agencies and its nuclear arsenal, is now controlled by a band of amateur renegades who are out to dismantle the American state.
The dismay in Washington carries a hint of alarm. The traditional mandarins are not just offended by Trump’s cavalier treatment of the CIA and Pentagon in his first week in office or the callous, pointless and chaotically implemented immigration order. They are disturbed by his systematic contempt for the standard procedures of governance followed by every Democratic and Republican administration since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947.
