Every four years, Washington, D.C., plays a game of musical chairs atop the Great Ship of State.
In a normal cycle, thousands of appointed people in hundreds of agencies lose their jobs as a new administration takes over the federal government. To the victor belong the spoils, as Sen. William Marcy of New York said of Andrew Jackson when he took over the presidency in 1828.
It's just the way it goes.
This time around, the Ship of State is the Titanic. The good men and women who have served their country for the last four years, often at tremendous cost to their families, are being forced over the side. Scary, scary people are coming to replace them.
This isn't just a matter of a Democratic hack feeling sorry for his friends. I do, but they're smart people and most of them are used to the churn. But this time around it's as if the iceberg destined to destroy the ship has put in charge of sailing it.
If you remember Trump v1, you'll remember Betsy DeVos, who wants to disband the Education Department, was put in charge of it. Rick Perry was put in charge of the Department of Energy after failing to remember its name during a debate. He wanted to disband it. Rex Tillerson, who it turned out had no strong belief in diplomacy and had a well of hate for the Department of State, was given... Well, he was given the State Department to run into the ground. Mick Mulvaney, who hated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with a white-hot passion... Forget it. If you don't see the trend by now, you're not going to see it.
And this is without mentioning the financial conflicts of interest so many of former and Future President Donald Trump's appointees were accused of.
Trump v2 is the same, but of course, worse.
Just yesterday we learned that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), 42, will be given the job of enforcing the nation's laws as attorney general. Gaetz has much in common with the president-elect, they share a philosophy that is selfishness—and they've both been probed by the Justice Department. Both have been credibly accused of a fondness for young women—in Gaetz's case, very young. Fellow legislators tell stories of Gaetz pulling them aside to show off naked photos of women he's slept with.
Gaetz, the King of the Congressional Frat Boys, can now become Trump's formal—and literal—partner in crime. That would follow from Gaetz's attempts to enact the Will of Trump in the House of Representatives.
Gaetz replaces a man of great integrity, Merrick Garland. Garland has so much integrity, in fact, he thought it was unsporting to charge Trump for his coup attempt until it was far too late for the case to proceed.
We can rest assured, Gaetz will do Trump's bidding and arrest as many innocents as Trump can read off his vengeance list.
Perhaps even more frightening to those of us who have enjoyed our democracy thus far, is Trump's pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. Hegseth is a veteran, which is nice, but more than that he's a Fox News host and slave to MAGA and Trump. A 44-year-old angry sycophant who was pulled from active duty in the National Guard over his extremist views will be running the Pentagon. Hegseth's planned first move is an old Trump favorite—firing everyone. Every general who isn't Michael Flynn must go! Especially if you're Black, as is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.
The wonderful thing about firing everyone who isn't in perfect alignment with Trump, is that when the order comes—as Trump himself has said it will—to start rounding up the president's enemies, there won't be anyone left to say no. I'm sure Hegseth himself can't wait to get his hands on "the elites," as the Princeton grad calls us.
Even more bizarre than the other selections thus far is the choice of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence. Gabbard, once a Democrat, is even more in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin than is Trump himself.
She has a history of passing along Russian propaganda via social media. Now she can pass state secrets back to the Kremlin. There is no way that this choice can serve the United States, but perhaps that's not a priority for the man who took the nation's secrets and allegedly shoved them in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
On a more minor, but more personal and critical note, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee gets to be ambassador to Israel, the world's most urgent flashpoint. Huckabee, known for his amazing weight loss and his religious fanaticism, gets to hang out with the Jews, cheering on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he spreads death and shreds Israeli freedoms..
This column isn't long enough to get to everyone Trump has appointed thus far, let alone the magic he has in store over the next four years. But whatever the final arrangement of those deckchairs happened to be, we know the Titanic sank, taking many lives with it.
Maybe when they make a movie out of all this, it can win an Oscar, too.
Jason Fields is a deputy opinion editor at Newsweek.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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