We had a small win, the other day. Trump v. Slaughter, in which the Supreme Court upheld the president’s ability to fire bureaucrats.
Early in 2025 Trump fired a woman named Rebecca Slaughter from her job as head of the FTC. She sued. The question is whether Trump has authority to fire the head of an administrative agency. This doesn’t sound too interesting, on its face, but I invite you to think through the implications, and understand why my ears perked up when I started paying attention to the controversy.
In the run-up to the decision I listened to portions of the oral arguments and realized that it strikes at the heart of the tendency to automation we all feel, if we’re human: the increasing sense that we’re controlled by large social and technological systems that rob us of our souls if we care and are not vigilant.
I’ve written often about creeping automation, the growing sense that we’re all little parts of a vast social machine, with an ever-withering band of personal autonomy. Partly it’s about technology. That much is obvious. Next time you’re on a bus or subway, do a quick little count of how many people quietly have their heads bowed, not to pray, but to stare at their phone. I hate having to use my iphone to double-authenticate for certain applications because they’re necessary to how I’m living my life (or doing my job) which means I have to carry this tracking and surveillance device everywhere. I can’t participate in commercial life without this mark of the beast.
Partly it (again, my concern about creeping automation) is about atomization and isolation, natural consequences of ambient love draining out of the world, not because God withdraws it, but because we repudiate it, turning all of our passion and attention to our own felt needs, our own quivering, timorous inner self that must be protected no matter what it costs other people. A consequence is loss of ability to recognize traits of honor, dignity, and courage, let alone develop it in ourselves. The world is a good bit more bland with these necessarily individual virtues so diminished.
Partly it’s because of the prevalent ideology of socialism, with a little “s,” the conviction that we are only ever more specialized units in a large machine, unable to function independently as citizens of earth. The instruction manual for how we’re to function inside this machine is the vast, interlocking systems of overt, written regulation. There’s not one big Antichrist telling you what color socks to wear. But at every level of human authority there is written code to circumscribe how you live your life. You’re left only a few questions to answer on your own, about inconsequential matters like socks or what’s for dinner or what kind of regulation-compliant car you drive, or what sports you watch, or what brand of church/no-church you align with.
Partly it’s because of the growth of that hideous strength, to borrow C.S. Lewis’s book title, the move to transhumanism in the confluence of the above factors, the authority of God wrested away by man and placed into the claws of demonic forces.
And finally, partly it’s simple political theory. This brings us back to Trump v. Slaughter, but I wanted to give you context. It’s not just a boring court case that doesn’t really affect anything. I have long been of the opinion that one of the principal drivers of the kind of automation I recount above is the inexorable joining of power centers: big tech, big media, big pharma, big ag, all with big gov and its lent-out police powers. To keep government from getting out of hand by itself, our founders built in some points of conflict: the vote, obviously, but also a separation of powers among legislative, executive, and judicial functions. These principles have been so compromised as to be no longer recognizable.
How? We’ve gone from Eisenhower’s 1961 warning about “the military industrial complex” to a government that pimps us out to the private “bigs” I mention above. It hasn’t stopped under Trump, btw. I just read about how he succeeded in doing great “deals” with drug companies to bring costs down. See, it’s not supposed to work that way. It’s another incremental consolidation of power in the state, the sum of which is the very definition of fascism as Mussolini meant it.
Not that I really want to criticize Trump too much, I think he’s done a lot of good, given the already fetid political environment. But the consolidation of power in the combined power centers is institutional and incremental. It never should have gotten to the point that we’re applauding the President for bringing down costs of certain private goods. We should be aghast, instead. It’s one big Machine.
I used to say, with Churchill, that democracy is the worst of all systems except for all the others. We equate it with freedom. But why? Well because we have the power of the vote, right? The people who legislate, execute, and adjudicate are supposed to be accountable to us. This is really, really important, because if we don’t have real power with the vote, then democracy is the worst system there can be. We would overnight be reduced by the parasites to bloodless husks. If you dissent from the collective will of the very worst of us, you’d be immediately subjected to Biden-level tyranny.
So we have a representative government, instead. Individual voters vote in representatives, but it’s the representatives’ votes that really count. Because every issue is not a plebiscite, there have to be rules for how these functions of government are carried out, else we devolve to autocracy. So we have checks and balances, to navigate between the tyrannies of pure democracy and top-down autocracy.
The checks and balances have become thoroughly corrupted. The representatives vote on the self-interest of themselves, first, and their constituents, second, but both are wrong. They should be voting on principle. Of course they disagree about application of principles, that’s part of the inherent tensions government is set up to manage. But they’re so deep in the stinky mire of their own hypocrisy it’s a wonder they can even breathe.
Representatives aggregate power through regulation. But they do it sneakily. They hide their self-interest by attenuating themselves from responsibility. How? By delegation. You, or your party, sets up an alphabet agency and delegates legislative authority to it. You no longer have any idea what they even do, that ship sailed decades ago. But the administrative apparatus insulates you from criticism for the Machine’s ever-tightening grip on your constituents.
It’s silly now to say you’re a small-government conservative, like I used to. It’s like saying your favorite animal is the unicorn. Have your fantasies, but go do it in the other room, the grown-ups are talking. MAGA types complain about the “Deep State,” and more particularly its lack of accountability, its reach, its corruption, and its micro-management of American life. Can anyone deny the existence of the Deep State as the true repository of power? It is malevolent, but not like an aggressive cancer. More like the gentle stirrings of a quiet parasite that has outgrown its host, leaving the bloodless host lethargic and apathetic.
Maybe it’s too late to recover from this breach of faith by the government. But perhaps we can at least recognize the problem for what it is, and begin treatment and recovery. At a minimum, we can reclaim power from the Deep State. It’s tempting to say just fire them all, all 3 million non-military employees. But even that is just federal employees, the Deep State reaches into state and local government, too, as a result of the intermingling of government funding, primarily from the feds down, but also ideological conformity, intergovernment unanimity on the conviction that the beast must be fed and grown. We’re so stupid in my home county that we vote taxes on ourselves because we believe idiotically deceptive marketing. As if the money they already stole from us is for some reason untouchable. I’m telling you, voters are herd animals, and it’s because the Machine is so large and so corrupt that we have no hope of meaningfully containing it.
Maybe it’s too late to recover from this breach of faith by the almighty government. Its individual actors are caught in the torrent that long ago eroded the banks of constituent confidence, carrying away any residual institutional trust. The treasure of our individual autonomy has leached into the flow, carried away to God-knows-where, and we are left in the odorous aftermath of the effluent.
So maybe it’s too late, but we should nonetheless see what’s going on, and perhaps build our cute little dykes here and there where we can. Trump v. Slaughter was debated on whether a decision like firing the agency head is reserved to Congress or the President. The trouble is, that is an outdated legal principle. Once upon a time, in the hoary mists of antiquity, Congress actually exercised oversight, and we had Constitutional principles against excessive delegation. Debating those now, though, is like arguing how many angels dance on the head of a pin. No one in their right mind would think the Deep State is anything less than a fourth branch of government, more powerful by far than the original three, and driven more by the interests of the bigs as by those of the proletariat with their cheerful “I Voted!” stickers, kept like mushrooms in the dark and fed equine excrement.
And maybe that’s why Justice Ketanji Jackson, who famously does not know what a woman is, suggested a new rationale for upholding the Deep State monster without actual Congressional oversight, while still keeping Trump’s hands off it. She argued for Deep State independence, citing the need for “experts” unaccountable to the vote. So this is why I give the automation context for this debate. Jackson’s is the ultimate elitist position. Forget Trump, it’s those inexpert rubes who will ruin everything if we don’t insulate their betters from criticism. Resume construction of the hive, she says, and stop asking questions above your pay grade, morons.
So in Trump v. Slaughter decided on June 29th, the Supreme Court said Trump could fire a bureaucrat. Yay. I fear it’s one little sandbag brought to the water that has already overrun the riverbanks and flooded the town.
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