Politico is reporting on a Twitter uprising from a number of accounts purporting to be from rebellious Park Rangers at the National Park Service, the EPA, and NASA. The tweets, much to the cheering from the left, are offering similar talking points about climate change (including the long debunked notion that “97 percent of all scientists believe in global warming) and is offering defiance to President Donald Trump’s environmental and energy policies.
One way to look at the Twitter rebellion is that it is a heroic resistance against an out of control president who wants to undermine science.
This is the narrative being offered by the media.
However, assuming that the tweets are even coming from government agencies (one can claim to be anyone on Twitter) another way to look at the uprising is that it consists of government bureaucrats trying to undermine the duly elected president of the United States. Part of the reason that Trump was elected is that the previous president was using climate change to devastate entire sectors of the American economy. The bureaucracy does not seem to grasp this truth.
That government civil servants tend to try to undermine elected politicians is nothing new. The 1980s British comedies “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” were based on the theme of civil servants at war with elected officials.
Sir Humphrey Appleby, the smooth talking, two faced head of the UK Civil Service fought relentlessly to make sure that his political boss, James Hacker, would not enact policies at the expense of bureaucratic privileges.
Sir Humphrey did not have the advantage of having social media and the anonymity it imparts to defend government bureaucracy from attempts at reform.
He would likely approve of the use by people claiming to be inside the government to try to fend off Trump’s attempts to bring sanity to environmental policies, including climate change that has assumed the dimensions of a theocracy. He would have loved fear mongering and lying about global warming since such enhances the power of the bureaucratic state over the people, whom he regarded as brainless children who needed guidance from their betters.
Trump would be well advised to use his mastery of social media to counter this uprising quickly. Then needs to get his political appointees in place so that they can align various government departments to the new policy.
