Something similar presents in Official Washington, as senior managers use their jiu-jitsu to slow Our President's executive orders. "Career employees with this degree of expertise and experience are exactly the type who would embody institutional norms and, thus, exactly the sort who could be expected, in their own way, to form a bulwark of institutional resistance to Trumpian excess." Don Surber calls it "insubordination." It might be work-to-rule, a useful tactic for railroaders to obtain a more favorable contract without going out on strike.
In Official Washington, the Trumpians call it "malicious compliance." For example: Our President issues a ukase removing diversity training. Somebody at the Air Force Training Center in San Antonio interpreted that as removing all mention of the Red Tails.
Republicans exert leadership on something, then resistance activists pretend to "comply" with the new rules, in a way that deliberately and misleadingly reflects poorly on the new rules. The 'news' media, meanwhile, misrepresents that those rules are, also in order to undermine them and those who made them. That's what happened with the Tuskegee Airmen posturing. The Trump administration ended DEI programs and mandates within the federal government, so someone decided that they would "obey" these new orders by barring historical instruction about American heroes who happen to have been black. This does not look like an honest mistake. It looks like a deliberate political manipulation, executed for the entire purpose of leaking it to journalists. As soon as this episode started to draw attention, Republicans in the legislative and executive branches intervened to put an immediate stop to it.Deliberate, and yet telling. "Excellence is the best response to racism" doesn't align well with the priors of critical theory.
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