OK, I understand celebration of a successful election. I get it, having worked on a few myself, mainly the un-sexy parts of addressing mailers, doing neighborhood “lit drops” and doing door-to-door canvassing the last few weeks of a campaign.
This has gone too far. The willy-nilly purging of the federal administration as a “cover” for a multi-trillion dollar tax cut for the rich is not only illegal, it’s downright ugly. In order to demonstrate the evil-ness of federal workers and undocumented foreigners, the Trump administration has to liken them to Satan-worshippers or pet-eaters. And document everything in ICE reality shows with Kristi Noem or Phil Donahue. How about a gauntlet for fired employees at the exit of the federal building where they worked fifteen minutes ago, with whips and chains and video cameras to document everything?
Being fired is horrible. Being purposely made “other” by the purported Trump “waste-cutters” is outright wrong. Belittling federal workers as absent, do-nothings who don’t deserve a paycheck is mean. Imagine that you’re fired from your job. Do you want people on the streets and in print and video saying you deserved it for trying to cure Alzheimers, predicting what types of flu need to be protected against in next year’s vaccine, or how the weather might conspire to create massive hurricanes, droughts or wildfires in the future?
Imagine if it were cancer, instead of losing one’s job. Would you and your friends gather round and cheer that Jerry has cancer! Yea! He deserved it. Why? He borrowed one of my rakes fifteen years ago and when he brought it back it was bent. So he doesn’t deserve to live. Who cares about his wife and kids?
I don’t know many federal employees, but the ones I interact with most frequently are postal workers, at the main or satellite offices, or more often in the neighborhood delivering mail. Over the years they’ve all been very kind to me, even though I was nearly always walking a dog at the time of our encounters. And if I didn’t trust my own judgment of them, I do trust that of a dog. Dogs just know. My dogs have always loved our mail carriers, and have even sought them out on the street away from our home just to say hello.
[On a related note I believe it essential to have a dog to suss out your kid’s friends, and especially first dates as a teen, because they know who can be trusted and who cannot! Well, my last dog had one flaw in that regard. We were living 1/4 mile from downtown Houston with a great view of the skyline so there were always groups of foreign tourists milling around taking photos. She didn’t like people who walked with no immediate sense of purpose, amblers. Nope. But other than that, she was spot-on!]
Cheering the misfortune of fired federal workers is un-American. So please stop. They’re just regular people going about their jobs, which they deserve to get paid to perform. There is no “deep state” but there are laws that must be followed in order to fire certain workers and this politicized scattershot effort is not it, sending out form letters telling every probationary employee that their work is sub-par, sometimes not even addressed by name. Even after receiving awards and stellar reviews, probationary employees have all received the same form letter criticizing their performance and making it nearly impossible for them to gain future employment anywhere.
That’s not US, the United States. We don’t do that to people who take lower salaries in order to serve the public. You won the election. The time for gloating is over, and for blaming Joe Biden for everything that happens between sunup and sundown every day forward. The hard work of governing begins now (I’m talking about YOU, Congress, with the power of the purse that you’re not even pretending to defend). With great power comes great responsibility. Only if the Republicans are in the minority can they just say a big fat “NO” to every potential solution to America’s problems, like reducing the price of eggs. Get to work, and address the real needs of the American people, not just being fawning members of the Musk/Trump Retribution Tour’s Official Fan Club. Dee
Cooking with Dee 