How many people work in government in this country? Do you have any idea?
I mean all levels of government: Local, county, state, federal. No, neither do I.
But there have to be a lot of them: Millions. The number of people who work for the Department of Energy alone is about 110,000.
Bet you never knew that. You don't run up against them in everyday life, not even without the pandemic.
And what do they do? Among other things, they insure that nuclear materials don't get into the hands of those with nefarious intent. And they close off places in which nuclear fission has taken place so people don't get radiation sickness, from which you can die. Pretty important stuff, huh?
Nope, I never knew that, either. And of course I never taught it in any of my social studies classes. I feel a little sheepish about that, but then, there couldn't have been time because you then have to cover all the other Cabinet positions, too. It took enough time to go over the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The DOE employees, many of which have been there for a generation or more, do important, crucial work. If nobody else did it or we left it to private investors, it wouldn't get done and we'd be in much, much deeper trouble than we already are, which is plenty if you haven't noticed.
How do I know this? I read "The Fifth Risk," by Michael Lewis, as important a work than has been published during this forlorn, awful era in our history. It's so important to understand just how incompetent 45's administration has been, starting with naming particularly unqualified people to fill positions that take, normally, people of exquisite training and expertise to do.
The book is, actually, a quick read. Much of it, the part discussing the DOE, already appeared in Vanity Fair before it hit the stands in book form. It scared me when I read it. Then I read the rest of the book. It was printed two years ago.
To think that we've gone through four years of this nonsense and not completely fallen apart must mean first, that enough people caring about this country stayed at their posts instead of running for the exits screaming, which is remarkable enough; and second, that the so-called Deep State, the bureaucrats who apparently plot endlessly against a paranoid president, have in fact saved the country to this point--but whose grip on the levers of real, genuine power can't hold on forever.
But they're people. They have lives and families. They're not faceless robots. They need to make a living, and they make it serving us. We should kiss the ground that they're still willing to do so. Instead, many of us want their jobs to end without thinking about who else would do it.
I ran into this in Texas, where I tried to lead retirees. The Republican-led legislature tried again and again to limit access to a decent pension, which of course would discourage anyone from going into public service for a career. Who or what would replace those people? Good question. Nobody discussed that. I guess nobody needed to. The few Democrats in the legislature kept saying: These are people. They're no one's enemy. They want to help us. They like helping us.
Teachers are but one example. I taught in a public school. That made me a government worker. I liked it when kids learned stuff. It was fun. Yeah, I made them do assignments. Yeah, the tests I gave were hard. But I thought learning what I taught was important. It gave my work integrity--like many other government workers who aren't teachers.
And I made sure to try to give both sides of an issue. Otherwise, there would be a decided political edge to what I did, and that wouldn't be fair. No one can be purely objective about anything, but one can be sure to check on his bias before handing it out.
I allowed myself to be politically attacked at one point in my career. But all that it appeared to be was on the surface. All anyone had to do was visit my classroom for one or two days to see that I put politics into my history teaching only as informational context, not doctrine. That would be wrong. And there's a big difference.
Besides, being a teacher shouldn't be a political appointment. That isn't good for the polity. 45, though, wants to write an executive order making civil service subject to political whims, bringing us back to the days of Andrew Jackson. See above: Much of what government service now entails is just too complicated. We have to have skilled people, not politically-minded people, in place to perform governmental roles efficiently and give taxpayers their best value for their dollars.
And they do it without fanfare. They are so taken for granted that their successes are downplayed, if not ignored. Others take advantage sometimes. The next time you hear an AccuWeather report, know that it's just a jazzed up version of what the National Weather Service does. AccuWeather makes money selling its forecasts to stations, but it takes the base information right from the NWS. Without the NWS, it couldn't function. Not quite a ripoff, but not quite genuine, either.
45 wants you to think it's easy to be a government employee, that anybody could do it, to look the other way while it's being politicized. That way you won't mind if government jobs are populated entirely by sycophants and toadies. Then the information you get is tainted, unreliable, and unprofessional.
The trust in government would then plummet. But 45 would be able to control it all. That's a subtle way of expanding authoritarianism that would hurt us daily, just not everyone at once so it would be easier to hide it. Just another price to be paid about putting the wrong person, a plotting, devious person, in the top job.
If you haven't voted yet, you must now take your mailed ballot to a dropbox, because it's too late to guarantee that it will reach its destination by Election Day. Or, go vote yourself. If so, wear a mask. But please go vote and free us from this horrible monster, maintaining the credibility of the people who wish to honestly serve you. It counts as never before.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Please vote. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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