You gotta hand it to the Trumpets — they’re way ahead of everyone else. They came with a clear operational plan and guns ablaze, but the media (and therefore the populace) hasn’t even begun to see the pattern. Trump:
- conjured up an extralegal magical entity, DOGE, that was going to cut some ridiculous percentage of the federal civil service,
- from Day One terrorized employees with a “shock and awe” blizzard of illegal, incoherent, and inconsistent Executive Orders,
- followed up with overheated rhetoric announcing witch hunts and firings,
- reclassified a huge number of them in a way that strips them of most labor protections,
- directly spammed every one of them with a phishy “test message,” directly intimidating them and indirectly undermining the structures and procedures they maintain, and now
- offered them a buyout — in a mail that made it clear their work life would be a nightmare if they stay.
There are several more details that would fit in neatly, but it’s the storyline that matters.
In just one week they’ve done more to damage and discredit the ideal and reality of a professional, impartial civil service than the GOP managed since Reagan was elected. In terms of their concrete impact on this country, the people who’ve done this are — I’m not even slightly exaggerating — terrorists.