Blowing up the government, again

 

     Timothy McVeigh was so upset that the government used tear gas on children during the Waco siege that he killed 19 kids in a day care center. Agitated by the deaths of 76 Americans at the hands of federal law enforcement in 1993, he killed 168 more, lighting a two-minute fuse on a rental truck and walking away. The bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City exploded at 9:02 a.m., April 19, 1995, 30 years ago Saturday.
     Toxic hate against American government did not die when McVeigh was put to death by lethal injection in 2001. Instead it grew and spread, so that our national infrastructure can be blown apart before our eyes — a sort of slow-motion, nationwide, institutional destruction — and reaction ranges from numbness to joy.
     Just as Britons in areas that most relied on trade with the European Union pushed hardest for Brexit, so red state Americans who lean most heavily on the government cheer its wholesale destruction since Jan. 20.
     People seem only dimly aware that services they depend on are being scrapped so that money once used for their benefit can be given in tax breaks to billionaires.
     The government isn't even keeping track of who's being fired. News organizations estimate that about 12% of the 2.4 million strong federal workforce have lost their jobs in the last three months, with more layoffs every day, and no end in sight.
     To add insult to injury, the fired workers are being told it's their fault. Even though, clearly, no assessments were done by the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk's youthful wrecking crew created by executive order and given free rein.
     Again and again, offices are eliminated, only to be reinstated when an adult realizes that, oh, hey, they've let go people they need to keep nuclear reactors safe, or to check food for contamination.
     Not to forget the billions of dollars in research grants being eliminated, wholesale. Not in any connection to the merit of the work being done, but as retribution for institutions that do not adjust their programs to the government's liking. Harvard resisted, and not only are $2 billion in federal grants being withheld, but its tax- exempt status is immediately challenged, a clear violation of the First Amendment. Americans are not taxed more because of what they teach. Well they weren't, up to now.

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