Be Careful, MAGANuts…

In what you wish for. Because the wholesale destruction of wide swathes of the Federal government is likely to come back and bite you in the ass. Both in the near term and the long term.

Now, mind you, if the consequences of His Imperial Majesty Trump the First’s idiocy could be confined to the Cult of MAGA, I could live with that. Frankly, I don’t really care, anymore, what happens to anyone who thinks Trump is the Second Coming of fill in your favorite deity here. Their futures could be wrecked and their lives ruined, and I’d just shrug my shoulders and say, “sucks to be you.”

Unfortunately, the consequences can’t be limited to those who deserve to be screwed. They will inevitably harm many others who didn’t support The Donald, or opposed him, or just wished he’d leave them alone.

The short-term consequences are already becoming apparent. Listen to the chatter in farming communities and you’ll hear concerns voiced about all those ag product purchases that aren’t going to be made anymore because one or more government agencies were decimated. Watch the dawning realization among Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe¹, that, gee, maybe he was serious about roiling markets with tariffs and alienating major trading partners. Peek behind the scenes as GOP Congressional representatives and senators become more and more desperate to isolate their constituents from the effects of Trump’s economic “policies”. Heck, just remember how the Speaker of the House recently advised his Republican brethren to stop holding community meetings because they were exposing themselves to too much voter anger.

But that’s all just for starters. Not only will there be more and bigger shitstorms raining down, but forces have been set in motion which will redefine key relationships we depend on. And not for the better.

Former allies will inevitably turn away from us and join forces to exclude us. We’re rich enough that we can still go it alone, mostly. But bare is brotherless back. When others don’t want to play with us — bullies are rarely popular on any playing field — what will we do? However much you may wish our former allies would pull more weight defending the world from tyranny, it’s going to be a lot more expensive to defend ourselves by ourselves. Both in treasure and lives.

Not to mention you can’t usually get good commercial terms out of people who despise and/or fear you. We will likely have to pay a massive asshole premium for years because of what Trump has done and will do.

And those are just the external costs.

I served for years on a public-school board in liberal, progressive California. Even in that environment it wasn’t uncommon for voters to complain about rising teacher salaries. “We didn’t used to have to do that!” was a common refrain. “Why are you giving away our tax dollars?”

All of which reflected a profound ignorance of history. Communities used to be able to get away with not paying teachers as much as they have to today because society strongly frowned on adult women being anything other than wives and mothers. Sure, there were plenty of exceptions. But the general pattern held…and, through the magic of supply and demand², teachers didn’t cost as much as they should have because it was one of the few professions where women were “allowed” to work.

Of course, once women were free to pursue pretty much any career, guess what? Many of them stopped wanting to be teachers. Which means you have to pay more to recruit and retain the quality of teaching staff you’ve come to expect.

Right now, Elon “Ox Brain” Musk is, with Trump’s blessing and support, destroying the morale of the Federal workforce. And not just through mass unlawful layoffs. They’re also playing psychological warfare games against those who keep our government working for us, doing things like only sending out their in-your-face emails to staff and management late at night and over the weekends. You can imagine how disruptive it is to feel like you have to respond to such crap, delivered via impersonal email, outside of normal working hours³

I’ve known and worked with many public sector employees, and almost all of them pursue public sector employment for two reasons:

• Many/most want to be employed making their communities a better place for all. That sounds odd to a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, but it’s true.
• Many/most also want a greater sense of security from their jobs. There’s nothing wrong with that; risk tolerances differ.

But it gives rise to an interesting situation. Public sector employees could earn more, often way more, in the private sector…and they know it. But they trade off lower financial compensation against the value of community service and the value of more security and bite the bullet⁴

What do you think they will do if their job security declines or disappears?

If you guessed “they’ll demand higher compensation”, go to the head of the class⁵

And that means the broader public will end up with some combination of increased taxes and less public services than it used to have. With the MAGANuts complaining all the while, no doubt, about how unfair it all is and how things weren’t like this in their father’s time⁶.

Of course, Musk, Trump, and his fellow billionaires won’t care. It won’t matter to them, since they’re rich enough to compensate for that kind of loss. I’m no billionaire, just well-off, and even I probably won’t notice all that much.

But there are a lot of people who will. I wonder if they’ll come to their senses soon enough to keep the slide into a serfs and lords economy from happening?

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1. that’s what they call themselves; news flash, I used to work with them and could’ve been one of them — they’re not. ↩

2. it’s amazing to me how fundamentally ignorant so many members of the Republican Party — which embraces market capitalism — are of how capitalism actually works ↩

3. Which shows, by the way, that Musk must be one of the worst bosses in history. Because even in the private sector treating your staff like interchangeable and disposable cattle is rarely done. ↩

4. I am aware some voters are angry because most public sector employees are covered by defined benefit retirement plans, which are almost unheard of in the private sector nowadays. But 401Ks and the like were created by Congress to keep corporations from paying the price for mismanaging their defined benefit pension plans. Eventually, many private sector employees realized they’d been screwed… and wanted to vent their anger at those who continued to enjoy what they themselves had had taken away. ↩

5. If you came up with any other answer, consider joining the Republican party. But remember to wash your hands afterwards. ↩

6. Of course not. Because their fathers and mothers tended to have a better handle on the relationship between having a high-functioning community — which requires a solid public sector — and personal success. Something has to keep plutocrats with delusions of grandeur in check, and certainly no single average individual can. Except through violent revolution, which I hope we can avoid. ↩