Trump, Failing To Feed the Hungry

MUCH LIKE THE FRENCH, Americans like neither taxes nor government, except of course when it provides services indidpensible to themselves. Americans do not like being regulated. Americans have been propgandized into thinking that the federal government bureaucracy is bloated, and includes millions of useless, needless workers who do nothing but draw a hefty salary, and that they spend wasted time thinking of diabolical, nefarious ways to inflict pain on and control us the American people. That is a misperception. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Every government regulation has a valid purpose. Every government bureaucrat is kept busy, working hard, providing help to the rest of us Americans. The government, like private businesses, only hires people as a last resort, only when absolutely necessary. The number of people working for the government, in the federal bureaucracy, has remained essentially unchanged for the last sixty years, since the nineteen sixties. This, even though the population of the United States nearly doubled during that same timespan. Like Casey Stengal used to say: "you could look it up". Reducing the government work force, for effeciency's sake, is nothing new. Most recently, the Clinton administration eliminated about four hundred and twenty five thousand jobs, but instead of doing it with a chainsaw, chaotically, cruelly, and arbitrarily, it did it over a seven year period, intelligently, legally, with congressional cooperation. This was possible largely due to the advent of computers, which, in every sector of society, tend to reduce the need for human beings as workers. Clinton did it not by turning the job over to a cruel, unelected egomaniacal multibillionaire, but with a competant team of experts. As the years went by, it inexorably became necessary to re-increase the number of workers, as new cabinet level departments were added, and the exigencies of the country required. And yet, this false notion of a bloated, out of touch federal government persists, as do so many false notions promulgated and perpetuated by Trump, MAGA, and conservative Republican America. Now, we are confronted with the dreadful specter of Trump-Musk, trying to decimate the government, illegally. USAID, America's foreign aid agency, is already largely defunct, the victim of Trump's butchery. U.S. foreign aid takes up less than one percent of the federal budget, but it helps poor people in other countries, and does nothing to enrich America's ultra wealthy, and thus is inimical to all things MAGA. Trump-Musk put a block on funding for USAID, a federal judge orderd Don the Con, twice, to unblock it, he refused, and now Trump's extreme Supreme Court once again came to the great reprobate's rescue, yet again, as it has so many times before, and reversed the federal judge. Now, food sits rotting in harbor, and food, medicine, and vaccinations have stopped flowing from the land of opportunity unto the world's poorest, most desperate people. How many lives have already been lost because of this perfidy? How many more will be? Millions? Probably. U.S. foreign aid has always saved millions of lives, but, no more, likley not for a very long time. Noam Chomsky says that he is still looking for a word adequate to describe the evil of people and corporations which knowingly engage in ativities which will destroy organized human civilization, merely for the sake of adding more money to already overstuffed pockets. the word "evil", Chomsky maintains, is insufficient. He still hasn't found one. He probably never will. If he can't, nobody can. Such a word probably does not exist. Now its time to look for a word adequate to deseribe the behavior of a man and a political movement which deliberately sets out to kill millions by withholding food, medicine, and vaccines from dying people merely for the sake of appearing to increase government efficiency. Because, understand this: DOGE has nothing to do with efficiency. It has everything to do with concentrating power in the hands of a vicious tyrant. Likely we will never find the word. But we will keep trying.