How to Stop the People Who Are Destroying Our Government

They are sowing the seeds of their own undoing

You could hardly think of a more destructive and inefficient way to bring “efficiency” to our government than the wholesale chaos that has recently been unleashed. Yes, there are plenty of ways to root out and eliminate waste and fraud. No, violating the Constitution and shutting down entire agencies with a promise of later “review” or simply firing great swaths of people or persuading them to randomly pick up and go are not the ways to do it.

My friend, the always brilliant Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law Center, described the current approach on the latest DSR Podcast as the “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” method of reducing the size of our government. It’s cuckoo and it’s dangerous. (Really? We want to just gut big critical agencies from the CIA to USAID?)

Making matters worse is that—as intended—everything that is currently happening that is so overwhelming that people hardly know how to react. The media can’t keep up with it. Neither can opposition “leaders” (I use the term very loosely). The result is lots of…feelings. But what, a reasonable person who sees how serious this crisis is, can or should we do?

There are lots of approaches and the answer is: do all of them. If you can advance legal action to stop what’s illegal, do it. If you can donate to those who are coordinating such actions, do it. If you can run for office, do it. If you can reach and influence large audiences, do it. If you are in the Congress, for chrissakes, do something. (Tune in to our DSR Words Matter podcast tomorrow—Thursday—for a detailed discussion with Congressional guru Norm Ornstein about what to do. Or, if you’re in a Substack-y mood, read this recent post by Norm:

Fighting the Putsch

But I think in the not to distant future other critically important approaches will work. Because…consequences.

You see, I do not know a single person in DC who has not been directly negatively impacted by the "sudden disassembly in flight" of the U.S. government. In most cases the impact is major and professional and pyschological as well as economical. You might shrug it off and say, "It's about time."

"It's about time those DC insiders got their comeuppance." First, of all, most of these people are just people who have devoted their whole lives to public service, often eschewing career paths that could have brought them a great deal more wealth and security. They're not rich.

They're just people trying to do the right thing, to help, to serve their communities. But, listen, this is not just a DC phenomenon. In fact, it is very likely to very rapidly be a signature consequence of the Trump Administration. It will impact every community in America.

Everyone will feel it if the Department of Education is shut down. Teachers. Schools. Programs to provide food for kids in need. Parents of kids with special needs and of course, the kids themselves. Everyone will feel it if the weather bureau shuts down and you can't get early warning of disasters.

Everyone will feel it as infrastructure projects are stopped before they are done. They'll feel the impact of the jobs lost. They'll feel the impact of the traffic jams. They'll feel the impact of the slowed economic growth. Everyone will feel the impact of tariffs. Prices will rise.

Farmers will see lose markets to overseas competitors. Everyone will feel the market shocks. Everyone will feel it when big plants that depend on trade--like auto manufacturers--are shut down. Everyone will feel the sting of foreign countries retaliating.

Everyone will feel the impact of federal agencies shutting down. If an NIH research program is no longer there or a US AID program is no longer in place to stop the spread of a disease, people will die or be sick and suffer. Not on the other side of the world. But next door and across the street.

The litany of local costs of the wholesale,reckless, destruction without a plan of the U.S. government will be huge and it will compound daily and weekly and monthly. Because our national political leaders are proving ill-equipped to stop what's happening, these local stories will gain significance.

We can each translate our awareness of these consequences into the kind of actions that can make a difference. Tally them up. Talk to your neighbors. Understand their experiences. Present what you see at meetings of school boards and town councils. Move beyond red vs. blue politics.

Show the real, granular, meaningful human consequences of what's happening. Such actions will move mountains and set the terms for the political discussions to come in this country. It will be mayors, governors, towns, cities and states that end up providing the real resistance to what's happening.

What's more by taking this approach you will be undercutting the big power of the oligarchs who are intimidating members of Congress w/threats of primaries. Raising the human costs of the anti-government approach to government, making these issues local, will restore general elections to centrality.

It must made crystal clear that anyone who supported this-regardless of the wing of the GOP (or Democratic Party) that they're from--will pay the ultimate political price. We must once & for all send the message that we expect government to serve & protect us not to sacrifice us to political stunts.

The Trump-Musk-Bannon-Putin approach to all this is to play to the weaknesses of Washington and the media. So our response must be to acknowledge this and then disintermediate those groups. This is not abstract. This is big and for each of us it will become deeply personal.

We must turn that into our power to produce the change that will undo the damage and ensure this kind of wanton destruction of the institutions of government that were created to serve us at the behest of billionaires who just want to fund further tax cuts will never ever happen again.