Nancy Price GraffOn day one of his presidency, Donald Trump vowed to turn the water on. He was referring to a reservoir in northern California from which, he claimed, water would flow to Los Angeles to use in fighting the wildfires ravaging the city.
It was a stupid decision because the engineers who designed that system said the water would never reach the city. It was also a foolish one because the water drained from the reservoir has now been lost to the farmers who in the past depended on it to nourish their crops during the area’s dry, hot summers.
Trump did, however, activate other waterworks that may serve a purpose. I and many other Americans have been brought to tears over the past 100-plus days by what David Brooks of The New York Times calls “moral shame.”
According to a recent New Yorker magazine, “The Trump Administration is carrying out a coordinated assault on first principles.” And the tears shed in response, whether from rage, despair, fear, or frustration, have unleashed a torrent of emotion that is finally manifesting itself as meaningful opposition to this attack on our democracy.
Ironically, it has only been in registering our losses, week by week, that many of us have seen clearly the full breadth of the functions of our government. We have been reminded, if indeed we had ever given it much thought, of how intricately almost every aspect of our lives is intertwined with some long arm of the government.
Medical research, food safety, education, the right to walk down the street without fear of being disappeared, retirement savings, global stability, and hundreds of other everyday aspects of life in the United States have come under threat. As they have, we feel acutely that the goal of our government for the past 250 years has been what the writer John Lancaster says is “a stable and coherent society.”
This winter my son recommended the book “Who is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service,” edited by Michael Lewis. I can’t think of a dryer title, but the book tells the fascinating stories of public servants — Lewis even goes so far as to call them bureaucrats — who have had remarkable careers in federal government doing unsung work.
Seven essayists, including Lewis, profile exemplary workers, among them:
- the managerial genius in charge of keeping the country’s 155 national veterans’ cemeteries in a condition worthy of their service;
- an archivist who created the History Hub using thousands of volunteers to bring national archival material to the web so that anyone, anywhere, can access everything from military records to census reports to tribal treaties;
- and an IRS agent who may be among the most effective detectives in the world in chasing down pedophiles.
Every one of these federal workers has dedicated his or her career to working quietly behind the scenes, for far less money than they could make in the private sector, to make our nation a better place. Today I wonder if any of them still has a job.
Lewis’s book got me to thinking about all the ways the federal government has touched my own life. These probably number in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps the millions, but I would like to take what’s left of my space here to acknowledge some of those impacts in no particular order.
I am grateful for the right to vote and the right to express my opinion, both of which are under threat. I owe thanks to the special educators who worked for years with my son to launch him successfully in school. Thanks go to the four generations of one family who delivered my mail faithfully for more than 40 years.
I would like to thank three brothers, all West Point graduates, who served the country at home and overseas, and, at the same time, give thanks to my father for his service during the Korean War. They all helped make the world a safer place.
I am indebted to medical researchers, now stripped of their funding, for their work in cancer, the scourge of my family. I give thanks for programs that provided food to a hungry boy I once mentored and to services that welcomed a refugee family I once wrote about as they started new lives in this country.
I am grateful to National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts, all threatened, for bringing the world to my doorstep.
Thanks also go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, now largely defunded, for helping my city recover from devastating floods; and to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which until Trump dismantled it, shared the blessings of this rich nation with less fortunate people around the globe.
This list does not scratch the surface of the ways the federal government under the guidance of intelligent, empathetic, and wise leaders has enriched my life. But it does show me what is at stake, which is almost everything that makes life worth living.
The material presented here represents the opinion of the author and does not reflect the opinions of The Bridge. Commentaries may be submitted to editor@montpelierbridge.com. Preference is given to submissions by those who live in central Vermont. Submissions are encouraged to be 500 to 750 words in length.
