Taken for Granted by Geoff Carter « The Pen in Hand Blog

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

“Don’t it always seem to go/ That you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone/”

–“Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell

Humans have a peculiar tendency to become quickly accustomed to surrounding circumstances—particularly good circumstances—and then to subsequently take them for granted. The excitement of getting a brand-new car (oh yes, that new car smell) wears off after only a couple of weeks. We get used to it. That warm feeling fades.

We sometimes don’t appreciate what we do have. Hipster teens will scoff at their dorky parents (who they think they know so well), not always considering the sacrifices their folks have made for them. Yep. We got complacent, we get bored, we lose interest. We believe we deserve what we have, and we assume we’ll have it forever. Until it’s taken away.

When the new car gets stolen or the teen’s parents file for divorce, they might begin to appreciate what they’ve lost. In the last few weeks, American people are starting to realize how far-reaching, benevolent, and efficient their democracy has truly been only because it’s being taken away from them—as Donald Trump and Elon Musk dismantle it piece by piece.

For decades, Americans have been told that their government is a bloated, wasteful, inefficient, and corrupt institution. Stories about widespread welfare fraud, tax cheats, bureaucratic inefficiency, and wasteful spending have served to create widespread mistrust of our government. Like the teen’s parents, it has been belittled and underappreciated.

As pointed out by the brilliant Heather Cox Richardson in a Letters from an American series essay, this disdain for government goes all the way back to a popular American icon: the cowboy. Independent, tough, armed with his six-shooter, and willing to take the law into his own hands, the cowboy became the paragon of an American who wanted or needed nothing from his government.

These kind of ideology continued with Ronald Reagan, who in his 1981 Inaugural Address said, “Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem.” Then, in a 1986 press conference, he said, “I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help,” Coming from the Chief Executive, this only served to sow the people’s disdain for their own government.

Of course, some of this distrust was well-founded. The Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandal, inflation, economic woes, the Wall Street bailout, and other sundry scandals eroded the national trust greatly. Faith in the government has ebbed and flowed since then, depending on economic circumstances, scandals, and national crises.

Donald Trump has demonstrated unparalleled skill in sowing governmental distrust. His “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him has sown skepticism towards one of the greatest bulwarks in our democracy—the electoral process. His deliberate disinformation about election fraud in the 2020 election resulted in the January 6^th insurrection—the day when American citizens attacked their own Capitol Building.

Trump’s hand-picked right-leaning Supreme Court, partly because of their blatantly partisan decisions—including granting immunity to a sitting president–has suffered the lowest levels of public trust ever. His demonization of the CDC and the scientific community during the Covid crisis led to mass refusals to wear masks. And now he has appointed anti-vax champion Robert Kennedy, Jr. as his HHR secretary. This is a crack-brained conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer—about as far from science as you can get.

All this has led to where we are today—the Musk/Trump purge of our government. Now, with the advent of his second term, Donald Trump has begun to fulfill his promise to cut out “waste” in government, and Americans are starting to realize exactly what it’s been that they’ve been taking for granted all these years.

Trump handed the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to Elon Musk, one of his multi-million-dollar donors—an unelected South African immigrant with absolutely no government experience—to implement federal cuts. Musk is presently hacking and slashing outside the supervision of Congress or the courts. What he is doing is illegal. He is a renegade, a hired gun brought in to indiscriminately slash what Trump and the Republicans have called a bloated, inefficient, and corrupt government.

And now that the GOP is finally doing what they’ve been promising to do for decades, the American people are discovering what it is that they’ve been taking for granted—and how much they need it.

According to the New York Magazine DOGE has fired or laid off over 30,000 federal employees from the Departments of Education, the Interior, Agriculture, Financial Protection Bureau, Defense, Energy, Justice, State, VA, the Treasury, and others.

These workers were deemed superfluous and unnecessary to the well-being of the American people. FAA workers, food inspectors, doctors and health care workers in the VA and elsewhere, IRS workers (in the middle of tax season), FEMA workers, National Institute of Health researchers and CDC employees (in the middle of a possible bird flu epidemic and measles resurgence), and a purge of the most senior leadership in the Pentagon are not—in the eyes of Elon Musk and President Trump, necessary to the health, safety, and well-being of the American people.

DOGE recently slashed funding and fired thousands of National Parks workers. Suddenly, citizens found themselves waiting for hours in line to enter the Grand Canyon and other national parks. We’re losing some of our national treasures.

Cutting funding for programs like USAID will impact people across the globe who rely on American aid for survival. severely damage our image abroad. American farmers whose crops were sent overseas as part of these programs will suffer. Medical research in the DIH will cease, causing major and irrevocable damage in battles to fight cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, among others.

The consequences of these rash and reckless cuts have already been devastating for hundreds of thousands of our citizens. As the repercussions of these cuts resonate through our daily lives, we might start understanding the impact of our government on our health, safety, and quality of life. And Musk’s henchmen have shown little regard for the people they are hurting. To say they have displaying poor judgement is a gross understatement.

For example, when DOGE employees indiscriminately fired workers from the Department of Energy, they apparently didn’t realize they were getting rid of experts who oversaw and maintained our nuclear arsenal. After realizing their mistake, they immediately backtracked. This “chainsaw” mentality of cutting our government—if it continues—will result in economic disaster, untold human suffering and death, and a clear and present danger to not only every American, but to every citizen of the planet.

In his book, Putting Government in its Place: The Case for a New Deal 3.0, David Reimer brilliantly explains how the government touches nearly every aspect of our lives. From the purity of our water and food to the licensing of our teachers, lawyers, and doctors, to the accessibility of public transportation, to the availability of public education, to the training of our first responders, to the maintenance of strong and well-trained armed forces and the rule of law—and much, much more—our democracy touches nearly aspect of our lives.

Is it perfect? No, of course not. What is? There is wasteful spending and government programs that should probably be pared down or cut, but it must be done surgically and as deliberately as possible to avoid suffering and distress—or danger.

We didn’t know how good we had it. While we lag behind other countries in healthcare, education, and quality of life, our government provides key services for our well-being. It is time we stop vilifying and start defending it.