Fire & Brimstone in DC
Some thoughts on grieving the end of good but imperfect things
I confess that I love DC-based shows, especially the bad ones: The Americans, 24, Scandal, Homeland, and even the dark House of Cards. Here’s the thing though—the most unbelievable parts of all of those shows is not the exciting pace at which the action moves, but that the only smart people in the city are the leads in the shows.
So Olivia Pope is the only fixer in DC who sees things clearly and can diffuse your scandal; the problematic Carrie Mathison is the only intelligence officer who knows how to fix the current international concern that threatens the homeland; and in House of Cards, the very underhanded Frank Underwood is the only cunning and intelligent person in the city and, thus, outsmarts everyone and gets everything he wants.
The truth is less than thrilling and wouldn’t make for a very good TV series: there are lots of smart people in D.C.
And I mean loads—you can hardly throw a rock without hitting one.
I’ve been at dinner parties. book clubs, church services where I sat next to a simultaneous translator for the World Bank; a policy-maker that regularly meets with U.S. legislators; and a PhD in biology who works at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). In fact, just last weekend I went to a Latinx poetry event where I sat next to a microbiologist doing very important work at the National Institute of Health. And that’s just to name a few. Many people come to D.C. to work for the federal government or think tanks or at the headquarters of large organizations and nonprofits.
Many of them people have dedicated their whole lives to public service, working to make a difference in international development, public policy, public health research, etc.
So you can imagine how devastating it has been to live in this city since the current presidential administration took over. In the misguided effort to create a more efficient government and save tax dollars, DOGE has slashed or eliminated the budgets of many federal agencies, and now lots of these brilliant people are out of work.
Last Wednesday when I went into the city center around 6:00 in the evening, the train was strangely empty and the two people sitting behind me were discussing the protests against these federal layoffs and their financial plan to make it through the next few months.
It’s heavy in a way I can’t describe. I feel rage and survivor’s guilt all at the same time. As if that weren’t bad enough, the programs and projects that supported individuals around the world in areas like food security, sustainable agriculture, economic opportunities, reproductive health, public health are suddenly gone. No warnings. No gradual end to the program. Just a very sudden “Stop work” order and then lots of chaos.
So it’s the end of USAID; Elon Musk, a man from a country that received support from USAID, boasted that he put the agency through the woodchipper. Allegedly, he resents the agency’s involvement in dismantling Apartheid in South Africa.
Now I am not one of those people that romanticizes USAID and its many problems. It was a bureaucratic beast and having worked for three organizations that received funding from it, I can tell you a hundred different ways I would have reformed the agency, just with my limited knowledge. But I would not have dismantled it completely because it provided life-saving services through its funding. Life-saving!
And I’m heartbroken by all the people I know and don’t know looking for work. People who were meeting those needs and measuring the effectiveness of the work. And I’m absolutely wrecked when I think about the people whose lives our government deems worthless, not worth vaccines or mosquito nets or HIV medications, even though the budget for USAID was less than 1% of the national budget.
Supposedly, it’s illegal to dismantle USAID by an Executive Order—it should be done by an act of Congress. But as it turns out, our checks and balances were on the honor system, and there are no honorable people left in government, apparently.
And it’s ok to stop, notice, and grieve all of this before moving on to anything hopeful. Because that’s where I am. And maybe that’s where you are, too. I hate having to think about the federal government every single day, but here we are. I wish there were an Olivia Pope who would come and handle everything. But it’s going to have to be all of us.