That is always a risk of working for the government. Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.
That is always a risk of working for the government. Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.
>Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.
Perhaps in theory, but not in practice as a historical norm. And, certainly not for "standard" non-appointed, bureaucratic roles.
It's important that we don't normalize what we're seeing here, in terms of quality or degree.
No, this is not the case. This is a recent and never before seen phenomenon. Please, do not try to downplay it. And, if you do, do not do it dishonestly.
That has essentially never been a risk for a non-appointed government employee in the United States of America, at least for the past century or so. We Don't Politicize the Bureaucracy. And that was at least in part the secret sauce to our generational success, that we could immunize the workings of the government from the pique and emotion of its leadership.
Or we didn't. Now we do. Kinda sucks.
Since ~1885 and the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Refo...
Submitted some historical breadcrumbs here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43686221
Well this was advice my father (an academic and lifelong straight ticket Democrat) gave me decades ago. So it was nothing specific to the current administration.
The difference is that the people affected by whim were, by design, only supposed to be the political appointees, not the civil service rank and file. Those jobs existed for as long as Congress decided that they produced useful results for the American people. Positions could be eliminated by virtue of Congress deciding that a shift in policy was needed, eg fewer Kremlinologists after 1989, but that is not a whim, that is a result of debate.
The current administration is making all positions political, and in doing so, performing an end run around the legislative branch.
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> You want to argue that Joe Biden didn't weaponize every branch of the bureaucracy against Republicans?
He didn't. I don't know why you guys think he did. A lot of those agencies, like the Justice Department, act independently.
It's not like any Republicans were jailed. This is starting to seem less like a legitimate take, and more like a strange fetish for persecution.
For the record, if people like President Trump want to no longer be under the eye of Justice, they should stop doing illegal things. It seems every other American citizen has figured that out. It is shameful our own president has not.
Joe Biden did nothing remotely comparable to what Trump is doing now.
And unlike Trump, Biden faced constant criticism from within his party. He would have faced outrage if he tried to, for example, cancel all federal grants containing the word "conservative" in them.
Meanwhile we're heading towards a future where Trump can deport anyone he doesn't like to an El Salvadorian prison without so much as a trial, regardless of whether they broke any laws. Why doesn't this terrify people on the right?
The people I've talked to just don't believe it can happen to them. They're going through the normal immigration channels, only getting abortions when medically necessary, and limiting their anti-Trump speech to the few quibbles they have here and there. They don't realize that the deportations aren't just the "bad" immigrants, even medically necessary abortions are being stymied by the current administration (with predictable deaths), and that any anti-Trump rhetoric is dangerous.