With all its gears well-greased by the tears of indignant bureaucrats, the great machinery of the press has once again set to wailing over a most predictable affair. Thousands of recently hired government workers found themselves unburdened of federal employment on Thursday, their probationary tenure cut short by the merciless shears of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
It is no surprise to any who possess ears to hear and eyes to read, for the President said what he would do before he ever stepped back in the White House, and the people—by some accident of democracy—agreed with him.
And yet, here we are, treated to the theater of sorrow, with the legacy media feigning shock and despair as if this were some great calamity unforeseen. Handkerchiefs are in high demand, and the ink-stained scribes have ruined many in their convulsions of grief.
But the facts remain unmoved by their lamentations. The positions lost were not long-tenured seats of wisdom but probationary, still in their infancy, and their departure from the public payroll is less a tragedy than a return to that oft-forgotten principle—fiscal prudence.
The dismissed employees hailed from various corners of the bureaucratic empire, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Forest Service. These agencies, ever-expanding like a balloon in the hands of an excitable child, have now been forced to expel a bit of hot air.
The state of Nevada, where the federal government owns more land than any sensible man would deem necessary, finds itself particularly touched by these reductions. The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, those grand stewards of endless acreage, must now learn to do with fewer hands.
In response to the uproar, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, overseer of the Forest Service, issued a bold statement with tones as measured as they were unmoved. Secretary Brooke Rollins, a woman immune to the collective sobbing, reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to trimming the fat government, pledging that every dollar would serve the people rather than the bureaucracy.
“Talented individuals,” she assured, “will find many opportunities to contribute to society outside of government.”
A daring claim that could spark a fire in those released, urging them to soar to new heights—or–at the very least, to their local employment office!
The Bureau of Land Management, under the Department of the Interior, elected to say nothing at all—perhaps because silence, unlike verbosity, is not liable to be held against them in the court of public opinion.
For those who relish statistics, the Washington Post has helpfully cataloged the great calamity in numbers, tallying just how many of Nevada’s towns and cities have been affected by the cuts. With 3.1 percent of the workforce attached to the federal teat, Fallon leads the pack in government dependency, while Fernley, at a paltry 0.1 percent, can hardly be troubled to notice.
These figures will no doubt become weapons in the ongoing battle between those who believe the government is the lifeblood of a nation and those who know it as a particularly persistent parasite. In the end, however, the press knew this was coming, the people knew this was coming, and even the dismissed, had they been paying attention, would have known this was coming.
And yet, here we are, drowning in a sea of ink and tears, pretending that the inevitable has somehow taken us by surprise.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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