Nina spitting truths as always. She’s on fire recently, so follow her if you’re not doing so already.
To be clear; everyone working in my government, particularly after today, is a Nazi, or someone who works for Nazis. Do you know what we call people who worked for the Nazis, in the Nazi government? Yes, that is correct, Nazis.
So Machado is certainly not gonna feel lonely on the list of people on my TV who are definitely Nazis.
Oh, was that too harsh? Are you feeling bad for the good career civil servants, working for the literal fucking Nazis, who I have just impuned? Cool, let’s refer back to that part where I said I was surrounded by people who openly recognize that this is fascism, and ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY refuse to accept what that actually means.
We call people, who worked for the Nazi Party, in the Nazi government, Nazis. Nobody says “the Nazi government and the career civil servants who hated them but stayed.”
“They’ll just find someone else.”
Then let them. “I took the job at the concentration camp because I was sure Hitler would find someone else” was not a good defense in court last time, and it won’t be this time either.
Henry Thoreau was a great American author and abolitionist who wrote, among other important works, the essay Civil Disobedience. Written in 1849, the essay was written after Thoreau’s imprisonment for refusing to pay taxes in protest of slavery. The thesis of this essay claims that individuals have a moral obligation to defy unjust laws and institutions. He specifically implores government workers to resign in protest due to this moral obligation.
Here’s an audio version for those that are curious but don’t feel like reading it
What’s the argument, though? Defy unjust laws --> quit govt positions even if they’re an actual public service and not actually supporting the regime is quite the jump. It’s cool that he’s a great author and all, but an opinion piece is still an opinion piece - whether its good or not (and I’m assuming it is) depends on the reasoning therein.
Some absolutely horrific things have been done in the name of advancing healthcare… should I quit my job as a surgical tech because of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study? Wouldn’t it be better to stay in healthcare and blow the whistle if I see shit like that starting up again?
I’m not gonna be able to condense a 12 page essay into a digestible comment but essentially (read as stripping this part of all of its nuance): if people lived by the morals they claim, they wouldnt be able to sit idly by/ perpetuate a slave state. Can’t have a slave state if the bureaucrats running the slave state refuse to run it anymore. And citizens should not be compelled to pay taxes to an institution they find morally reprehensible.
Fun facts about the Tuskegee experiment, it was funded by the United States Public Health Service, the experiment itself was wholly unnecessary as we had recently found a standard of care that treated syphilis effectively, and almost nothing of value was learned. If the pencil pushers and other associated “little guys” enabling this experiment knew what was happening, they could’ve shut it down swiftly by bringing the bureaucratic process to a halt in an act of protest.
I’m an EMT, and I’ve often found myself in situations where it’s made me question whether I’m doing the right thing by working, and legitimizing, a medical system that feeds off the exploitation of the general populace and medical workers at large. Instead of quitting, I’ve settled on stealing medical supplies from hospitals and distributing them during food shares and free markets run by local organizations. I’m also a protest medic and help get people trained up to be protest medics. My attempts at unionizing have fallen flat in the past but I’ll still engage co-workers and fellow providers in hospitals to encourage organizing.
The people running the machine have an outsized influence on whether that machine runs or not, no matter what their bosses say. A large enough strike (<10% of the federal workforce) could bring this regime to its knees in a matter of days. I don’t wholly agree with Thoreau, but an act of resistance in the spirit of his argument would make a world of difference
Agreed on the vast majority of that.
Now let’s say you were employed by the USPHS, or VA, or IHS, or… there are other federal healthcare agencies, right? Anyway- you quit because Trump is a dickhead, and now what? Those supplies you’re distributing just got cut off. That doesn’t help anything.
The pitch I’d make: if you’re working for any part of the govt that’s functioning as an oppressor, then you should have quit a long time ago unless you’re actively sabotaging. Falling that, better late than never - GTFO now. But if you’re working for any other part of the govt, do your job and keep in mind who you serve - hint: it’s not your boss. Don’t be a silent pencil pusher like the ‘little guys’ in the Tuskegee experiment, speak the fuck up. But don’t just quit - use your position to actually serve the public, whether in an official capacity or akin to what you described.
So… I’m with you mostly, but I do hold that there’s a distinction between forces like the ICE Nazis and actual public servants employed by the govt.
Absolutely, individual actions will (almost) never solve systemic problems. The only way government employees quitting would make a bit of difference, while ensuring the welfare of those now unemployed workers, would be through robust organization and community support for the dissenting federal workers.
Dual power is essentially non-existent in the states, and those structures would need to be built in order for a strike like this (and broader resistance movements) to be more than a flash in the pan