Today, Buy A Federal Worker A Fancy Coffee, Why Don't You?
Dearests! To immediately answer your question, no, I did not watch the baffling televised speech made by Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America (still feels really weird to write that out tbh) last night, because if I wanted to subject myself to existential dread-festering anxiety, I would read Vox’s piece on all of “the ways nature could wipe out humanity,” or remember that 800,000 federal workers who do everything from cleaning up our public parks to processing our tax refunds to inspecting our planes are all still not getting paid. And the novelty of the shutdown is sure as hell wearing down for those impacted: in fact, in a lovely example of acrostic prose, the staff at the National Weather Service in Alaska spelled out “please pay us” in an official public forecast. And for 38 million Americans on supplemental nutrition assistance (SNAP, also known as food stamps,) the end of February may also be the end of their payments. And federal workers legally can’t strike because of 1947’s Taft-Hartley Act, so those ‘essential’ workers are showing up to their jobs without pay. And according to their union, TSA workers are quitting which will only make lines for flying more hellish than it already is. And Joshua Tree National Park will shut down because the delicate namesake flora is getting trashed.
And when The New York Times went out to interview Trump supporters impacted by the shutdown, one interviewee lamented not the lunacy of the unnecessary shutdown itself, but that Trump is “not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” Friends, that zero-sum perspective on American politics is our current political reality and how we got to where we are, and I have no idea how we dislodge ourselves from it. Woof.
But don’t worry, Robot delivery dogs deployed by self-driving cars are coming! Friends, we are in the future, and it is uncanny AF.
Ugh. This Missive was DARK. So here are some soothing GIFs to make sure you join me again tomorrow.
Be kind to each other, and yourselves,
Xoxo Amy