We see videos of people being brutalized and treated as less than human by Trump’s immigrant hunting Gestapo. See, for example, “'Hard or easy?' ICE agents seen using terrifying new tactic to detain immigrants.”
With notable exceptions like the few lucky people who came back after being brutalized in the Salvadoran prison of horrors, we don’t learn about how their lives are destroyed after they are disappeared.
These are the dramatic tales, but we also have untold stories about another group of people who weren’t literally grabbed up by masked Gestapo.
(The actual Nazi Gestapo didn’t need to hide their identities. Nobody would dare go after them at home. Wait for this being a crime punished by summary execution here.)
Far less dramatic are the stories of how the lives of federal employees fired by the DOGE Boys and overall downsizing of federal agencies have been disrupted.
The media looks at how the work of agencies is effected, a how in a few cases the government scrambled to rehired fired staff.
Depending on where you look the numbers of people who lost their jobs because of DOGE start at a low of 130,000 and go up from there. This is a Google search for aritlces about this.
This is the AI created overview:
While the exact number is difficult to pinpoint due to limited public disclosure, it's estimated that around 135,000 federal workers have been fired or resigned as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) workforce reductions. This figure includes both outright firings and voluntary departures, such as buyouts, that were prompted by the initiative.Additionally, there are plans for further reductions, potentially reaching a total of 285,000 lost jobs, according to some sources
Trump’s handling of Covid caused impossible to precisely determine loss of life and considerable suffering. “Approximately 450,000 Americans died from COVID-19 during the final year of Donald Trump's presidency, with studies suggesting that about 40% of these deaths could have been avoided if the U.S. had matched the death rates of other wealthy nations. His administration's response has been widely criticized for being inadequate and harmful to public health.” (AI generated)
Here’s a Scientific American article about this:
If 285,000 people died as a direct and incontrovertible of something a president did it would headline news. It would have to be something akin to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which caused 150,000 to 246,000 deaths. However, consider the following:
More than 14 million additional deaths are projected to occur globally by 2030 due to cuts to USAID, including over 4.5 million children under the age of five. These estimates are based on the significant reduction in health and humanitarian programs previously supported by the agency. (AI generated)
People tend to respond emotionally to human interest stories, to accounts of how a person who they would relate to was effected by trauma. These stories take numbers, in the most famous example the 6+ million people who died by disease, starvation, or murder in the Holocaust death camps, and focus on just one individual. Anne Frank is a good example. Anne Frank died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Right now in the land of the free and the home of the brave we have people hiding out for fear of Trump’s Gestapo. There may even be a 15 year old immigrant girl being hidden in someone’s attic.
I am not naive enough to think that one compelling story, one diary that could be published and made into numerous movies, could pull at the collective heartstrings of MAGA. That is the height of wishful thinking. Trump and his MAGA minions have no heart.
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Addendum:
I posted a link to yesterday’s Substack about South Park’s show about Trump on Facebook and it was removed for the reason shown below.
I’m not going to appeal this. I hope readers don’t count on Facebook to find my Substacks. I far prefer that those who like what I write Subscribe.
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