John Young column: Torture-chamber treatment for fed workers

We now can know the MAGA-fied, true-believer replacement force for federal workers demeaned and demoralized into submission by a president bent on destruction.

Rats.

When federal workers who had been doing their jobs perfectly well from home were forced to return to work by presidential edict, they found a field of horrors headlined by long-tail rodents. And no toilet paper.

“Defense Department employees returned to work at an Army base in the Midwest only to find their offices were not mission-ready,” reports USA Today.

No room to work. No place to park. No place to eat lunch. Cafeteria shut down.

“Crammed into tight quarters, they sit elbow to elbow at card tables and talk over one another on the phone and on video calls.

“Supplies are so scarce they have to bring their own toilet paper and paper towels.”

A skeletal janitorial force. Filthy bathrooms. Employees are told “to take their trash back with them.”

But at least these people have their jobs.

This is the face of federal service under President Blob — his actual name never again to be honored by my hand. He doesn’t respect democracy. I don’t respect him.

He spoke of “American carnage” in his first inaugural. He’s delivered.

He lied to voters that Project 2025 was someone else’s idea, that he hadn’t read it. Well, he may be functionally illiterate, but he’s acting out every word. It must have come with pictures.

What the Blob has done to civil servants has two faces: (1) those fired illegally; (2) those who, based on Project 2025’s marching orders, endure psychological warfare in a bid to force them out.

“Put them in trauma,” proposed Project 2025 mastermind Russell Vought, now White House budget director. How exactly? Water-boarding? Electric shock?

How exactly can a carpet-bombed workforce do what the public expects and deserves?

For instance, the Blob says the Department of Education will be dissolved. Never mind that Congress will have something to say about that.

One of the vital functions of the department is the servicing of $1.8 trillion in student loans. No problem. The Blob says it can be handled by the Small Business Administration.

Yep, like having the Marines administer school lunches.

What imaginable savings can come from this? This benefits whom?

At this point, borrowers haven’t had to deal with the mess likely to come, but they should brace for it, as should Social Security recipients, taxpayers accustomed to prompt IRS refunds, and anyone depending on the Veterans Administration.

This being only the fourth month of the Blob administration, a lot of the damage from Project 2025 can only be speculated. That’s not the case with the U.S. Agency for International Development. We can see that the Blob’s designs literally are starving people and crippling American farmers.

U.S. farmers are contracted to provide food for foreign assistance through USAID. Right now because of the Blob’s freeze on foreign aid and shut-down of the agency, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of life-saving food is sitting on docks, and those farmers aren’t getting paid for their products.

What a great way to spend taxpayers’ dollars.

Speaking of U.S. farmers: The Department of Agriculture has ended two programs that gave schools and food banks money to buy food from local farms and ranches. That’s roughly $1 billion yanked from those who provide and those who receive wondrous resources.

A smarmy mouthpiece for the Blob administration said these programs “no longer effectuate the goals” of the USDA.

Effectuate?

Like all the other effluent oozing from this administration, we can know for sure all those syllables came from a secretive right-wing think tank.

This president thinks only in two-syllable, two-word commands, like:

“Destroy now.”

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: [email protected].