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The Latest New Yorker Cover: "You're Fired!"
680 sats \ 15 comments \ @siggy47 26 Feb Politics_And_Law
We still have a subscription to the New Yorker. They usually publish good fiction, and the book and movie reviews are okay. I have learned over the years to never read any of their even remotely political articles if I want to keep my blood pressure in a safe range. Full disclosure: I would have cancelled the subscription long ago, but it's my wife's.
In today's mail THIS is what I find. The New Yorker Cover artwork this week is named "You're Fired."
The implication, of course is that the jack booted thugs would have fired George Washington or Ben Franklin in different times, and/or that the ideas of our nation's founders are being tossed aside.
The irony is rich. The notion that Franklin, Washington or Jefferson could be identified in any way with the gigantic, wasteful bureaucracy that the US government has become in the 21st century is too infuriating to be funny. The Founding Fathers would have cheered the dismantling of the Leviathan.
Maybe the New Yorker will have a WAPO moment soon. I hope so.
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76 sats \ 0 replies \ @denlillaapan 26 Feb
HAHHAHAHA, pathetic.
~100k out of 2.5m civil "servants"? Yeah, yeah, yeah. TOTAL Washington Monument moment here
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76 sats \ 2 replies \ @Satosora 26 Feb
The founding fathers actually wanted a different kind of government that what it has grown into now.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 26 Feb
That's for sure.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 26 Feb
The world and Americas role in it was very different back then.
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76 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 26 Feb
Or the idea that the height of tyranny is firing government workers. It's amazing.
Some of my NPC family members have literally been in tears over this and I find it very difficult not to laugh at them.
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29 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 26 Feb
The pearl clutching has been nauseating while the crocodile tears have been hilarious
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46 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 26 Feb
They won't. They are publishing exactly what the majority of their readers want,
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46 sats \ 3 replies \ @kepford 26 Feb
When you have actually read history and thought about it for 2 seconds things like this are so absurd.
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford 26 Feb
Most people just listen to their side's version of history. Both sides are wrong btw. At best the rest just believe the state propaganda history they are taught in government schools. The sad thing is that most non-state schools teach the same stuff including home schools.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 26 Feb
But even the nonsense we are taught in school is less ridiculous
At least I hope it is
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 26 Feb
It is nonsense and most people barely remember any of the details. Its more important what we ARE not taught in gov schools. What they don't teach. Honestly its mostly lies of omission vs. bald faced lies.
Been seeing a lot of cries about Trump being a strong man. He is. But he is far from the first or worst in US history. At least up till this point. The strong men of the past tend to be the most popular like FDR, and Lincoln. Both did things that would shock anyone today if Trump or Biden did them.
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46 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 26 Feb
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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 26 Feb
Ok but the world has changed since the 19th century. The role of government has expanded and become increasingly complex. The US became the global super power it is today. US global hegemony is central to its wealth today.
It may be easy to look back and see the time when America was new and its position in the world less complex- but today US wealth and power rest upon it having since WW2 assumed the global hegemony Europe/UK handed over to it.
That role is not one of isolation and frontier simplisticity- it is one of global involvement and complicity. It is a world where the USA dominates global banking, institutions, protocols, trade rules and routes.
It is easy and popular to argue in modern democracy that there is too much bureaucracy but the world is now much more complex...especially for the USA compared to its 1900s frontier days.
Our New Zealand government previously engaged in a similar neoliberal-Libertarian campaign to DOGE is now waging with similar rhetoric and actions -including where they sacked 60 border biosecurity staff to save $1.3 million annual wage bill- the result?
Over a decade of multiple crippling border biosecurity incursions that cost primary producers and government tens of billions- and still incur costs as some of the new pests and disease can never be eradicated.
Remember when you sack these people some have combined skills and knowledge that cannot be easily or swiftly replaced when/if you realise several years later that the sacking was a mistake.
Beware politicians promising tax cuts and slashing the public service- its sometimes more complex and risky than it sounds.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 26 Feb
Your comment is gaslighting
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 27 Feb
Questioning the wisdom of US government cutting the public service given the much greater complexity of the world today and USAs role in it compared to the 19th century. Have given one concrete example from my own country of how such populist cuts to the public service can go terribly wrong. Can you explain what exactly is 'gaslighting' about that?
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