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James Buchanan – Worst President Ever?

Covered in green pollen and tucked in a corner of Meridian Hill Park, it’s a monument that attracts little attention. Dog walkers and runners pass by the bronze sculpture without a second glance. A seated figure, looking down, on a marble plinth.

It’s James Buchanan, the worst President ever, according to a new biography by Robert Strauss.

If you remember Buchanan at all, it’s for doing nothing as Southern states seceded from the union after Lincoln’s election. But you don’t become the worst President though sins of omission; you become the worst by making a series of terrible decisions. In four short years, Buchanan:

Lobbied for the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, believing that it would settle the issue of slavery. Instead, it spread the bacillus of this poison to the North, whose citizens now found themselves legally obligated to help slavers.
Failed to intervene during the Panic of 1857, an economic crash caused by Dred Scott, for it unsettled the issue of whether future states would be slave or free. Emigration to the west dropped, railroads failed and millions went broke.
Made a martyr out of John Brown by handing him over to Virginia to hang for his role in the Harpers Ferry raid.
Allowed Southern states to seize federal forts and armories after the election of Lincoln, arguing that while states had no right to secede from the Union he had no right to use force against them.

After the Civil War, Buchanan was condemned as a “doughface”, a Northerner with Southern sympathies. His photo hung in stores with “TRAITOR” written under it. In Worst. President. Ever., there’s a story, probably apocryphal, of Buchanan fretting in his Pennsylvania estate as Lee’s armies approached, finally realizing his misdeeds.

Buchanan has his defenders, however. John Updike examined the life of his fellow Pennsylvanian in Memories of the Ford Administration, a novel mixing fact and fiction, arguing that Buchanan and the malaise-filled 1970s were both misunderstood.

The life of Buchanan becomes relevant only when America faces a leadership crisis. Then, our thoughts turn back to history, to the worst possible outcome. By this point in his term, Buchanan had ushered in the Dred Scott decision, a very lawyerly interpretation of the Constitution that united anti-slavery forces. A deal was no longer possible. As Lincoln said in 1858:

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

The Buchanan Memorial remains, forgotten, overgrown, a convenient sleeping spot for the homeless. Worst President Ever, an ignominious title for James Buchanan and one that may soon be taken from him.

Letter from Washington: A War We Must Win

There was a moment during a recent demonstration. A crowd had gathered outside the White House to protest immigration policy. Standing in front of a chain-link fence, a young Honduran woman described fleeing the violence in her country. She loved America for saving the lives of her children. People applauded, including a 94-year old Holocaust survivor who had insisted on attending the demonstration. Stooped over, her eyes flickered with life.

At the edge of the crowd, a middle-aged couple approached, the female half in a Make America Great Again hat. They saw the demonstrators protesting Trump’s treatment of refugees. The woman snuck into the crowd and made a mocking peace sign so that her husband could get a picture. They laughed.

My friend Pippa is conducting dinners with Trump supporters. She feels that if only we all knew each other a little better, it would be easier to get along. Results have been disappointing. Breaking bread doesn’t change political opinions.

I was not a political person until this year. Living in DC, I had the opportunity to work on Capitol Hill. I declined, feeling it to be a waste of time, disliking the passion people brought to even the simplest of issues. A pragmatist at heart, I voted for Republicans and Democrats, always seeking the candidate who would do the least harm.

But Trump is different, representing an assault on democratic institutions, something that every American should oppose. Evidence is growing that he colluded with Russia, part of a Putin strategy to use fake news and select leaking to influence the 2016 election. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Secretary General of NATO, warned:

“It is Russia’s aim to undermine the political cohesion in Western institutions.”

Putin seeks is to divide and weaken the West, to discredit democracy itself and restore the old Soviet Union. He wants to end the Pax Americana that has kept the world free of global wars for more seventy years. It’s a dangerous moment, as America wavers, the prospect of a new wave of conflict on the horizon. A global war would mean the end of the connected world that we know and enjoy.

Encouraging these end times is a selfish con man, Donald Trump, a dupe who is willing to go along with Putin’s schemes and court international disorder if it will benefit his family of grifters.

Trump’s supporters have told me that he can do whatever he wants, because he is the President. They’re willing to throw away the Constitution and their own hard-won democratic rights in pursuit of vengeance against people like me. “We suffered under Obama. Now it’s your turn,” I’m told.

After the election, I was ambivalent. I even wrote an award-winning short story about my mixed feelings, Victory Party, in which a waiter receives the election news with something approaching happiness.

But since Trump’s American Carnage speech (“That was some weird shit,” George W. Bush), it’s clear what he and his supporters want: revenge. They don’t want to build a new America; they want to punish America and are willing to work with the Russians to do so.

“Since when are you a liberal?” a friend of mine jokingly asked me. I’m liberal in the classical sense, as someone who believes in free speech and free markets. I believe in the West, in freedom from tyrants under a system where every person is equal before the law. That marks me as an enemy of the state, at least this state, for Trump and his supporters seek to turn this country into a soft dictatorship, Putin light, where an autocrat makes all the decisions, without the pesky impediments of the Constitution.

“There was a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin and his government, his organization, to interfere in major ways with our basic, fundamental democratic processes. In some quarters that would be considered an act of war.”

Who said that? Dick Cheney.

The war began last year, when Trump’s entourage colluded with Russia to subvert the election. It’s a war against democracy itself – and one that we weren’t even aware that we were fighting until recently.

No amount of gentle conversations around a candle-lit dinner table will budge the hate and envy in the hearts of Trump partisans. Sorry, Pippa! No accommodation is possible with people who would collaborate with a foreign power to snuff out democracy in America.

Trump and his Russian backers declared war on America during the last election. It’s a war that will be fought in the streets, courts, legislatures and media. The majority of the country voted against Trump. We did not choose this war. But it’s one that we must win.

Southern Monuments

Monuments tell the story of a people. Overlooking the town of Sylva, North Carolina, stands a Confederate War Memorial. The statue was erected in 1915, at the height of Jim Crow in the South. Bands played and dignitaries came from as far away as Asheville. The copper soldier stands guard atop a stone base in front of the courthouse, with a commanding view of the town below.

If you read Cold Mountain (or saw the movie), then you know that the people who lived on the slopes of the Blue Ridge were reluctant participants in the Civil War, for the conflict brought nothing but chaos, murder and starvation to this remote corner of North Carolina. It took decades to recover. Northern money brought the region back, as Sylva became a manufacturing center, its paper mill belching white smoke even today.

I’ve been coming to the region for twenty years, ever since friends moved here from Florida – a very common story. The mountains are filled with Floridians retiring from Florida to North Carolina.

Trump supporters are proud of a map colored red, all those counties away from the coasts voting for a new kind of war against the federal government.

But the red states are red just barely. In Asheville, which went for Clinton, restaurants and coffee shops make a point in identifying their bathrooms as “all-gender,” appalled by their legislature’s bumbling efforts to regulate toilets.

The cities and towns are blue, while the rural areas are red. A man who worked in a remote valley said that people just assumed that he voted for Trump. After all, he was in his 60s and white. But he didn’t. Old enough to remember segregation, he recognized wrong then and he recognized it now.

“We fought the Civil War once already,” he told me, not interested in another red versus blue battle.

On the way home, I took I-26, a four-lane highway soaring over the Eastern Continental Divide and down into the green valleys of Tennessee. It’s a monument to the genius of America, with passages blasted through granite and tons of concrete used to create ramps and bridges, allowing me to drive 70 mph over mountains that formed an impassable barrier during the Civil War.

I nearly had the road to myself, just me and a few other drivers enjoying the monumental views of the Blue Ridge. Where other generations valued segregation and identity, our generation values progress, as memorialized in the monuments that we build. Rather than casting bronze renditions of a lost cause, we’re connecting cities with all-weather highways.

When I was in North Carolina, I kept being asked, “What’s going on in DC?” Even in the mountains, people recognized that calamity in the nation’s capital would eventually touch their lives.

Retirees can only afford to live in these red counties with Social Security. The federal government battles the opioid epidemic that plagues trailer parks in the hollows. Highways like I-26 are only possible due to a much-maligned administrative bureaucracy.

Government is a monument that some would tear down upon themselves, happier to live among the rubble. That’s what taking back America means to them. Like those who precipitated the Civil War, they would rather see the country burn than change.

Monuments like the one in Sylva represent the past. Those who cling to these symbols want to return this country to the days of segregation and oppression. If you truly want to make America great, then it is government that you must support. It’s the monument that we all depend upon – and one that we build together.

Letter from Washington: We Don’t Need Any Stinking Credentials!

We’re winning. That was my thought watching a dozen women make out in front of the Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. A right-wing blog called the protest “sparsely attended.” Which was true. Participants were outnumbered by a crowd of viewers, which included photographers, police, tourists, friends and security guards.

But the protest was just one of a dozen that took place in Washington, DC, over a very mild President’s Day Weekend. Or, as it was called here, Not My President’s Day Weekend.

Despite the small size, there was a joy in the LGBT Makeout Against Trump protest that would overwhelm even the most bigoted heart. Protesters distributed mints and gum to the crowd. Funny signs were shared. Selfies were taken, as the thump of Nicki Minaj reached up the face of the Old Post Office.

My anaconda, don’t

My anaconda, don’t

Security guards delicately looked away as women grinded on the other side of the barricade. Two men paused in front of the Trump sign. And kissed, as the cameras whirred, recording their contribution to the resistance.

The interesting stuff always happens on the margins of these protests. In the middle, you have a hard core of organizers and participants – the people who make the signs and lead the chants. Surrounding them are supporters, friends and media. Beyond them, you find people passing by, drawn in by the noise and excitement.

And there’s always one or two who come to yell at the crowd, like Canute trying to hold back the waves. During the Muslim Ban March, there was a woman who shouted at the streaming throngs from her balcony, filled with desperate madness and fear, yelling until she went hoarse.

The LGBT dance party was no exception, one middle-aged man giving a young AU student a hard time. Her offense? Trying to interview him. She was a journalism major and was seeking opposing opinions for her video. “Where are your credentials? I need your credentials!” he kept demanding of the blonde girl, his face full of aggro.

But, if the election of Donald J. Trump has taught us anything, is that no credentials are needed. His election has inspired millions of people to do things they previously thought unthinkable – writing their member of Congress, organizing rallies and even making out in the street. You don’t credentials to be a journalist. Or a protester. Or the President. That’s what truly makes America great.

Letter from Washington: Signs of Spring

There are signs of spring in Washington, DC, little splashes of color appearing around the Tidal Basin and elsewhere in the city, despite temperatures that remain in the 40s. I spotted bits of of yellow, pink and white while running between memorials, the bright tones popping out against the muddy grays and browns of late winter.

Winter, even a mild Mid-Atlantic one, is a season to be survived. The days get shorter, the green drains from the trees and a low clouds descend upon the city for weeks at a time.

Snow is the only consolation, the bright white blanket that stills traffic and turns Washington into a pedestrian paradise. With its marble monuments and red-brick townhouses, DC becomes a magic snow globe, fat flakes falling forever, piling up on history and politics, Mother Nature making a mockery of man’s schemes.

But we didn’t even get snow this year. Instead, nothing but chaos under cloudy skies, stretching from the Presidential Inauguration until today, marches and demonstrations filling the streets, the weather be damned.

“I want one one day without a CNN alert that scares the hell out of me,” the judge says in the Trump Peoples Court skit on SNL.

But there will be no relief. Instead, we get some light treason from the Trump campaign, revealed to be in contact with the Russian government before the election. All the dark theories about Putin’s control of our President are revealed to be true, in a blockbuster New York Times article fueled by leaks from the intelligence community.

Trump rages, in a barely coherent tweet slamming not the Russians, for subverting our democracy, but, instead, the American government.

Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?).Just like Russia

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

The right calls it the Deep State, civil servants striking back against legitimately elected leaders. But, when you have a leader that’s mentally unstable, do you blame them? This rebellion of the bureaucrats prevented Mike Flynn, friend of Putin, from becoming National Security Advisor.

It’s a victory. Not quite the checks and balances envisioned by our Founders but a stop to erratic, dangerous and possibly treasonous executive action, joining the hold issued by the 9th Circuit against the Muslim Ban in the pantheon of victories.

Our enemies are weaker than they appear, held together only by the bluster of the flim-flam man. Take apart the lies, and they’re revealed to be scared and desperate, lest the mark uncover the illusion.

Winter seems to go on forever. Then, one day, you notice a couple of green shoots. Within a period of weeks, the world turns green again, spring reasserting itself with the power of all that’s good and true. That’s what Washington feels like today.

Letter from Washington: Don’t Blame The Swamp

During the campaign, Donald Trump vowed to “drain the swamp in Washington.” According to his formulation, this city was filled with nefarious characters who skirt the rules for their own benefit.

But what do you call a President who hawks his daughter’s clothing line on national TV? And sends his surrogates out to do the same? It’s literally a violation of Government 101 – you can’t endorse products as a government official. More than just unethical, it’s illegal, and one of the first things you learn upon entering federal service.

Don’t blame The Swamp for this endemic corruption. From stiffing contractors to swindling students, Trump exhibited a pattern of unethical behavior long before he set foot in this city.

I know, it’s easier to blame the nation’s problems on a secret cabal in Washington that controls everything. But, as the past few weeks have taught us, it’s shocking how little lawmakers actually control in this country. Trump can issue orders but they go unheeded and unenforced, for they are poorly written and unconstitutional. As I’ve written before, you need the cooperation of the bureaucracy to get things done in government.

Dystopias are supposed to be more efficient. Big Brother in 1984 was quite good at quashing dissent, even to the point of erasing the past. But the authors of this dystopia can’t even write a tweet without an embarrassing error.

Don’t blame Washington – we’re really not that good at governing the lives of others. Even the Obama administration, staffed with Ivy League graduates, was responsible for a bloodbath in Syria and somehow made healthcare in this country even more complicated and unaffordable.

The Swamp is a town of do-gooders, which is not entirely a compliment. The prospect of helping others leads people into government agencies and nonprofit organizations. But it also propels some of the worst excesses of the past couple decades, such as the invasion of Iraq. The architects of that disaster believed that they were liberating people from tyranny. They were doing good.

Fortunately, the longer you are here, the less confidence you have in the efficacy of government. Instead, you work to make your community better on a local scale.

You could see this in a pair of events on a Saturday afternoon in DC. Cupid’s Undie Run was a charity event, designed to raise money to fight cancer. Participants donated money and ran a mile in their skivvies in a good-natured, PG-13 happening.

The run happened less than a block from where anarchists torched a limousine on Inauguration Day – the Swamp is compact and walkable.

After Cupid’s Undie Run, another event took place, one of a more serious nature, a demonstration against Trump’s immigration policy. Though his sweeping Muslim Ban order had been stopped, the threat of extreme vetting and deportation remained for the nation’s Latino community, who gathered in an emergency basis in front of the White House.

This was just one of several demonstrations that day. Earlier, was Primal Scream Against Trump (which I was sorry to miss) and later was a rally for free speech.

How do these demonstrations come together? The Internet. Groups post their rallies and marches online and people show up. The denizens of The Swamp. They look like quite normal people, don’t they?

The Swamp is a poor metaphor for the corruption and incompetence that plague American politics. That government no longer works is not due to a place. It’s due to people, most of whom are from out of town. If you live in The Swamp, you want government to work, for it’s the industry that defines your city. It’s why you’re here.

The chronic dysfunction comes from the creatures that slither into The Swamp every four years. Like Trump, they want to make money, cause some trouble and then get out. Without these interlopers, we’d have a healthy ecosystem that delivers results to the American people.

Iraq, Obamacare, Muslim Ban. Don’t blame The Swamp for these calamaties. Blame yourselves and the elected officials you send to rule here.

Letter from Washington: Fear and Loathing After the Inauguration

Washington, DC, has a raw, unfinished quality to it. The Presidential reviewing stand is still up on Pennsylvania Avenue, as the National Park Service disassembles it with their usual lethargy. The site is surrounded by chain link fences, adding to the type and variety of barriers that encircle the White House – yellow caution tape, red wooden snow fences, concrete bollards, decorative planters, metal car barriers that pop up and, of course, the historic wrought iron fence that has proven to be so easy to climb.

Behind these walls, a couple of orange-hatted construction workers toil at disassembling the reviewing stand by hand, while observed by a platoon of heavily armed Secret Service agents. Work isn’t expected to be completed until March.

On the other side of the White House is the empty spire of the Washington Monument. It’s closed until Spring 2019, due to an elevator problem. We’ve fought and won wars in less time. It’s a symbol of America but is not a priority to Congress, who is more interested in taking things apart than fixing them.

Looking out on this tableau of dysfunction is Donald Trump. Brooding, tweeting, as he wanders the White House in a bathrobe. He doesn’t think to right the broken things around him. Instead, he conspires to break more things, appointing a parade of loathsome incompetents to high office – Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, Betsy DeVos.

I wrote a novel called Don’t Mess Up My Block, the thesis of which is that you have to fake it until you make it. In this satire of a self-help book, a loser reinvents himself as a management consultant, despite having no qualifications or experience. With the blind confidence of a conman, he goes from Dinkytown obscurity to DC success.

Even with my fevered literary imagination, I never thought a conman could take over the federal government.

What this city needs is a good snowstorm. Today, it’s 65 degrees. I’m in a coffee shop by the White House. The air-conditioning is on. Outside, tourists walk by in shorts and t-shirts.

We need a blizzard, something to remind lawmakers of the power of Mother Nature to silence them all. A storm that shuts the city down for a week (like the one that occurred last year) might instill some humility in these cruel powerbrokers.

But that’s not going to happen. Winter is nearly over.

Rescue is not coming. “At some point, the adults will step in,” I assured myself during the election. Party elders. The media. The wisdom of the American people. Someone would save us.

We’re going to have to save ourselves. Humor is a good start. The parody of Sean Spicer by Melissa McCarthy did more to shape the public view of the administration than hours of talking heads on CNN, revealing the Trump regime’s bullying and incompetence.

Humor is subversive, an effective tool targeting tyranny and freeing people from fear. There’s a reason why anti-Trump demonstrations in DC feature so many hilarious signs – the people sense it’s working, these little pinpricks getting under the skin of delicate Donald and his supporters.

How does this all end? Mass demonstrations began the moment Trump was inaugurated. And they’ve continued despite seasonably cold weather in DC. Six major marches are coming this spring, from everyone from outraged scientists to outrageous juggalos.

If I was the city government, I would prepare for a million people to descend upon Washington, mass demonstrations of a size and scope not seen since the Vietnam War.

And if I were demonstrators, I would lay siege to the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue. The General Services Administration foolishly leased this grand building to Donald J. Trump, who garishly affixed his name to it in gold.

But this landmark belongs to the public, who saved it from demolition in the 1970s. Trump does not belong there; the Old Post Office belongs to us.

And, unlike the White House, the so-called Trump International Hotel is not ringed by fences. The Old Post Office is open to the public and right on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is vulnerable and should be the focus of demonstrations.

Surround the Trump Hotel. Discourage stays there. This would hurt Trump in his pocketbook. And, more importantly, his pride. Destroy the Trump brand. Make it mud. That’s how you drive this particular tyrant from office.

Letter from Washington: Another Day, Another Protest

No Muslim Ban protesters in front of Charlie Palmer’s, where Paul Ryan was having lunch.

Anti-Trump demonstrations are a constant now in Washington, DC. They happen multiple times a day, the residents of this city and beyond having a limitless appetite to protest Trump’s Muslim Ban and other outrages.

You run into them in random, unexpected places – like Charlie Palmer Steak on Capitol Hill. The word had gotten out that Speaker Paul Ryan was having lunch there. A very well-organized protest appeared, marching past the windows of this high-end joint. Lobbyists chowing down on $60 Wagyu Strip Steak watched a parade of women bundled-up against the cold demonstrate against the Muslim Ban.

Who are you going to stand with? Lawmakers who send Syrian refugees back to war zones while they enjoy expense-account lunches? Or ordinary folks like those who came to protest?

I am jaded, cynical, having seen scores of protests in DC. But the Trump protests have a different quality to them, attracting not just the young and disaffected but plenty of middle-aged, middled-classed people.

That was evident on a freezing Friday when another protest took shape across Constitution Avenue from the White House – one of at least three that occurred that day. The wind chill was in the 20s but that didn’t stop demonstrators signing a wall rejecting Trump’s bigotry.

That you can draw a crowd on a cold and dark Friday afternoon speaks to the strength of the anti-Trump forces. It’s supply and demand. Everyone wants to come out and protest so demonstrations occur on every day of the week. I talked to people who came out to this protest because they couldn’t make last weekend’s march. They felt compelled to show up for foreign friends and coworkers that were terrified by Trump.

We Reject Trump's Bigotry — An open letter to Trump, rejecting his bigotry.

It was cold. I biked home, going by a protest on the other side of the White House, demonstrators pressed against the fences, chanting into the dark night, though Trump was hundreds of miles away, brooding and tweeting from his Palm Beach mansion.

A few blocks away, a third protest was gearing up, a dance party that would take over Pennsylvania Avenue. Thousands would dance in the streets while thousands more would watch online. The revolution will be live streamed.

Resist banner and Washington Monument — Cyclist carries #Resist banner in the freezing cold.

Letter from Washington: Resist

Resist banner over the White House — Greenpeace hung this Resist banner on a crane overlooking the White House.

This is no longer “left v right.” The #Resistance is now a pro-democracy movement against a would-be authoritarian regime. Dems & GOP unite!

— Van Jones (@VanJones68) January 30, 2017

Strange days indeed, where I’m retweeting Van Jones. My politics don’t fit into an easy category. I’m socially liberal, believing that people should be free to do whatever they want, as long as they don’t harm others.

I also believe that government is too big and does too much, interfering in aspects of life (such as mandating health insurance) that it should stay out of. Nearly a decade of experience as a government contractor has just reinforced that notion. As I wrote in Victory Party, my award-winning short story (shameless plug!) about election night in DC, government is:

nothing but a big blind beast, stumbling across the American landscape, more likely to crush you than help you.

The economy is the most important issue to me; the biggest moral issue of our age is the lack of real economic growth, for it leaves millions unemployed and underemployed in the vast heartland of our country, a tragedy of abandoned towns and people, like a modern Grapes of Wrath.

In a fit of 2008 optimism, I voted for Obama but then switched to Romney in 2012, wanting a President that would focus on jobs. He doesn’t look so bad now, does he? Trump vs Clinton was a nightmare choice for me, literally Kang and Kodos. In a fit of pique, I wrote in independent Evan McMullin (I might have a thing for Mormons), knowing that blue DC was going overwhelmingly for Hillary.

Trump merchandise for sale outside Treasury Building — Few takers for Trump merchandise for sale outside the Treasury Building.

Like everyone else, I expected Her to win. When she didn’t, I was ambivalent, fictionalizing my response in Victory Party, my tale of DC on election night.

I am ambivalent no more.

What does it take to get someone as jaded and as cynical as me off the sidelines? A week of chaos from the Trump administration, from the graceless “American carnage” inaugural address to the dissing of the Women’s March and on to the Monday night massacre firing of the acting Attorney General.

Trump is a bully, now with the overly vast power of the federal government behind him. There’s never been a better argument for limiting the size and scope of the executive branch than Donald J. Trump.

I expected the evil – it’s the incompetence that surprises me. They have no idea how government works. And despite their purported social media savvy, it didn’t occur to them that public servants, such as the National Park Service, could push back anonymously using these same tools.

Rather than uniting the country around the need for economic growth, Trump has issued a series of bizarre and poorly thought out decrees. It’s government by tweet, straining this country’s democratic institutions beyond the breaking point.

Protesters besiege the Old Post Office — Muslim ban protesters besiege the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

me at the Muslim Ban march — Me at the Muslim Ban March. I used Capital Bikeshare to get around and take photos.

The streets of DC have been filled with demonstrations the size and scope of which I have never seen before. And I’ve been out, biking around the city with a camera, capturing the moment. And participating as well, something I never thought I would do.

As Van Jones points out, it’s no longer a question of Democrat vs Republican. It’s whether you believe in democracy or not. If you do, then you must resist.

Letter from Washington: Public Servants, Not Trump Servants

President Trump is “locking down” government communication by public servants, including social media, at federal agencies. A crackdown is occurring at the Department of Transportation, HHS and other agencies. Press releases, tweeting and even public speaking is banned – temporarily, they claim. Trump loyalists are being embedded to monitor the work and communications of public servants.

Public servants are called that for a reason – they work for the public. It’s a service, paid for with your tax dollars. Federal employees do not work for a single faction. They serve all of us, no matter which political party we support.

They are public servants, not Trump servants. Their work belongs to us. They have an obligation to communicate to the citizens who pay their salary.

I worked as a contractor in the communications department of a large federal agency. Among my duties was updating the social media account. As long as I avoided certain hot-button issues (like climate change), I was allowed to write and post to Facebook and Twitter without review.

Was this because senior management was interested in more important matters? Or didn’t think social media was important? A little of both. Press releases went through rounds of reviews because they could be printed out, marked up and distributed. The ephemeral world of social media didn’t lend itself to such micromanagement so was left alone.

It’s also impossible to monitor, as the rogue Badlands NPS account revealed. While there are tools to manage social media, my agency didn’t have them. We didn’t know how many social media accounts we had, who ran them or what they were doing with them. Different components of the agency had set them up, without informing HQ. Passwords to social media accounts were widely shared and given to interns and even contractors, like myself.

I felt we should communicate more, not less. There were some fascinating stories inside the agency where I worked. Technicians developing tools to alert the public to severe weather. Scientists uncovering the secrets of the lightless deep ocean. Researchers helping farmers plan for drought.

There should be more government communication, not less. Every government employee should be allowed to communicate with the public on the subject of their work. Conservatives should demand this – don’t you want to know what your money is being used for?

Information wants to be free, wanting to escape its bounds and find its way to readers. Just look at the 2016 campaign, during which embarassing DNC documents were leaked by the Russians.

The Trump action will ultimately fail, the tools they used against opponents now turned upon them. Once the feds discover how easy it is to go rogue, an alternate universe of federal information will be established in cyberspace, outside the control of Trumpian minders, a Wikileaks of climate reports, scientific research and gossipy accounts of government life, ultimately achieving the aim of making government information accessible to the people.

For what better way to get people to read something then to tell them that it’s banned? 😉