Josh First's Blog

All those DC jobs and families…

All those people and jobs and families and dreams and homes being lost right now in the Washington DC area….

I write this as a former Washington, DC, Beltway person, a former US EPA employee, a former 1964 tract housing suburban homeowner in a sterile suburban neighborhood, and as a former refugee of that big mess.

So, as the new administration takes shape, embeds itself into the federal bureaucracy and into the DC area buildings, apartments, homes, and businesses, and as DOGE begins to really dig into the catastrophic amount of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money in almost every single federal agency, we also hear about the cost in people there. That is, the cost in DC Beltway people whose jobs are suddenly ended, whose sinecure isn’t, whose gold-plated taxpayer funded lifestyle and pensions are now over or up in the air.

And while I do feel badly for all these people, this developing bloodied crust of human detritus being tossed about on the waves of the Potomac River, I have to ask all of them, all of you: What about all of the Flyover Country victims of these now sad bureaucrats over the years?

Remember the rural landowners whose private properties – working farms and forests – suddenly lost about fifty percent of their value after the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule was issued? Remember how those rural properties, which are the rural person’s own 401(k) retirement fund and pension, were suddenly, dramatically, radically devalued overnight by some politically radical bureaucrats in DC? Because those properties had a mud puddle on them?

And do you remember how just a few years ago the federal bureaucrats dismissively, derisively, arrogantly told everyone newly, artificially, and unnecessarily out of a job in the coal and natural gas industries to “learn to code“?

Well, folks, as it is commonly said, karma is a real big bitch. Ain’t it.

All those untouchable federal bureaucrats at EPA, USDA, ATF, FBI, DOJ, etc who enjoyed beating up on poor white working people in flyover country, impoverishing them with outrageously destructive and useless regulations, talking down to them…now suddenly some of these same bureaucrats are being held accountable. And this is not even a taste of their own medicine. This DOGE stuff is really just fixing a few broken tractor parts in the barnyard. Chief Executive President Trump has not even figured out which rotting barn he is going to try to fix and which rotting barn he is going to demolish, push into a big pile, and set on fire.

So, yes, some of my old friends in the DC area are either hurting or scared right now, afraid that they are about to be hurting. And I feel badly for them, I do. I do not want to see anyone lose their job, or lose their home as a consequence of losing their job, or not be able to pay for their kids’ college indoctrination experience as a consequence of losing their job. It brings me no pleasure. None. I actually feel badly for all of these DC federal employee people and their ending jobs, their ending careers and ending life plans.

I just also wonder if any of them see or understand the symmetry in all of this. The relationship between messing with the bull out in its rural field, and then earning the bull’s horns up your ass. Somehow, I think of DC Beltway people as not very smart, or not too wise, actually quite tribal and primitive, and having now lived within their own cozy bubble for so long that they are now living so far out in outer space that they really don’t understand what or why this is happening to them.

I am not saying that the DC Beltway bureaucrat people should be treated like cattle and just herded on out of the venue and sent out to pasture. But I am also unconvinced that they will appreciate being treated any better than that, either. They still have a deeply inbred sense of selfish entitlement that only a couple generations of working class reality can erase. C’mon out and join us in the hinterlands, and develop a work ethic we can admire, OK?

So, yeah. About all the sad DC Beltway people right now….