Trump and Musk’s Collateral Damage: Human Beings

This was 1984. My father was fifty-eight, five years younger than I am now. He sat on the couch and cried. He paced. He pulled himself together and made phone calls. The handshakes that guaranteed his return to American Meter’s tool room should his management position be eliminated turned out to be dead fish. A young Turk called Dad into his office and said, “You can run a drill press or retire.”

“But what about . . . ?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Coleman.”

“No, thanks.”

No dishonor in running a drill press, but Denny Coleman, who had put in over thirty-five years, deserved better. He arrived at work early, drank black coffee at his desk and read the morning paper. He’d been a union steward. Everybody at the shop knew Coly. The place was in his bones.

But that’s how it goes. People lose jobs, get divorced, bury those they love. And sorrows greater than Dad’s befall millions the world over. Hopefully no litany of woe is necessary as evidence.

I thought of my late father a few hours ago while skimming The Washington Post. Headline: “President Donald Trump’s administration fired thousands of federal workers.” Bullet point: “Agency heads were told yesterday to terminate most trial and probationary staff.” The article estimates that the move “could affect as many as 200,000 employees.” That’s this particular move, with others to come that may kneecap a million or more. Who can say?

There are myriad complaints to register about this scorched earth campaign against governmental agencies and workers, but I want to stay focused on one consideration obscured by the consternation over Trump, Musk, and their operatives: human beings.

Denny Coleman was fortunate compared to the many employees who could be affected in this season’s purge-first-and-ask-questions-later ambush. He was within sight of retirement, had decades of valuable experience and easily secured employment for the homestretch. Twenty years of comfortable living awaited him. This said, nothing excuses the bum’s rush American Meter gave Dad at the end.

For two days he sat on the couch and cried. I never saw this myself; my stepmother told me. He wasn’t worried about money. No, he was cut to the quick. In my imagination he occupied his usual end of the couch, ran fingers through his wavy gray hair, went into his back pocket for the third handkerchief of the day, wiped his eyes and blew his nose. Maybe you would need to love someone who served long and faithfully get backhanded on his way out the door by some snot nose to appreciate the loss of self such treatment would cause. Please take my word for it.

Were there legitimate reasons for the Meter to trim Coly from the payroll? I have no idea. Are there great fat caps of waste in government spending? Probably so. The question is—and always has been—how can costs be controlled without exacting an undue human toll? We might up this reflection’s ante and ask, “Can’t changes be made without destroying lives?”

That the destruction of specific agencies is Trump-Musk’s goal complicates matters. Were the American house ablaze, the speed of closings and firings might be understandable, but the urgency is certainly stoked by a strike-while-the-iron-is-hot philosophy. Keep on the attack, let anxiety and outrage interfere with the opposition’s ability to mobilize. If a few million citizens in America are incommoded and millions more in countries desperate for our assistance languish, well, that’s acceptable collateral damage.

When I saw that number, 200,000, though, a distressing vision came to me: thousands and thousands of people crying on their couches. How many of the millions in Musk’s crosshairs are like my father was, devastated but on his feet?

I know of one person in the current upheaval who is not like Dad. This from The Washington Post:

One staffer who lost her job worked in the department’s office of special education, helping students with disabilities. In an interview, she said she had moved across the country with her partner to take the position last summer, spending all her savings in the process. She was working from home because of the snow when she got the email. She was removed from her position in the civil service that same day. Before she could process what had happened, her supervisor called,she said.He was surprised and devastated, he told her. He’d received the email at the same time she did.

“Do I need to finish work?” she recalled asking.

“No,” he told her.

When I read this account, I thought of my daughter Elena, a thirty-something spitfire who grabs life by the lapels, yet tears up out of sympathy for strangers in need. This staffer could be my daughter, set out thousands of miles from home to heal humanity one student at a time. I would have watched her drive away, fueled by dreams, my tears wishing, “Godspeed, my lovely.”

This civil servant may have reddish hair, like Elena’s. She’s on fire, I bet. I picture her taking in the admonition of planet earth’s wealthiest man: “We [Americans] have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.” Her cheeks flush at the hypocrisy.

So what has this young staffer—this grown offspring of my imagining—lost, exactly? Income, of course. But let’s not minimize other potential blows. Loss of esteem. Loss of purpose. Even loss of identity. Health itself unquestionably suffers when a vocation, perhaps long dreamed of and prepared for, is stolen by men who have lost count of how many dollars they’ve accumulated.

She and her partner drove across America, their piggy bank thereafter sighing like a seashell. Maybe they now cry on a futon, but they grieve all the same.

A ledger of the funds saved by gutting the United States government and dismissing millions of its servants is easy enough to compile, I suppose. Leaving aside concerns about the constitutionality of DOGE’s efforts, I ask citizens who witness what this department is doing and particularly how it’s accomplishing its goals, “Have you considered how people’s lives might be inadvertently upended or worse?”

Is there a column in your ledger for the price of one young staffer’s sojourn to Washington, D.C., accompanied by her parents’ longing and her own aspirations, only to be instructed, mid keystroke, “Your job ends now”? Can you spare the heart to multiply this cost by millions? And have you sufficient love within to sit on a couch or futon and, for their sake, reach for your handkerchief?