On Maggie's farm

You are not my dad, random billionaire

What to do about this hilarious Saturday meme demand for a progress report? I have a few hours left before the deadline to press send on this shameful, groveling email.

It’s too much. Much too much. It’s gotta stop, one way or another.

I’m not going to respond.

It’s gotten to a point, I feel, where a prudent thing to do is go shopping for the termination mechanism by which you are most likely to be made whole in the future, if our courts hold and justice eventually prevails. Because getting fired in the immediate future has to be the baseline assumption now.

In whatever hierarchy will eventually be established for the return of property stolen by the mafia state, the probationary employees fired last week have a decent spot in line, I’d think. For the woman in my office who was fired Thursday night, the performance review I signed for her is as solid a piece of evidence of the illegality of her firing as anything. It might reasonably serve as a valid claim ticket at the coatcheck of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I think getting fired for not responding to this new bullshit might be even better. I can’t be sure, of course. But it exists in such a messy tangle of overlapping prohibited practices that I can’t imagine a judge endorsing it. Methed-up gamified weekend shitposting isn’t something contemplated in the democratic civil service framework developed over 250 years of trial and error, transgression and correction, corruption scandals and national security failures and state-sponsored human rights abuses.

On top of that, it seems to me like Elon’s tweet — which did threaten workers with termination even if the HR@opm.gov email did not — provides a bit of conjecture, at least, that any justification for termination from this point forward is in fact retaliation for non-compliance with this unsanctioned order. Say they terminate me next week and cite something that smells a lot more like legality, like a blanket reduction in force. I will do my best to argue that, no, you’re gonna have to provide proof that this is not in fact retribution for leaving Elon on read, which, I’m betting will be firmly established, is not a legal grounds for dismissal. A handful of sand in their gears.

In another attempt to choose the method of my execution, I’ve tried to hedge with a First Amendment defense. In a way, that’s what you’re reading right now. All the free-speech hogwash from the reactionaries at least postulates a surviving system for enforcement of the First Amendment among the ruins of the rest of our republic. By exercising my First Amendment rights, I can insist that it be acknowledged as a factor in my overall case, should I have the opportunity to present it. They don’t do any good if you don’t use them.

I’m not sure that any future claims by workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or the U.S. Agency for International Development carry quite the same categorical dimensions. Should the wholesale destruction of executive branch functions be deemed a prerogative of the president — and remember, the most heinous crimes you can think of have been deemed the prerogative of the president if he’s acting in an official capacity — there is no specific superseding defense available, if an individual worker hasn’t pressed for one.

Is it necessary to say anything about the counterargument that workers in the private sector expect to endure tedious reporting exercises to placate shitty bosses all the time? Well, these people argue, that’s just being a worker in America. Surveillance and control. I’ll just mention that this is more like being a worker at Wal-Mart being forced to type up a report by some tiny management bully from across the parking lot at Target. Elon Musk is not a manager at my organization. He is a random billionaire without a defined position or portfolio. Just a megalomaniacal Republican donor — until Congress and the people are informed otherwise.

I’m not saying I have even moderate confidence in any of this. I’m flying blind. My agency has not issued any formal guidance, except for an email from my supervisor saying whatever, guys, go ahead and send the stupid bullets. With more or less that same degree of conviction.

It is also certainly true that in Palestine and Cuba all these decades later, there is no longer any hope that there will be an accounting. What’s lost stays lost.

But I’m also tired.

I do not serve a king, and I do not want to go on being trotted out into the center of the lists to juggle for these laughing courtiers.

Our days have just become endless exercises in choosing what we can and cannot stomach. If only for this particular Monday, I’m just not finding the equanimity to play along or help them gnaw on my dignity up in their penthouses. I’ll just try my best to be just what I am.

Anyway, OPM said replying to the email is voluntary. (But not in writing?) Whatever.