Timothy McVeigh was so upset that the government used tear gas on children during the Waco siege that he killed 19 kids in a daycare center. Agitated by the deaths of 76 Americans at the hands of federal law enforcement in 1993, he killed 168 more, lighting a two-minute fuse on a rental truck and walking away. The bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City exploded at 9:02 a.m., April 19, 1995, 30 years ago Saturday.
Toxic hate against American government did not die when McVeigh was put to death by lethal injection in 2001. Instead it grew and spread, so that our national infrastructure can be blown apart before our eyes — a sort of slow motion, nationwide, institutional destruction — and reaction ranges from numbness to joy.
Just as Britons in areas that most relied on trade with the European Union pushed hardest for Brexit, so Red State Americans who lean most heavily on the government cheer its wholesale destruction since Jan. 20.
People seem only dimly aware that services they depend on are being scrapped so that money once used for their benefit can be given in tax breaks to billionaires.
The government isn’t even keeping track of who’s being fired. News organizations estimate that about 12% of the 2.4 million strong federal workforce have lost their jobs in the past three months. With more layoffs every day and no end in sight.
To add insult to injury, the fired workers are being told it’s their fault. Even though clearly no assessments were done by the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s youthful wrecking crew, created by executive order and given free rein.
Again and again, offices are eliminated, only to be reinstated when an adult realizes that, oh, hey, they’ve let go people they need to keep nuclear reactors safe, or to check food for contamination.
Not to forget the billions of dollars in research grants being eliminated, wholesale. Not in any connection to the merit of the work being done, but as retribution, for institutions that do not adjust their programs to the government’s liking. Harvard resisted, and not only are $2 billion in federal grants being withheld, but its tax exempt status is immediately challenged, a clear violation of the 1st Amendment. Americans are not taxed more because of what they teach. Well they weren’t, up to now.
It goes on and on. The Department of Health and Human Services laid off 10,000 workers April 1. Offices for Head Start — designed to give poor children a taste of the advantages enjoyed by well-off ones — were closed across the country.
About a third of the Internal Revenue Service — some 22,000 workers — have been laid off, affecting the collection of taxes and the prosecution of tax cheats.
I don’t want to swamp you with figures. But each department has a real impact on American lives. The Department of Veteran Affairs, tasked with caring for the well-being of America’s 16 million veterans, who served this country in war and peace, is set to lose about 80,000 workers.
Then there is the suffering abroad. The United States used to pride itself as a force for good in the world — relieving famine was not only good publicity, but good business. Those bags of grain with “USAID — FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE” printed on them contained wheat and corn bought by the government from American farmers.
We did well by doing good. Now we rip down our infrastructure, our reputation, our economy. And our future — what bright graduate would join the government now?
Once the Voice of America countered the Russian propaganda our leaders now parrot; VOA is also gone.
After the Oklahoma City blast, the FBI quickly found the axle of the truck McVeigh had used, combed through millions of rental records, checked 43,000 leads. They had a sketch of the suspect the next day, and McVeigh was identified as a suspect.
Now we must wonder: with the entire top leadership of the FBI fired and thousands of agents who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol under review, could the FBI respond with the same efficiency? Particularly since its head, Kash Patel, is a man Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, called “a dangerous, inexperienced and dishonest Trump loyalist” who has “repeatedly expressed his intention to use our nation’s most important law enforcement agency to retaliate against his political enemies.”
The Oklahoma City bombing was over in an instant, the death toll 168, plus more than 800 injured. With this latest blast against the government, the death toll will never be known with such specificity nor the damage tallied. But both will be far, far greater.