20181231.0430

On 26 December 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News released "Never, Ever a Good Reason for Shutdown" in the online version of the newspaper. The article lays blame for the shutdown at the end of 2018 squarely at the feet of the occupant of the White House at the time, explicating why it does so. Congress seems able to reach an agreement on funding, and support for many administrative policies is waning against the increasing number of administration scandals and rapidity of personnel turnover at the highest levels, but a single sticking-point from the person who holds the veto pen keeps anything from moving forward. As it does, hundreds of thousands of federal employees are left scrambling for funds just as demands for them increase sharply. The piece closes with pointed remarks calling for the federal government to resume its operations and for the head of the administration to relent.
Unfortunately, said head is not likely to relent for reasons that are amply attested elsewhere, and in far clearer and more vociferous terms than I am ready to deploy. No, said head might be said to have its head embedded somewhere else, even up to the shoulders, and all such people are oblivious to reason and the sweet smell of anything other than their own colons. And the editors of the Express-News are in position to know that the rhythmic chants of "Build that wall" still ring out, drowning word of other perfidies in their cacophonous refrains, even in their own city, even among people whose families straddle a border that jumped them in days gone by, even among people who depend on the services provided by federal employees and who are those employees. Perhaps they seem less loud in the Alamo City proper than they do not far outside it because there are other voices braying out their own discordant tunes, but the rumblings that sound in the Texas Hill Country are in a different key altogether.
I am fortunate that my family has not been much affected by the 2018-end shutdown. Though my father is a federal employee, his agency had already been funded for some time. Though my mother works with the IRS, she does not work for them. And though I deal with Medicaid in the work that I do, and though the agency for which I work receives funds from federal departments, directly and vicariously, the flow of money into it has not abated. (I could wish for more, of course, but that's true in the best of times.) But I know that others are far less fortunate; they are far more reliant on income and access to resources that are now imperiled. Many of them will also continue to laud the administration's head, despite that person acting in ways that harm them. For the editors are correct; it is but one person who has held things up, so it is upon one person alone that blame rests--and should rest. Because that person is supposed to be in charge, and that person eagerly seeks credit for what goes well; blame for what goes badly accrues there, as well, or it damned well should.