DAVID REESE, 27 Feb 2025

“So tomorrow we will be escorted like criminals into USAID to get our personal effects. 15 minutes per terminated employee. That’s us folks. That’s the reward of public service in this country. See in comment below the circular that went out telling us what we cannot bring into the building – firearms, axes, martial arts weapons like nunchucks and throwing stars, spearguns, and even dynamite. No my friends you did not read that wrong. Maybe the folks at 🐕E has us confused with Jan 6 rioters. I will hold my head up high. If I cry, it is for my Agency. For the billions we will have let down.”

That’s me right there.

Dave leaned back in the creaking office chair, another second-hand buy, to make the teeny-weeny DC condo he could afford somewhat homely.

He had also just been fired from USAID, just like that. He had been about to vent, to someone, anyone – when he saw the post on reddit. It felt like an eerie echo of the storm inside him.

America was coming apart. The world was coming apart. He was coming apart.

Another newsflash from his laptop, and the world’s richest man – the man responsible for cutting aid to starving millions overnight – called federal workers “parasites”.

Dave had never felt closer to committing the unthinkable. He was sickened.

In the condo beside his, through the paper-thin walls–and with the window open–he could hear Abigail watching the news again. Fox News.

Something about a corrupt Biden transition team member, millions wasted for operating an empty facility for something somewhere in Texas.

It seemed like an insane coincidence. He had never talked much with Abigail. But right now he felt like going over there and putting a carving knife to her throat and forcing her to switch channels. What the fuck was wrong with her? With everyone?

If somebody wanted to save money, why not do it rationally? Go through the logs, comb out the fat, keep the government running, don’t hurt innocents. Clinton had done that brilliantly when Dave was a teen, even his grumpy old man had had to admit that.

Now, with Musk’s DOGE running wild to cut anything remotely related to DEI or social services, and channeling those funds, Dave thought bitterly, to tax cuts for the wealthy there was only one way this could end:

“The operation was a success – but the patient died.”

He grieved for those children in Sudan he would not be able to help now, but he grieved more for his world. America would shut down. He was sure of it.

His neighbor’s TV continued about how Biden was the root of all evil, and Dave felt he knew the answer to such idiocy:

There was no answer. Cruelty was the point.

Then just as he found himself looking through the medicine cupboard, his phone rang.

He wasn’t sure if it was a saving grace or incredibly bad timing.