When I graduated from college in 2003, I anticipated being a public school teacher in New York City, and I figured that I would be interested enough in politics to work my way up into leadership. These days, I smile about the person who graduated because not only was I never going to be that interested in politics, I discovered that I care more about being a person on the ground than I do about feeding people’s egos. Beginning in 2007–on January 1st, no less–I began a long career of working for the government, going from entry-level position to entry-level position. I noticed that as entry-level, everyone is there, while the higher up one goes, the same types of people dominate the conversation, regardless of whether they demonstrate competency.
In 2018, I worked briefly for the IRS before being briefly swept into the private sector. Those who have been consistently in the private sector often smirk about the incompetence of those in the public sector, but what is obvious to everyone now is the the private sector is largely composed of fake jobs and fake people. Yes, there is a range of competency in the public sector, but as we can all see now, without a corporate framework, some people would just be demonstrated to be the sycophants and clowns that they are. Most of the successful people within the private sector are the same kind of person, so much so that I have no interest in repeating it. Whether the government pays or some capitalist pays, there is no magical formula to ensure that everyone is working all the time, and people in the private sector are just as lazy as those in government offices. This is why the introduction of technology should have tempered the expectations of productivity, especially when people have less disposable income.
I noticed in 2018 (IRS), 2020 (Census), and 2022 (IRS) that every kind of person is at the federal government, which is why people are so angry about it. Black people are in multiple leadership positions, and comfortable doing what they do, as well as other people of color. I had my second hearing-impaired supervisor of color while working at the IRS. There were pregnant women who not only worked, but worked overtime while being pregnant, and as long as they were physically okay and got the work done, nobody bothered them. For those curious about what was done with all those kinds of people in the same place at one time, we did…whatever we were assigned to do. Looking out over a sea of IRS workers, especially during the night shift when I worked, would mean looking at a bunch of focused people, most of whom were wearing headphones to keep from being distracted. My census team met twice, but most of us were self-motivated since the census occurred during the lockdown.
Sometimes, I envision all the ridiculous attention given to the fear of diversity, and I realize that some people are just irredeemably obsolete in their thinking. The current, obnoxious smear campaign seems to be designed to flush out all the idiots who think that anything other than work goes on at the federal government. At this point, people’s sensitivity to being called “idiots” when they pointlessly attack others is irrelevant to me. I have firsthand knowledge that for most of the positions at the bottom–like, who used to compose the mythical middle class–people were just doing their jobs. However, whenever abusers decide to target other people for absolutely no reason, I guess it becomes the job of everyone else to tune out their ramblings, and some people are better at that task than others.
Chasing A Dying Empire 