4/25/2018

Can We Choose to Know Who Runs Our Government Agencies?

Pop quiz, motherfuckers.

1. Who is Lisa Jackson?
a. Michael Jackson's daughter
b. EPA administrator for President Obama
c. Audrey Hepburn's character in Two for the Road

2. Who is Hildy Johnson?
a. Boris Johnson's wife
b. Secretary of Labor for President Obama
c. Rosalind Russell's character in His Girl Friday

3. Who is Shaun Donovan?
a. The full name of folk singer Donovan
b. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for President Obama
c. Jack Lemmon's character in Airport '77

4. Who is Gary Locke?
a. John Locke's lesser-known brother
b. Secretary of Commerce for President Obama
c. Alec Guinness's character in Our Man in Havana

5. Who is Tom Donilon?
a. Secretary of Transportation for President Obama
b. Secretary of Energy for President Obama
c. Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Obama

The answer for numbers 1, 3, and 4 is b. Number 2 is c because what's life without a twist now and again (Hilda Solis was Labor Secretary, though). And, fuck you, number 5 is a trick because Donilon was Obama's National Security Advisor.

I'm gonna bet you knew maybe one of those. If you knew more than one, then fuckin' awesome for you. You have decided to be extra-aware of who is making decisions that affect your life. But most people everywhere wouldn't know a single one of those 4 real people and 1 fictional character. And isn't that the bliss we want? Don't we just want our government officials to shut the fuck up, stop doing stupid shit, hunker down, and do their fuckin' jobs? It used to be like that. Not that fuckin' long ago.

I might not agree with what Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, Wilbur Ross, Mick Mulvaney, or any of the querulous worms of Trump administration do as they heap piles of shit on their offices and leave wreckage wherever they go. I may want them to fail miserably and be sent to the hinterlands in disgrace or burn their careers on the pyre of the Trump administration's blustering cruelty. I want to fight their policies. For instance, I want to demonstrate how changes in EPA rules are going to dick the air and water for multiple generations and not talk about a soundproof booth. I want these braying asses, creepy motherfuckers, and skeevy grifters to just fucking get out of the public eye, especially for shit that has nothing to with policy (and they suck when they're doing policy, too).

During the Obama administration, we didn't worry about Gary Locke because he wasn't doing shit like going on TV to talk about the effect of tariffs on the price of aluminum cans like a barely animated corpse. The only reason we ever heard about Lisa Jackson at EPA was when Republicans attack dogs went after her and decided to make having a private email account is the worst thing anyone could do, far worse than, say, hiring a massive security force and spending on paranoid office shit, like fuckin' Scott Pruitt has.

This is not a call for ignorance. It's a call for peace. It's a call for the Republicans to step up (man, I just rolled my eyes so hard, I saw another dimension) and get the executive branch to cut the shit out. You learn shit like Ben Carson buying an extravagant fucking dining room table, then you call for his firing.

And the members of the administration just seemed to be engaged in a "hold my beer" contest in who can be the biggest corrupt asshole. You think Pruitt seems nuts? Check out Ryan Zinke. Think Steve Mnuchin's a greedy piece of garbage? Mulvaney's got him beat. You just know that Trump loves this chaos. He loves that it keeps his name on TV even more. He probably beats off to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell getting pissed off.

The fabric of a society cannot hold if the claws of scandal keep tearing at it. Eventually, it's gonna give way. The question is whether or not anyone is gonna be able to stitch it back together.