The shutdown

I was driving home from moms tonight and accidentally started thinking about the shutdown. 

I’ve been doing my best to avoid news about it. News terrifies me. Makes me think too much. For years, I just plain couldn’t experience it - it was like I felt the pain of the people living that life and I was in a place where I just couldn’t deal with that feeling. I needed to focus on me, something I’ve never been good at.

From the outside world perspective, this was while things were relatively nice. Obama was president, I was traveling abroad in Turkey; the world was sad and parts of it were scary, but overall things seemed alright. Brexit hadn’t happened. Trump hadn’t happened.

In 2013, I started cautiously watching the news again. Just a little, in the morning. Started out with light stuff like the local news on channel 2, quickly remembered why I don’t watch local news when I live in Utah. Graduated myself to Morning Joe on MSNBC. That spread to more MSNBC.

Then, eventually, election night came. I watched that night. I tried to watch the next day and I couldn’t. Rachel Maddow cried during her show and I had to stop. When the people who are always strong cry in front of you, it hits hard. Because you know it’s not just you anymore.

I dip my toe into the news every now and then, but by and large I don’t experience it. Or I used to not. Things have changed and what used to be my fun super gay newsfeed on Facebook turned into news. Real news. So I still hear about these awful things going on, and then I start to think too much.

There were times in years past where there was a threat of a government shutdown. But they always pulled it out in the last minute, like a hail Mary or whatever. It started happening more frequently and I’d get a little concerned, but this too shall pass and it never happened. 

Now the government has been shut down for weeks.

So the thing I started thinking about the shutdown during my drive was how close are we? The precipice is looming ahead of us. But it’s dark, so you don’t really know where exactly that edge is. But we’re close.

People haven’t been getting paid, and I read an article recently that mentioned it’s illegal for federal employees to go on strike. The penalties for doing so are basically your career is over. And that’s a scary thing, so it’s a good deterrent to stop those employees from letting our government really shut down.

But what about when it’s not anymore. We’re all people, we each have our breaking point, and more importantly, we all have bills. What if they don’t go on strike, they just get other jobs? Or they don’t care that it’s illegal, and go on strike anyway? We’re setting a dangerous precedent all around with how much we’re putting up with illegal activity in the country, what is genuinely left to stop them?

So everyone who isn’t getting paid goes away, and that’s when the real shutdown starts. Who isn’t getting paid right now? I need to look it up, but don’t have the focus right now. I think I read that TSA employees aren’t getting paid, that would be a bad one to go. The states might be motivated to cover that gap as best as they can, but it’s a bandaid on a Scream sized wound. 

Except some of those jobs require a fair amount of training, right? How far does the TSA go in terms of who isn’t getting paid? Again, I need to look it up. Basically, anything less than those people getting paid means no air travel. 

No air travel means no business travel. Would that be enough to jolt people? Or would everyone start taking other means to get places? Most domestic travel can be accessed with trains, cars. 

Is the threat of terrorism enough to keep something like that from happening? I guess if planes aren’t flying, that’s cut off as one method. Is that enough to negate the threat?

It’s not even the TSA specifically either, there are other areas affected too, ones that are equally important. People forget that just because things seem automated and simple, there is still a person at the root of all that. Automatic doesn’t work if the machine goes down. Machines aren’t sentient beings - we’re not living in THAT dystopian novel.

One of the first things that struck me when I started working at eBay was the part of their motto where they said “we believe people are basically good.” I’ve never agreed. I believe people are basically volatile, and that scares the shit out of me.