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Budget slashing: Coming soon to a home near you
- Details
- Tuesday, 01 April 2025
- Written by Margaret Dickson
Something in human nature allows us to recognize travails and misfortunes of others and, at the same time, believe such troubles will never land at our own doorstep. Accidents, illnesses, the consequences of poor decisions happen to other people, not us. We watch from afar with a detached lens.
Such is the case at this moment in the United States of America.
Americans are watching, first with disbelief and then with hair-on-fire dismay, as our governmental structure is being not just torn to shreds, but in some instances, dismantled altogether with total disregard for the human consequences.
So far, my little family and I have escaped the so-called “reduction” sledgehammer, but our day is surely coming. Several friends and friends of friends have either felt the hammer or know it is heading their way. These are American citizens I have known for many years. They are people whose lives are being rearranged and perhaps irreparably changed by the bulldozing of our government and our way of life.
These are not abstract people, not “other.” These are people I have known for decades, Americans not unlike you and me.
The daughter of my college roommate met the love of her life when they were Peace Corps volunteers in Africa. They met, married, and decided to devote their lives to helping people in developing nations. He holds a PhD. and helps farmers in emerging economies with best agricultural practices. She is a nurse practitioner providing health care in African communities where it is otherwise scarce. They are parents of 2 young children. He was fired from this position with USAID almost 2 months ago and has heard nothing more since. They remain in Africa awaiting whatever comes next.
A close friend has a beloved aunt in a western North Carolina county. Now 95 and bedridden, though mentally sharp and reading a book a day, the aunt resides in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid, as her own resources are long since exhausted. Her son, a MAGA soldier, was stunned when he learned that Medicaid is on the chopping block. When asked if he would take his mother into his home, her son was silent.
A teacher in the Triangle works in an independent school for children with learning differences. With the projected demise of the US Department of Education, this school, the teachers who work there and the children who go there to learn, face the end of funding, and therefore, the end of this school and others like it.
These are real Americans, real North Carolinians, hit by the deadly buzzsaw our national government has become. I know their names, of course, but do not use them here to protect their privacy. There are thousands, perhaps millions by now, of Americans staring down the barrel of “governmental efficiency” and waiting to be shot.
So, I have to ask Americans who voted for national slashing. Did you intend to harm families and children? Did you mean to leave young, well-meaning Americans stranded in foreign lands? Did you vote to turn 90-somethings out of nursing homes? Did you vote for special needs children to lose their teachers and their schools?
Are you happy about and proud of what has already happened and what is yet to come?
Whatever your answer to that question, the harsh reality is that the slasher train has left the station and is heading our way. It is coming to homes, jobs, and families across our nation and the world.
It may be on its way to a home near yours.
It may be on its way to you.
