Echoing McCarthyism, federal firings will inflict generations of trauma

Anyone who has been fired, or knows someone who has, must be shocked at the callousness of Elon Musk talking about taking a “chain saw” to agencies and Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, saying he wants government employees to be “traumatically affected” and “viewed as villains.” Making trauma for government employees a policy goal is horrific. I know, because I grew up in a home where that trauma hung in the air like smoke from the cigarettes chain-smoked by my mother - a civil servant fired without cause in the McCarthy era.