The Commons: The Purged

The removal of civil service workers is presented as a major national loss affecting hundreds of thousands of people and the country’s future. Individual profiles of gifted and generous workers emphasize how essential their skills are to what the United States has meant and what it once represented. The consequences are described as lasting for decades, extending beyond immediate staffing changes. Government work is characterized as quiet competence that underpins everyday safety and infrastructure, such as highway construction and maintenance and aviation safety standards. The loss of expertise and enforcement capacity is framed as reducing the quality and reliability of public services and protections.

"The Purged Donald Trump's destruction of the civil service is a tragedy not just for the roughly 300,000 workers who have been discarded, but for an entire nation, Franklin Foer wrote in the February issue."

"I read Franklin Foer's "The Purged" in one held breath. This is how to weigh the stakes of our political moment-one life at a time. No statistic can adequately describe America's losses. Each of the 50 people profiled in Foer's essay is so gifted and generous, so essential to what the United States means-or at least to what it used to mean. I salute Foer's courage to tell the story head-on. His narrative journalism is letting us see one another whole."

"I don't know the people in the article personally, but I do know them-I know their value. Their individual loss is our national loss. I worked on significant problems, including air quality, acid deposition, and the safety of liquefied gases. I developed simulation techniques for the accidental release of toxic chemicals."

"I worked in state government for 29 years. Franklin Foer's 50 profiles are an important reminder that we'll feel the consequences of Donald Trump's purge for decades. I tend to think of government work as that of quiet competence. When we travel on interstate highways, we do not think about the work done to locate an appropriate site for a road, to build it, and then to maintain it. When we fly, we hope that the plane meets safety standards but spare little thought for the federal staff who developed those standards and enforce them for our benefi"

Read at The Atlantic