The Storytelling We Need to Rebuild Belief in Government
After Trump spent a year destroying government, there have been several attempts in recent days to tell the story of what Trump took away with his assault on government. This is a story we need to tell, and tell far better, in the new year if we want to hold Trump accountable and not just reverse the damage he did, but use his destruction as a way to rebuild better.
Consider this WaPo story, “The year Trump broke the federal government.”
It tells the stories of hundreds of Federal workers, including those who left and those who stayed through the DOGE and Russ Vought massacres. It is great! But it also only mirrors the full story (and potentially buried in a holiday weekend).
It very poignantly captures the cruelty of Trump’s firings, such as this anecdote about a woman killing herself just after Elon Musk’s Five Things emails started.
In Virginia, the family of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services worker Caitlin Cross-Barnet checked her into a mental health facility. She was struggling with despair after a difficult hysterectomy, and because she felt Trump was unraveling the government. In daily calls to her husband, she asked about changes to the federal workforce. Six days after the “What did you do” email, she killed herself.
While it describes many benefits shuttered, it doesn’t describe what happened to the people affected by these losses.
What happened, for example, when those working a suicide prevention line could no longer offer their clients privacy?
Veterans who called to confess thoughts of suicide could hear people speaking in the background.
What happened when LGBTQ+ veterans stopped showing up for counseling appointments?
The psychologist’s LGBTQ+ patients stopped showing up to their appointments.
What is the impact of rising rates of mental illnesses among service members, now left neglected in the wake of another firing?
Another morning gone with no chance to turn to his studies of rising rates of mental illness among service members. Or his proposals, languishing for almost a year now, on how the government could drive those down.
What happened when the government fired a bunch of people focusing on educational access for Native Americans (even while moving health experts to Indian Health Services)?
Her job was helping administer grants to support Native American students. Then she remembered. She’d once served as president of an affinity group for Native Americans and Alaskans at the department.
You might ask what happened to the people Erica Hagen might be harmed in advance of her firing.
She thought about all the frozen programs she had helped oversee: One treating and preventing HIV. Another educating children in rural areas. A third reducing plastic in the oceans.
But a number of people have told the story of what happened with Marco Rubio cut USAID, both in sheer terms — the hundreds of thousands who’ve already died and the 14 million who may one day die, but also the children dying of hunger in Kenya or the cholera outbreak in South Sudan.
What happened to those who might benefit from sustainable energy programs that got cut?
At the Energy Department, one worker prepared memos arguing that his projects would cut costs for American homes and businesses. Someone decided to cancel many anyway. So he, like other employees, began deleting: Any mention of “carbon.” “Sustainability.” The word “green.”
What about FDA inspections that didn’t happen? Who got sick?
A Food and Drug Administration staffer couldn’t purchase dry ice or environmental swabs, nor pay the highway tolls that safety inspectors incurred driving for work.
One I’m self-interested in, as a former Great Lakes resident, what happened when they cut the carp program?
In the Midwest, union leader Colin Smalley watched his Army Corps of Engineers unit dwindle. Among the departed: An employee so knowledgeable about rock blasting that the government brought him back the first time he tried to retire. A staffer who was spearheading a novel project to stun invasive carp with electric shocks. How, Smalley asked his wife, could they ever replace someone who knew how to electrify rivers?
The answer, I think, is that this is one of the few things Gretchen Whitmer won by normalizing Trump.
The story describes how Trump’s cuts delayed efforts to prepare Colorado for fire season — ostensibly something Trump cares about. But did it exacerbate fires or did we get lucky?
In a Colorado branch of the Forest Service, one man was designated purchaser for the entire office. Anyone who wanted to buy horse fodder or irrigation pipes had to wait until the man returned from weeks-long firefighting trips. The new system meant staff were a week late buying chainsaw fuel, delaying the thinning of flammable forest brush. “In 15 years, I have never seen us so unprepared for fire season,” the local fire management officer told staff at a meeting, according to one worker in attendance.
The nation’s parks and forests are rotting from neglect. What does that look like?
In Lander, Wyoming, three Forest Service retirees noticed fences tilting over, docks slipping into lakes, mountain roads caving inward from water pressure.
Like the USAID cuts, this is story that is already getting told elsewhere; it is a story that is generating a lot of localized anger.
This great video from Molly Jong-Fast, which includes a bunch of great regulators — like Lina Khan, Alvaro Bedoya, Doha Mekki, and Elizabeth Wilkins — who got fired addresses many of these impact questions.
I’m a big fan of all these people and Khan (who’ll have a platform working for Mayor Mamdani) can explain the import of regulation to anyone. All of these fired experts are exceptional at explaining how overturning regulation harms people, like construction workers or taxi drivers or renters or chicken farmers.
But imagine a video that started from one or another harm that mentioned repeatedly — such as the harms, including encouraging suicide, caused by bots and AI. That’s a story that would resonate with mothers, as opposed to primarily Democrats who want to strategize how to reverse Trump’s destruction.
To be sure: at 39:00, Wilkins talks about how important story telling is. She describes that we need to explain all this in terms of villains. “Tell the story of who is the bad guy in this story, who is the hero of this story.” But we also need to invite every American into the story, because they’ve lost something from Trump’s assault on government.
One (very) simple example really resonated with me, at least. In a piece explaining the value of NCAR to Americans in advance of Trump’s assault on it, It’s just a list of eight things that are not (as Russ Vought targeted) “climate alarmism.”
In accessibly wonky terms, it translates some of the things NCAR does — like making flights safer — into things people care about.
As a child, I remember hearing news stories about commercial airplanes crashing due to wind shear. Microbursts, which are localized downburst of sinking air associated with thunderstorms, were often the culprit. The Low-Level Wind Shear Alert System developed by NCAR researchers has helped to virtually eliminate microburst-related wind shear crashes. Such advances, along with Terminal Doppler Radar, are examples of the R&D machine at work for our benefit even as you may not realize it as your plane takes off or lands safely. Additionally, many of the computer algorithms used to alert pilots and airline managers about turbulence were developed at NCAR. Likewise, NCAR’s aircraft icing products have been a staple in the aviation industry and distributed by NOAA’s Aviation Weather Center.
Regular fliers are already outraged by the continued enshittification of air travel, including Crash Sean Duffy’s reversal of consumer protection rules imposed by Pete Buttigieg.
Here’s one aspect, turbulence, that Trump is actively planning to make worse.
Again, I think all of these are really good stories. I’m just looking ahead — not to elections, or even to what Khan will do as a key aide to the Mayor of New York — but to ways we can better tell stories about what Trump took away, about what Trump stole from the American people, so we can hold him accountable.
Excellent points. I would just add one edit to the piece and the last sentence in particular. If we really want long-term productive change, we need to tie all this to the Republicans as enablers as well. If Trump died tomorrow, many of these problems would likely continue. We need to emphasize in this story-telling that it’s not just Trump; it’s the Republicans who are doing harm to our country and beyond.
The air will tell the story, the water will tell the story, the climate, the roads, the courts, the schools and so much else. I don’t think it’ll take too long to see the environmental catastrophes of the fifties and sixties again.
The products on the shelves will tell the story, the conditions in urban areas, the poverty in rural areas. I don’t think the repubs will be able to blame this on Biden. It’ll take decades to ameliorate.
The people on the street will tell the story. The health of the American people will tell the story. How long will that take to fix?
But those stories are trailing indicators. By the time they are noticed and irrefutable (a “boiling frog” situation) much harm will have already been done. We need to tell irrefutable stories about here and now.
It’s tricky, though, when he’s had so many enablers, starting with Repubs in Congress and followed closely by six faux jurists. “They said I could,” and he’d be right.
The problem for me, and for the many friends and neighbors I talk to about all this, is the firehose aspect of the Trump administration’s depredations. There are simply too many horrors for most to sort out, and universally they report feeling overwhelmed.
My close friends who watch the news all day have become paralyzed. They’ve turned their attention to redoing their floors, with CNN blaring mercilessly in the foreground. I try to counsel picking an issue (mine has been the cruelty directed at immigrants, now hitting close to home) but during these shortest days of the year I find it hard to stay on message, and not simply give my attention to family stuff and the new kitten.
January will be my hardest test. it always is. I want to focus on something that matters but just surviving myself typically takes most of my will (I have a history of suicidal depression that surges this time of the year). I would appreciate anyone’s very specific suggestion on where I can divert my own pain to helping others without passing the kind of background test designed to filter out people like me with a history of mental illness.
I feel your pain.
We’ve passed the shortest day. Nights will get shorter, days will get brighter.
I make sandwiches for somebody I know. It’s a small thing but it helps them get on with their life.
Ever try these – SAD lamps? In this case SAD is an acronym (Seasonal Affective Disorder)
https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-sad-lamps.html
“The Storytelling We Need …”
At the risk of stating the obvious: “Notice and Accountability” are two sides of the same coin and are most effective when they are formulated symmetrically:
For each of the many failures of the Trump administration, risk is created, thereby making the harm that accrues possible, perhaps likely, maybe inevitable. By describing, in detail and ahead of time, both how the risk that the administration creates foreseeably causes various types of harm, the administration is put ON NOTICE. So if/when the harm does accrue there is already established, in a descriptive statement, an “If (risk)…, then (harm) …” / “cause and effect” relationship. This makes the administration both ACCOUNTABLE for that harm (“But for …”) and subject to assertions that they intended the harm to occur (“Cruelty does seem to be the point.”). Here, Marcy has done this well. Thank You.
Through stories well told, “Notice and Accountability” is its own form of risk management and may prevent future harm that otherwise might be inevitable. Having gone to school in Boulder, Colorado … those working at the very prestigious NCAR (“EN CAR”) were considered among the best and brightest. I hope that they, in particular, are allowed to continue to do their lifesaving work.
This post is why the decision by Bari Weiss to spike a well-vetted 60 Minutes piece yesterday on the CECOT prison to which a bunch of ICE detainees were sent is such a big deal.
60 Minutes built itself on long-form video storytelling, something quite unique in the news business up until the birth of cable news networks. “Here’s a story that takes more than 180 seconds to tell. To do it justice takes 15 minutes or 30 or maybe 60. But unlike the evening news, telling these big stories is what we do.”
Back in the day, a CEO or government worker being greeted by their office administrator with the words “60 Minutes is here to see you” was the very definition of “You know you’re going to have a bad day when . . . .” No one wanted to see Mike Wallace sitting in their waiting room.
Now Trump is going after the storytellers.
CBS caved when Trump sued them for the way 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris. “It’s only $16M,” said CBS, thinking this was a one-off. But Trump learned a lot about CBS at that point. He learned they could be pressured. So he kept pushing.
CBS hired noted rightwing flack Bari Weiss to run their news division, hoping this would placate Trump and allow their various mergers and acquisitions to go forward. But the bully is not placated by compliance. The bully is emboldened.
So now, Bari Weiss gets a veto on every story at CBS News, and she’s not afraid to use it.
Storytellers matter, and I suspect a lot of CBS News storytellers are looking for a new place to do their storytelling unimpeded by Trump and Weiss.
60 Minutes has long had its problems, like all corporate media; their ventures into “true crime” territory have made the worst of Dateline look like Ida Tarbell. But that was before the Harris interview capitulation; as you note, Peterr, it certainly seems to have signaled to the bully that he could have his way. And so he has. Again.
As EW so insistently notes, if the powerful won’t stand up, it is up to us–if nothing else, to take their power away. I found some reason to watch 60 Minutes segments before, but none now.
Yep, they have to for their own professional integrity if nothing else. Amazing how much we can lose in just one year.
Thing is, the 60 Minutes CECOT exposee exists and people will clamor to see it. The addition of Stephen Miller won’t help the administration.
In other Trump violations of the law, ‘Bring it on,’ says Mr. Smith to Washington, ‘and let me speak in public.’
As I understand this situation, Bari Weiss wanted them add a segment with a Trump admin spokesman presenting the WH POV. Except that the 60m reporter insists they contacted the WH multiple times and each time the WH declined comment, so…
Maybe this segment will see the light of day if clamored for enough by the public, but they’d probably have to insert a clip of Stephen Cheung railing about how the whole piece is fake news concocted by radical left lunatic reporters (and that’s the best-case scenario). Scott Pelley made a public speech a week ago saying in effect “They haven’t touched us yet” (they=Bari Weiss, us=60 Minutes). Well Scotty, only took a week…
Gotta say it once more. Sorry, but I’ve seen it too often. That’s just the way the matzoh crumbles; into a half-baked cracker.
Sleepy TACO: “Energy prices are down.”
Reality: My electricity rate is 19% higher from a year ago. Heating oil is 25 cents/gal higher from a year ago.
Michael Lewis, possibly, is already working on a new book about this. If he is, it will complete a trilogy of his works on the unsung workers in public sector bureaucracy to go along with his books The Fifth Risk and Who Is Government?
My notes on The Fifth Risk are at https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-fifth-risk.html
The story is this: The United States of America is no longer under nation of laws. We are ruled by a dictator who controls and ignores the law. The only hope we have left is that the military will refuse the illegal orders he’ll give when Republicans lose the midterm elections in a landslide. Trump will order all voting machines impounded, void the election results and declare himself president for life. When protesters surge into the the streets, as they must, he’ll order the military to shoot to kill (blowing up innocent fishermen off Venezuela against all international and military law is the prelude) and the future of the nation will depend on whether the military will refuse those orders. That’s why Trump went ballistic when Mark Kelly et al reminded the military of their obligation to refuse. Who will stop Trump? Democrats are powerless, Republicans are owned, the Supreme Court is owned, most of the press is owned and court orders are a joke to Donald Trump and his billionaire cabal. All our institutions are failing. Unless we face that now, we are already lost.