Should I be looking for a different job?
Dude, if you quit, a Maga is taking your place. The last thing we need is more extremist infiltration of the government.
Stay, we need you. Your country needs you.
If there is any shady things happenning, we need you to be a whisleblower.
If you quit another will take your place. Possibly a conservative. You’d do more good holding that seat than giving it up.
The resistance infiltrating the enemy base in disguise can get a lot of work done. Especially if it’s long term and you don’t even need to sneak around.
Even just a low level functionary who’s not a nazi or a terrible person makes my time dealing with a government agency better. There’s not an automatic moral imperative to bounce.
A few months ago a german activist (I think it was Arne Semsrot) wrote a book about how low and middle positions in government agencies can work against the governments intentions in case of a extreme right wing takeover by the AFD. Though I don’t know, if it was translated to english or would be 1 to 1 applicable to the USA.
The answers to both of your questions are probably yes it’s okay, and yes you should probably be looking for another job.
Are you morally/ethically okay with your agency’s mission? With your role in it? If you are, then the new administration’s policies may not be reason enough to leave. You pretty much have to work somewhere. If the answer is no, you probably would have already been looking for another job.
Should you be looking for another job? Probably, depending on what your agency is and it’s mission. If TFG and Project2025 have their way, many federal government agencies will be defunded and/or privatized, and pretty much toothless when it comes to enforcement. We already saw what happened to the EPA under the first Trump administration. If yours is in danger of that you should be preparing a backup plan. I wouldn’t want to give up a government job, but I would want to be ready if I got RIF’d, or if I got fed up with the bullshit.I’d say it’s more important than ever. Leaving just allows the “yes” men to get more power and gives more control to the regime you dislike/disagree with.
Resist
This. Try to stay until you are forcibly replaced or your agency has its mission drastically changed.
I work for the USPS. We took an oath to the constitution and it’s very easy to understand why. The Postal Service is a necessary component of democracy as long as it remains true to what its supposed to be, which is a pipeline of information between any two points in the world. We can debate the legitimacy of that need after the internet, but there are vital services the USPS provides that the internet can’t.
I don’t like the direction things are going, but i still want to be a part of that. All i can do is make sure the mail I get is getting where it’s supposed to be.
If you believe in what you do and that’s important to you, then stick it out. If it’s not, then that’s fine, but you may want to get out for your mental health.
Thank you for your service
Haha, i never served and this is just a job. It just happens to be one that i feel has some contribution to democracy and i try to hold on to that.
Thanks, though, if this isn’t meant in jest.
You’re a public servant. That’s cool
Delivering the mail is every bit - if not more - important than killing foreigners for oil
Thank you. That’s a very considered response.
I’m serious about the mental health thing, though. I’ve had to develope a certain mind set to keep things from driving me nuts: incompetent supervisors and lazy coworkers. The unions really protect us, but the system most definitely gets abused and management is hamstrung to do anything about it i guess.
To me, work is a circus. People do stupid sit? I laugh and keep doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
Drag doesn’t know how they do things in America, but in drag’s country, the post is full of spam. No decent person uses it, it’s all just corporations and politicians trying to advertise. It’s a vector for capitalism to inject more BS into our lives. On that ground drag opposes the existence of the post office. It would be okay if they had controls against abuse of the system, but they don’t.
drag opposes the existence of the post office.
If speaking in the 3rd person didn’t show the caliber of mind you’re working with “opposing the existence of the post office” definitely would.
Yeah, there’s a lot a that here, too. But the way or post works is that no tax money goes to support it. It’s fully supported by the customers that use it.
Even when the post office turns a profit, congress will take that money and/or downsize the labor force.
Yes it is - you can continue to do good in the ways you can manage.
Until they get purged for not towing the party line.
Better to do the work they can to help until they’re forced out.
Hopefully they are financially stable and have good enough job prospects to just be able to find a new job of equal pay in their area fairly quickly on a timetable of ‘i have no idea when i am going to be blacklisted’.
Also - government jobs often have to offer severance for non-performance related termination.
Unless they just rewrite those rules/regulations to avoid that.
Which is their whole plan.
So assuming you’re an American. I hate to break it to you but your government has done way worse stuff than elect an orange guy. I seriously doubt everything done holds up to the slightest scrutiny to your moral and ethical code. The only difference is now you are aware of it. If it was me I would ask myself if I felt guilty for the work I had done already. If I did I would stop if not I wouldn’t.
The slightest effort at extrapolation makes this whole idea monumentally short-sighted.
What is the difference between a rebel and a revolutionary?
A plan?
Maybe, but I think it may also be possible they mean the same thing but from different perspectives or maybe whether you are willing to cross some line like dying or killing for a cause. There was a disagreement around 100 years ago when WW2 ended between philosophers Sartre and Camus about how to be free and whether violence and murder can be justified for political goals. Camus supported the French in WW2 but did not support political violence outside of war, in The Rebel he rejects revolutionary violence as it undermines/betrays yourself and is utopian and absolutist. Sartre thought violence could be justified for the right cause like communism to build and maintain a system for justice and freedom until it was obvious the tankies had taken over during the revolution reaction in Hungary. Sartre became an apologist for Soviet revolutionary violence until '56 and Camus was an advocate for nonviolent rebellion. I don’t know what the answer is or if there is one.
Working for the agency isn’t the problem on its own. If your job requires you to do something that is against your morals, resist up to and including loudly leaving that job if that’s what’s required. But until then it’s more important than ever to stick it out and push to make things better any way you can.
You work for the government, not for whatever yoyo happens to be President at any given time. You wouldn’t necessarily leave a private sector job if the CEO changed.
OTOH, this administration has been making a point of wanting to make government so small they can drown it in the bathtub. Unless you work in one of the very few Project 2025 priorities, they will probably eliminate your job eventually. So keep a keen eye out for alternatives.
I’d leave my job if Musk would become CEO at my job.
Bro I may sabotage it until I get dismissed and use that insider information to short his stock. See how elmo likes being on the losing end of stock manipulation.
Do you feel that your “customers” are the administration or the general public? Whom do you feel that you are serving in your job? Do you feel that the directions given to you by your administration are legal and safe and reasonable? Do you feel that the directions given to you by your administration cause a disadvantage to yourself or your “customers”?
You could try to clutch at straws to justify staying in your job. You might be able to reasonably determine that your feelings for your administration don’t affect the performance of your job. Maybe staying in your job is the best way to benefit your “customers” and obstruct the administration.
Only you can decide how you feel and what is an appropriate match for your own moral and ethical position.
We need people like you to resist when you feel like it’s the right thing to do. You took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. As cringe as it may sound, we need you and others like you to do that now more than ever…because there is an obvious threat.
Yup. Watch The Good Place, then ask again.
