Editor's note: This story is posted with permission from the anonymous federal employee who shared it with us. Some edits were made for length and clarity.
Back when United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was still bustled with activity, there was a wall we would pass with the names of USAID colleagues who had died in service to their country. The names of those who had sacrificed their lives did not include the many more who had been injured overseas or simply risked their lives to represent their country overseas.
Over and over again, my colleagues and I willingly ventured into uncertain and politically unstable regions. And even though we knew our wonderful colleagues from the US Bureau of Diplomatic Security had our backs, we also knew there were no guarantees. Why did we do it? Because we believed the best way to help the U.S. project its strength to the world was by embodying its compassion. There was never a moment when I stepped off a plane that I did not feel the weight of that responsibility.
It is a false dichotomy to say that we, the greatest nation on earth, cannot both take care of our own people and help the world to be a safer and more prosperous place.
We can absolutely do both. It is a shameful lie for our elected officials to say otherwise and a response that we should not be willing to accept. But I suppose it should surprise no one that we are refusing our compassion to the world when we seemingly think of compassion as something of such little value that we cannot even extend it to our citizens.
As I watch my colleagues at USAID and across the federal government struggle with an uncertain financial future, I cannot help but wonder how did we come to this? I, by the grace of God, find myself in a different place. I can retire but many cannot. The cost to them and their families will be very real. And as it trickles out to the rest of the economy, there is hardly a person or community that won’t be touched or even decimated by what is happening.
Many communities around the country—in red states and blue states—rely heavily on both the services and income that federal jobs provide. But as we indiscriminately slash and burn through the federal workforce and aggressively shutter the doors of many parts of the government, those communities will most likely become ghost towns.
While I actively grieve our abandonment of federal services that represent what had been our most strongly held values, I grieve more for the world we could have and should have been. Even if there were a way to reverse all the current damage that has been done, not just to how people around the world now view us but to the financial trauma that was so needlessly wrought on federal workers, the damage to our future selves I fear can never truly be fixed. It is easy to break things. It is hard to put them together again.