Why Ordinary People Ended the Shutdown


 

It seemed as if the shutdown would never end, until it did.

Ordinary people were not being hurt. And then they were.

It was not about officials suddenly opening their eyes. It was about who they saw, all along, as ordinary people.


I do enjoy Spike Lee movies. I watch Inside Man whenever I can. Near the end, Detective Denzel Washington begins to cut away at the “just like everyone else” public persona of bank director Christopher Plummer. The man is hiding something, and the detective starts by attacking the more obvious, harmless falsehoods.

You keep the rest of us safe and make it look easy.

[Skeptical laugh]….Pardon me!

What’s so amusing?

You say “the rest of us” Mr. Case. I mean, you gotta look around. The “rest of us” is a category that you haven’t qualified for in a long time.

“Ordinary people” is what defines you, me, mega-star actors, and most members of the Trump administration. All God’s children see themselves as ordinary people. After all, each of us is the singular individual with which each of us has the most contact.

Those with whom we rub shoulders everyday, co-workers, friends, co-congregants if we attend worship services, are all like us, in some respects, to some degree. We understand each other. We laugh at the same inside humor. We share similar problems and outlooks. We are ordinary, everyday people.

For the most part, this is not a conscious process. What we see as ordinary life is usually the common, unexceptional life we experience everyday. It is an easy thought process to fall into without any effort.

I thought about the insular views of ordinary life that we can fall into as I watched grimly laughable remarks by Trump officials, Trump family, and Trump. Each became a little more understandable when seen through the dark glass of how they viewed ordinary people through their own daily lives.

The ever cheerful Kevin Hassett, the chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, asked federal workers in trouble with bills, rent, food, and prescriptions to look on the bright side. At least they have some time off, especially those who had planned to take vacation anyway.

They can’t go to work and so then they have the vacation, but they don’t have to use their vacation days. And then they come back and then they get their back pay, then in some sense, they’re better off.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. After all, federal workers knew they would eventually get paid. They would, in fact, get every dollar in back pay they would have been getting in their paychecks. Everything would balance out. All they needed was to borrow what they needed.

Which, in the life of Wilbur Ross, is just how things work. In fact, that eventual payback that would be come for sure, would, for any billionaire, be regarded as a federal guarantee. No need for paperwork or collateral, or a credit check. If a bank knew it would come, a handshake would do.

Mr. Secretary, there are reports that there are some federal workers who are going to homeless shelters to get food.

Well, I know they are and I don’t really quite understand why.

Because as I mentioned before, the obligations that they would undertake, say borrowing from the bank or a credit union, are in effect federally guaranteed.

So the 30 days of pay that some people will be out is no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it.

The balance sheets would all even out after the shutdown was over, so what’s the big deal? A short term cash flow issue would disappear with a visit to any local, friendly, understanding banker. Then all would be right with the world.

Trump’s Economic Council Director, Larry Kudlow, thought workers should be given credit, although in the sense of congratulations rather than loans. He treated criticism of the Trump shutdown with disdain, as an attack on federal workers themselves.

The liberal press might see them as victims forced into impossible situations. But to Larry Kudlow, they were volunteers. They were not only at their posts because they love their country, but because they love their President enough to work for free.

Give them credit, okay? They honor us. They honor us by their service. I don’t care whether you’re Republican or Democrat. I mean that sincerely. They honor us.

Democrats have shut government down or either it’s us. You know what I’m saying.

They honor us and they do it because of their love for the country, and the office of the presidency and presumably their allegiance to President Trump. But whatever they’re doing it, give them some credit.

In his life, neighbors and friends could easily be found taking time from busy schedules for worthwhile community activities. Of course they should be given credit.

Daughter-in-law Lara Trump thought so too. She blamed Democrats and sympathized with those families with bills and rent. She even seemed to wax biblical, as if quoting from Deuteronomy. You will be loved by your children and grandchildren, yea even unto the third and fourth generations.

But she stepped on a rake, as her day-to-day life intruded. She characterized what she seems to have seen as unfair inconvenience. The Trump wall is bigger than you and your little bit of pain.

Listen. This is, it’s not fair to you and we all get that. But this is so much bigger than any one person. It is a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country. And their children and their grandchildren and generations after them will thank them for their sacrifice right now.

And of course, Mr. Trump knew, from the folks who work around his Oval Office, how federal workers feel about the inconveniences of the shutdown, and how all that was offset by their high opinion of their Commander-in-Chief.

And the people that will be paid, but maybe a little bit later, those people, many of them, are on my side.

But then, something terrible began to happen. Some of those loyal workers in and around the White House began to lose their own paychecks.

Kevin Hassett, who had been looking on the bright side, talking about how federal workers might see their weeks and months off as free vacation time, now noticed something darker:

Absolutely, government workers are going through a lot of pain right now. There are people that are having trouble making their rent payments. People are having trouble paying for their groceries. One of my staffers is driving an Uber. So, of course, there’s a lot of pain.

His own staffers had begun losing pay, so he could see there was a lot of pain.

Then the final blow hit. Airports servicing Washington, DC, announced slowdowns and cancellations because of staffing shortages. When Air Traffic Controllers applied for hardship leave and flights backed up, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Dulles International Airport, and Baltimore/Washington International Airport reported problems.

Senators couldn’t get flights. Lobbyists and visiting business executives couldn’t get home.

Suddenly, the hardship was not confined to some statistical abstraction. It was not those folks who couldn’t pay rent, who had to go to food banks. Now real people, ordinary people, friends of the Rosses, and Kudlows, and Hassetts, and Trumps, could not get a decent seat on a departing plane.

All it took after that, was Nancy Pelosi respectfully requesting President Trump to postpone or maybe cancel his beloved State of the Union speech.

When the hardship hit ordinary people, it got real.

Ordinary people.

Not folks like you and me. Ordinary people in the top executive suites, ordinary people working in the White House. Busy, wealthy ordinary people not used to waiting in airports.

And the shutdown ended.


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