Dislocations

My Country’s Capitol: Photos Over the Years

Departing on a plane…from the Washington Monument to the Capitol Building.

At a kite festival…

Walking by the Capitol on a beautiful autumn day.

Photos © 2007-2015 mae sander.

A Horror Show In Washington

Good things about our government: I read about a recall of canned tuna that was issued a few days ago. “Canned tuna sold at grocery stores in 26 states and in Washington, D.C., was recalled because of botulism risks, the Food and Drug Administration and Tri-Union Seafoods said on Friday.” I had a can of tuna from Trader Joe’s that I was worried about, so I looked on the FDA website. (“Canned Tuna Sold at Trader Joe’s and Costco Is Recalled Over Botulism Risks,” New York Times, Feb 12, 2025) 

My tuna wasn’t involved in this recall, but in retrospect, I started to worry about a much bigger issue: what’s going to happen to the FDA? Thousands of jobs in the Federal Government are being discontinued, and many services that I would say are vital are being “thrown in the wood chipper” (as Elon Musk himself describes it). I began thinking of all the ways the government contributes to my well-being and my life style. So many agencies do good things that I depend on: the FDA, the NIH, law enforcement, farm support and on and on. 

Will all inspection of food be discontinued, so that we have to accept whatever we get from the food processing industry? Will we have to trust slaughter houses to keep meat sanitary and safe? Who will track down the cause of a cluster of salmonella cases or e-coli outbreaks? Will auto safety measures and regulation be abandoned? Will drug manufacturers be allowed to release any drugs the choose, without even the limited testing that’s been done up to now? It’s been easy in the past to dismiss the benefits of government regulation in our lives, but if you think about it, we really depend on it. Do you trust the big food processors? Do you trust big pharma? 

Regulation of food and agriculture has been a response to public concern for over a century, with many emerging issues in the last few decades. I’ve been reading a book about the development of attitudes in the US about processed food, healthy eating, and the development of many ideas about what is safe and desirable. Specifically: 

“Concerns about the purity  and safety of the food supply had been around for a very long time,  but technological changes that accompanied twentieth-century  industrialization, such as the growing use of chemicals in food  production and the industrialization of agriculture, raised new concerns about risks related to everything from chemical additives, preservatives, and packaging to the use of antibiotics in  animal agriculture.” (Charlotte Bilekoff. Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge, p.55)

There are many valuable services at risk. I love to travel. The government supports the interstate highway system, the National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and National Seashores. The government enables the functioning of air travel through airports, air traffic control, and more. Like almost every senior in the US, I depend on Social Security and Medicare. If you live here, you can probably think of quite a few government programs that benefit you. What’s in jeopardy? We don’t know yet. The acquiescence of the Republican majority in congress to anything the President and his minions demand is a horror show in and of itself.

We are helpless, destabilized, and  bewildered, when confronted with so many attacks on government programs and the Constitutional rule of law in such a short time. In less than a month, we’ve seen the demolition of  cultural institutions; for example, the Kennedy Center (see Ann Telnaes cartoon left, from her Substack). International programs, particularly USAID, have been gutted. Support for assimilation of legal immigrants has been discontinued through defunding of welfare agencies, not to mention cancelling citizenship for American-born children. We’ve heard false accusations of fraud in many agencies and disruption of law enforcement  such as firings at the FBI and showdown at Justice. Alarming trends include cuts in funds for medical research supported by the NIH, ending fights against corruption such as shuttering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and cancelling other protections, and placing incompetent appointees in high positions (the anti-vax Kennedy for health is the most extreme) …and on and on — every newspaper has numerous articles about the destruction of organizations that were put in place by acts of Congress but are being destroyed by unprecedented fiat from the Executive branch.

We are also helpless in view of some extreme acts of cruelty towards immigrants, even if they are here illegally. We may have a bad conscience when we think about the knock on the door in the middle of the night, and the flights full of shackled people. Echoes of roundups of the Jews in Nazi Germany? I fear so.

I feel more helpless than ever as I watch this nightmare emerging —

“The pandemic reduced normal human interactions. Severed from one another, Americans deepened their parasocial attachment to social-media platforms, which foment alienation and rage. Hundreds of thousands of people plunged into an alternate mental universe during COVID‑19 lockdowns. When their doors reopened, the mania did not recede. Conspiracies and mistrust of the establishment—never strangers to the American mind—had been nourished, and they grew.” (Source: The Atlantic)

Did I miss anything? YES, absolutely. Every time I read the headlines there’s another outrage. A final quote:

“R.F.K. Jr. is now in charge of the F.D.A., N.I.H. and C.D.C., to which Americans said, ‘OMG,’ ‘WTF’ and ‘FML.’” — JIMMY FALLON

Blog post © 2025 mae sander,