This horrific catastrophe has a silver lining

The United States government is no longer able to protect us from real hazards, such as flash floods, because it’s shifting funds to fake hazards, such as a non-existent immigrant crime wave.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been stripped down so much it can barely respond to emergencies, yet it’s funding detention centers such as “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades.

The National Weather Service’s San Angelo office, responsible for some of the areas hardest hit by Friday’s flooding, is missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and meteorologist.

The Weather Service’s nearby San Antonio office, which covers other areas hit by the floods, is missing a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer who are supposed to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate.

The office’s warning coordination meteorologist left on April 30, after taking the early retirement package offered by Musk’s DOGE to reduce the number of federal employees.

At both offices, the vacancy rate is roughly double what it was when Trump returned to the White House in January.

It’s the same across much of the federal government. Callers can’t get through to Social Security offices. Hazardous waste sites and drinking water facilities aren’t being inspected. National Park services have been scaled back. There aren’t enough air-traffic controllers to safely guide takeoffs and landings at the nation’s major airports.

Trump’s newly-enacted Big Ugly Bill will take funds out of Medicaid and food stamps. For what? To finance another giant tax cut for the rich, along with 10,000 more ICE agents and a gulag of detention camps.

I’d like to believe that this worsening catastrophe may eventually have positive consequences.

For one thing, it could help us appreciate what our government is for. And why we need a competent and effective civil service rather than Trump lackeys and sycophants.

It will also push every American to choose sides, between a government that protects us from real dangers or a police state, between American democracy or Trump fascism.

Some have already been forced to choose — managing partners at law firms, a few university presidents, some top editors, federal judges, and many government employees.

But as the axe of Trump fascism comes down harder on America, the rest of us will have to choose.

We will demand a democracy that works for the people.

As we become unprotected from corporate malfeasance, climate change, fraud, ill-health, horrific accidents, and toxic chemicals — all so that big corporations and their top executives and major shareholders can make even bigger profits — more of us will take a stand.

As the nation becomes a police state with an internal army and a gulag of prison camps, more of us will speak out.

It will be a national reckoning.

It may be our last best hope.

• Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com