Democracy Under Siege: A Friend's Inside Account

A Chilling Conversation with an Old Friend (and a Call to Courage)

Sometimes, the most unsettling truths come from the most familiar voices. I recently reconnected with a childhood friend, someone I hadn't spoken to in years. She now works in HR for a major government office, a dedicated civil servant. Our conversation, initially a catch-up, quickly turned into a stark and disturbing glimpse into the current state of our government.

Reach out to your friends who are social servants now. Find out directly what is happening in our government. It is not all being reported by the mainstream media who gloss over things as though this is a typical audit. IT IS NOT. Regular audits actually use auditors and do not act like the Musk-goons who have no experience in auditing.

She confirmed what I'd been hearing: funds ordered to be unfrozen are still held up. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. What she described was a systematic dismantling of public service, a quiet but brutal purge.

"They're firing people," she said, her voice tight, "under the guise of 'poor performance.' People with stellar reviews, years of dedicated service… gone."

Her own small office, already understaffed, has been gutted. Ten percent of her team is gone, and travel budgets – crucial for their work with rural clients – have been frozen. This means no oversight, no accountability in the very areas that need it most.

Career social workers, accountants, trainers – those who’ve dedicated their lives to ensuring federal programs function as Congress intended – are being targeted. Particularly those who took promotions, placing them back in a probationary period.

She urgently told me to tell others to download their personnel files. "I can't guarantee fair hearings or even proper paperwork processing anymore. We're so short-staffed."

The ethics here are glaring. These are civil servants, people who believe in public service, who are now being treated with utter contempt. They’re being terrorized.

"They just want to do their jobs," she said, her voice heavy with frustration. "But they can’t. They're all afraid."

This isn't just about budget cuts or restructuring. This is about eroding trust in our institutions, about dismantling the very fabric of our democracy. It's about silencing those who are dedicated to serving the public.

My friend's story is a chilling reminder that democracy isn't a given. It's something we have to actively protect, and right now, it's under attack. This is happening now, and it’s happening quietly. We need to pay attention.

But amidst this darkness, I also want to offer a beacon of hope. We have good people, courageous people, working within these systems, fighting for humanity and the progress of peace, justice, and equity. They are there. And we must also be there, supporting them to be courageous and to help them when they are down.

It requires each of us to look at our own boots and say, "What can I do? How can I help?" and then act. We do not yet feel all the results of what has just happened and as more and more people are affected there will be ever more suffering.

In times like these, every act of kindness and compassion matters, as does our strong defense of democratic institutions—even when that requires speaking truth to power. We cannot sit idly by. We must call out those who are being unhelpful and stand in solidarity with those who are courageously working to uphold our democracy while creating a future with MORE chance for justice, equity and inclusion rather than go back to a caste system with institutionalized racism, injustices and using violence as their "m.o.". (Look to Russia. Is that what we want to become? Their interference in our elections these past 10+ years has gotten us to where we are now.)

Surely there are more of us that want peace, love and kindness upon this planet than those who want to be controlled by the most extremely wealthy people this planet has ever seen and think that's going to be the best plan for the USA! We are going to have to come together to fight this, what is coming. Find your grounding and come on! We CAN do this! We have to do it together and then we can remake what was broken into something better.