Fired Government Workers Are Mad At The Wrong Person

As fun as it is hearing the testimonies of weeping “career civil servants” (unaccountable bureaucrats) dismissed from their make-work jobs by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, these people have every right to be angry. Their anger is, however, misplaced.

The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast had a particularly enjoyable episode this week featuring countless bureaucrats describing their emotional turmoil as a result of having recently lost their jobs. One guy said it was his “dream job” to work as a bureaucrat because, “you’re a citizen, and that’s the best thing that you can do.” Talk about an underachiever.

But one of them said he felt “betrayed.” A former Department of Education employee said the same thing this week on CNN.

In all sincerity, they have every reason to feel that way, but they weren’t betrayed by Musk or President Trump or the voters who put them in power to do exactly what they’re doing. They were lied to by an endless series of people predating 2025, both Republicans and Democrats, who had no right telling anyone they were being given a permanent, taxpayer-funded job with the federal government. And that’s to say nothing of the unjustifiable salaries, benefits, and retirement packages with negligible productivity requirements.

These newly un-jobbed people find themselves in a very similar position to the thousands of migrants who trekked by foot through jungles and gang zones to get to the U.S. only to be told by the new president, “Cerrado.” I’d be mad, too. There are some truly heartbreaking stories of migrants who spent all of their money to get here, having nothing left, only to then be turned away. But that’s no one’s fault but the previous administration, led by Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who had no business promising entry to anyone and everyone who bothered to cross the southern border. They were given false hope by people who couldn’t guarantee anything.

In America, there are no guarantees outside of the right to vote as a citizen. Everything else is at the mercy of who we elect to uphold the Constitution and fulfill our wishes. In November we elected a president who said he would close the Southern border to the uninvited and right-size a federal government everyone knows is rife with waste, fraud, and graft. It wasn’t done maliciously. It was done to reverse the irresponsible, corrosive decisions of the past that led to too many unwanted outcomes, like a servant class of exploited laborers and an unaccountable bureaucracy resistant to the will of the people.

That anyone benefitted from such long-term tragedies is a tragedy in itself. Many of them, maybe most, had no idea that they were participating in some very big problems. That’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t mean the problem should remain.

They should be mad because they were deceived. They just need to think about who it really was who betrayed them and the best way to settle that score.