EDITOR:

In George Orwell’s nightmarish masterpiece, 1984, the government – endlessly stomping on Winston Smith’s face with a boot, hobnailed and metaphorical – is a totalitarian regime called Oceania. It has several ministries including the Ministry of Love where enemies of the party/state (they are one and the same) are tortured, the Ministry of Truth which disseminates state lies and propaganda and rewrites history according to party dictates, and the Ministry of Peace where the planning and implementation of continuous and never-ending warfare occurs.

The current administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with its stated purpose of “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity, ” seems to me to be similarly misnamed. It would appear its true reason for existence is, like the above mentioned ministries, the opposite of its given name and supposed function.

We learn as we get older to judge people and things by what they do and not by what they say. UNproductivity. Examples of this abound even though Elon Musk and his merry band of young hackers have only been around for a couple of months: estimates of more than 80,000 layoffs or firings and for International Development (USAID) and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the Department of Treasury (IRS). There are too many examples of their egregious activities to list here.

I, like everybody else, except perhaps for certain members of the U.S. industrial war machine, applaud the idea of eliminating waste and fraud in government at all levels. However, there is an appropriate way to do it and an inappropriate way. This administration’s immediate firing of seventeen countless stories of loss and harm (some of them right here in the U.P.) and unprecedented levels of turmoil and chaos in the federal government and our country.

And their work has just begun.

If you share my concerns about the current administration and DOGE in particular, I would encourage you to let your voice be heard by participating in any of the protests that will be occurring on Saturday, April 5, 2025 locally in Escanaba, statewide in Lansing, and nationally in Washington, D.C.

Michael K. Peach

Escanaba