Gulliver in Washington, D.C.

In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Lemuel Gulliver is shown around the Grand Academy of Lagado in which all sorts of projects are being conducted to improve the lives of the citizens. These projects included the following:

• Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers to warm the air in raw, inclement summers
• Reducing human excrement to its original food
• Learning to plow fields with pigs motivated by strategically placed acorns
• Extracting silk from spiders
• Developing a technique for building a house by starting at the roof and working down to the foundation
• A team of blind men learning to discern the color of paint by feel and smell

Of course each of these efforts was a colossal waste of time and money, and Swift was satirizing the stupidity of government waste in his own day.

I was reminded of his satire some time ago when reading about the some of the government programs the Trump administration has been keen on eliminating since his inauguration. Here are just a few examples:

• $45 million for diversity scholarships in Burma (Myanmar).
• $40 million for social and economic inclusion of "sedentary migrants" in Colombia, benefiting Venezuelan refugees.
• $10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique, reportedly for AIDS prevention.
• $20 million for the Arab "Sesame Street" a program focused on education and promoting inclusivity for young children.
• Programs aimed at promoting LGBTQ+ advocacy or acceptance in countries like Botswana, Belize, and Peru, including funding for an LGBTQ+ comic book.
• $325,000 for a program adapting an LGB+ teen pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys.
• $22.6 billion for aiding illegal migrants through resettlement programs, home and car purchases, and loans.
• $7.5 billion for funding a few dozen electric vehicle stations across the nation.

Those who complain about the work that DOGE has done, and is doing, should understand that had the government not so severely abused taxpayers in the past, there wouldn't be so much appetite for paring it down today.

There may be worthwhile programs that've been thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak, but the abuse has been so massive that there's little inclination to spend time drawing subtle distinctions. The government workers who've lost their jobs in the first six months of the current administration have only themselves and/or their colleagues to blame.