Much of the nation and most of our major news outlets are very, very slowly coming to grips with the fact that Donald Trump, real estate baron and reality TV star, is gonna be our next president.

Numerous columnists continue, day-after-day, to tell readers — especially those in states with big electoral votes who either voted for Trump or didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton — how stupid they were (are) and how we and they will suffer during the next four years. If they are right — IF being the operative word — high noon on Jan. 20 is the start of a long countdown to Doomsday.

Things are so bad, so gloomy, that even the media, which loves whacking Washington-based bureaucrats (even if they actually work in a VA hospital in Arizona or an air traffic control center in Chicago) is looking lovingly at the civil service. Newspapers and TV networks who have beat on bureaucrats for the last eight years — because they are overpaid, fireproof or there are just too damn many of them — now, suddenly, see federal workers as the two-legged version of rare and noble beasts, like tigers or giraffes, who may be headed for extinction under a Trump presidency.

The first fear is the federal hiring freeze that many people expect to be one of the first executive orders issued by the new president. While that is certainly a worthy topic, and a natural for headline writers, long-time federal workers know it really isn’t the end of civilization as we know it.

Many incoming presidents, especially if they are of a different political party, freeze federal hiring upon taking office. It’s almost a knee-jerk reaction. It appears to be a positive move to many and it shows you mean business, even if you don’t quite understand the business model of the federal government.

Freezes are almost immediately coupled with exemptions — for the Defense Department, Homeland Security, Social Security, the IRS, the Veterans Affairs Department, and key components of the Agriculture, Interior, State and Justice departments. Shortly after a “freeze” is imposed, only a small percentage of the government — maybe 20 percent — is actually subject to it. Yet a freeze warning serves both sides well: The anti-bureaucrat lobby that sees big government as bad (except for the vital part that sends out their Social Security check) and the new-found-friends of civil servants who, from time-to-time, move federal workers from whack-a-mole status to national treasures.

The lead editorial in the Jan. 3 edition of The New York Times was headlined “Mr. Trump, Bureaucracy Apprentice.” It, that is he, goes downhill from there.

The Times noted that with each election, certain politicians of both parties “portray Washington as a Gomorrah of influence peddling, gold bricking and waste, funded by hardworking taxpayers.”

Gomorrah, for those not familiar with the Old Testament, was a bad place: Las Vegas without any rules.

The editorial noted — correctly — that Republican politicians are more likely to take swipes at the bureaucracy than Democrats. It also pointed out that many people Trump team members especially have no appreciation of what civil servants do, and how well they do it.

The editorial is good news, finally, for feds who usually only lead the news when they’ve been caught having wild parties in the desert (GSAgate), or cooked the books (VAgate) concerning veterans care.

The reality is that long-suffering feds, who have been-there-done-that, will survive the coming freeze. And that those portions of the government that are hit by it won’t be shivering for very long.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

On April 24, 2004, Chad Fell blew the largest recorded bubblegum bubble without using hands. The bubble measured 20 inches in diameter.

Source: Guinness World Records

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