Gardens need careful pruning to promote healthy production. Ripping things up with a chainsaw only destroys
I saw geese flying yesterday. Spring may be coming and my thoughts turn to the pruning I need to do before the growing season.
My plum trees have some crossed branches that need to come out. Trees I recently planted need their lowest limbs removed. My lilacs will be pruned of their oldest growth after blooming. Throughout the summer other species will be pruned and damaged or diseased plant material will be removed.
Of course, we dare not ignore the constant need for weed removal. I try to keep my gardens happy, healthy, and productive and pruning and weeding are important components of that maintenance. Constant work but we all know the consequences of ignoring it.
Such is the way of growing things. Not just managed green spaces. We keep our hair and fingernails in check. Groom our dogs and trim the hooves of our horses.
Heretofore I’ve spoken of living entities — plants and animals. Nonliving systems can also grow and become tangled, unwieldy, and less productive. Now I speak of our government and its accompanying bureaucracy.
For anyone who has filled out seemingly random and useless and duplicate paperwork, the metaphor of pruning will resonate. Likewise DOGE (pronounced Doh-zhay thanks to Ryan Grim), resonates with people who agree with the concept but don’t pay much attention to or understand the ramifications of its actions.
I can understand the sympathy for the concept while abhorring how that sympathy has been weaponized to cripple, if not outright destroy, important programs and departments. Arbitrary firing of personnel (How many departments now!?!) is akin to randomly slashing branches from my beloved plum trees without regard to their placement or fruiting history or proper time to do it.
Before slashing personnel, let’s look at processes. What purpose does this particular form serve? Is it duplicative? Is it necessary? For instance, means testing in many, if not all, cases costs more than it saves.
I’m thinking here of the paperwork required for reduced or free school lunches. Just feed the kids, dammit.
Likewise the search for phantom abuse of any system. What are the benefits of this particular program? Who does it benefit? Is this the most effective way of delivering that benefit? These are the questions entrusted to our elected officials — all of them — and their administrative designees not a handful of barely post adolescent computer algorithmists seeking nothing more than the kicks of destruction and approval of the Doh-zhay overlord.
Government agencies are not lilac bushes. They can’t be cut to the ground and come back healthy and rejuvenated. Cuts may take years to restore and all that while their function is impaired.
Our Founders set up democratic systems to address the needs of the citizenry. They envisioned processes. As citizens we vote for those we believe will most serve our needs. Our system has grown unwieldy and some of those within it corrupt. The system of checks and balances has become unchecked and unbalanced.
I need not name names for this audience but those wielding the chainsaw do nothing to right the dysfunction of our system.The gardener in me can agree with the need for pruning but it must be done in a studied, judicious, and democratic manner.
Kathy Gustafson, a lifelong South Dakotan who lives in Brookings, is a mother and grandmother who is now retired and concerned about the "Balkanization" of our country. It takes a lot for her to speak out, she said, but she has reached that point.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
