You Want Me to Go in to the Office?

Perish the Thought

File: Edgar Degas - Washer Women.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

As usual, there is too much going on in the world to keep track of. I am hovering over two churchy items—the repentance of Steve Lawson and the ongoing troubles in the Church of England surrounding clerical abuse and whether or not Steve Cottrell should resign for allegedly covering up instances of sexual harassment (what is it with people named Steve?). And these are both very interesting, but the Cottrell thing only hit the news late in the day, and I’m curious about what kind of punditry will emerge, which may or may not boil my onion. So, in the spirit of seeing what shakes out at least until tomorrow, I thought I would wander over into the land of the Work From Home debate, for, honestly, that seems kind of fun.

So, as most of the Western world is aware by this time, every day President Trump signs a flurry of Executive Orders [EOs], not to be confused with Eastern Orthodoxy [EO], hang on…there’s a meme:

And some of these Executive Orders (henceforth EOs) are absolutely brilliant, like the one yesterday which stopped all federal funding to any hospital that is caught transing children.

As Johnny said, President Trump must have listened to Marianne Edgar Budde because here he is, literally having mercy on the children. Whatever else happens, this single order should incite much rejoicing over the protection of the most vulnerable amongst us—protection from predatory pharmaceutical companies and doctors who should not be allowed to keep their licenses for ever doing such a thing.

Plus, all of the pro-life actions President Trump has taken are really astonishing. It seems the executive branch can stop sending federal money to Planned Parenthood and those kinds of organizations. All that time, all those babies, and suddenly the pipeline of money that pays for their destruction is shut off. And so, in some strange happenstance, the long-fought pro-life cause is given new energy and focus.

But one grand action by President Trump might, it seems, appear to be controversial, not along political partisan lines, but familial ones. This is the question of having to go In Person to a location other than your domicile to do your work. Immediately upon taking office, the President commanded all federal workers to show up to the office by the end of the week, and now he is offering a lot of them the chance to quit and get paid until September. If only ten percent take this grand offer, apparently One Hundred Billion Dollars will be saved by the American Government. Imagine how many eggs a person could buy with that.