The D.C. Chainsaw Massacre: My long-ago stint as a federal employee

Put down the chainsaw, Elon, before you hurt somebody

When I saw that Elon Musk, the first South African to "assume" the presidency of the United States, was wielding a real live chainsaw over the livelihoods of our federal workforce, I wondered what that must feel like on a day-to-day or even a minute-to-minute basis.

I don't believe I've ever worked for the federal government, but I could be wrong.

Wait, I just remembered something.

I'd like to withdraw my plea, you honor, and provide an update to the record based on new information that has just come into my brain. Or that just came to the front of my brain from the back of my brain.

Shortly after leaving college I served as a VISTA volunteer one summer in the deepest part of the Deep South.

VISTA, which stood for Volunteers in Service to America, was indeed a federal program designed as a sort of domestic Peace Corps.

Only we weren't volunteers at all.