We Go About Our Daily Lives While People Die

By Rob C.

Eighty people are dead in Central Texas. Most of them never saw it coming.

They weren’t crushed by collapsing walls or swept away by some freak, once-in-a-century tsunami. They were victims of something far more predictable, and far more political: government negligence. And not by accident — by design.

While we go about our daily lives, checking phones, worrying about bills, arguing over headlines, the consequences of Trump’s Big Brutal Budget — that ghastly monstrosity of a bill — are already taking shape. The bill hasn’t even fully landed yet, but the destruction is well underway, thanks to Trump’s appointees marching lockstep under Project 2025, a manifesto of cruelty disguised as policy.

The tragedy in Texas wasn’t an act of God. It was an act of government defunding.

According to local reports, the regional weather service had been operating with skeleton staffing for months — open positions frozen, equipment requests denied, emergency drills canceled. Forecasting teams were stretched thin, and critical early warning systems didn’t reach the public in time. All of this was preventable.

The National Weather Service — just one of the many agencies being gutted in the name of “small government” — is on life support. Why? Because in this new dystopian America, if you want to be warned that a wall of water is about to erase your neighborhood, you’ll need a subscription. That’s the plan.

Under Project 2025, Trump’s administration aims to privatize virtually all public services — from health care to disaster relief to, yes, weather alerts. No money? No warning. No shelter. No life.

But make no mistake — the government isn’t getting smaller. It’s just getting more selective.

The budget still showers obscene sums on the bloated military industrial complex. We’re still building $2 billion submarines to prepare for wars we pray never happen, while the Pentagon continues to lose track of tens of billions of dollars — oops! But don’t ask for flood insurance or hurricane prep unless you’re a defense contractor.

The fossil fuel industry? They're not suffering. They’re bathing in subsidies, tax breaks, and regulatory exemptions — even as they sue for the “right” to lie to the public about the climate crisis they’re helping to cause.

And the prison-industrial complex? Still thriving. Still rounding people up — mostly poor, mostly Black or brown — for the profit of private companies and political careers.

So yes, government is big. But not in the ways you think. It's not big because we help too many people. It’s big because we jail too many, bomb too much, and hoard power in the hands of too few.

We were told government couldn’t do anything right. That “the private sector is more efficient.” And so we let them take our schools, our utilities, our water, our transit — and now, our weather reports. All so billionaires can get richer while the rest of us drown — sometimes literally.

This is not just a budget. It’s a moral blueprint. And the message is crystal clear:

If you can't pay, you don't deserve to be saved.

So as we scroll through our phones and get on with our work, remember — while we go about our daily lives, people are dying. And unless we rise up to stop it, more will die… needlessly.