If soldiers are going to be deployed to your city, what would you prefer they do: point a rifle in your face or mow your grass? This is not a question I ever expected to have to consider in my days on this planet, but life is full of surprises. As part of Donald Trump’s military deployment to address Washington DC’s so-called “crime emergency”, national guard troops are being tasked with various groundskeeping duties around the United States capital. These duties include spreading mulch around cherry trees, picking up trash and general maintenance of public spaces. The president must have been too embarrassed to get Four Seasons Total Landscaping involved again, so he got the military to do it instead.
It’s a real “swords into ploughshares” moment, or in this case, “M4 rifles into those grabber sticks you use to pick up plastic bottles full of piss.” It’s almost sweet, if you separate the move from literally all outside context and just think about a part-time soldier pruning your bush. The national guard is actually trained for sanitation and groundskeepingbut they are usually deployed for such purposes in a crisis like a natural disaster or even during the height of the Covid pandemic. Except: there’s no natural disaster, no stay-at-home orders due to a deadly virus, no wildfires, no floods. The only crisis here is man-made.
It’s usually the responsibility of the National Parks Service to beautify spaces in DC, but amid recent cuts by the Trump administration, the number of parks employees in the city fell from 200 to a mere 20, according to the Washington Post. Still, the guard wasn’t deployed to toss cigarette butts. This is happening because of alleged rampant crime in a city where the violent crime rate before Trump’s deployment was down by about 20% over the same period in earlier years. Some estimates place the cost of the DC military deployment at around a $1m a day. I will happily rake your leaves for half that.
The guards assigned to cleaning up the capital are not armed and may be happy to be on trash duty rather than engaged in more aggressive operations. I’m thrilled for them, to be honest. This is the best version of an awful situation, but from my perspective, it could be even better. Why are they just cleaning up parks when they could be doing so much more with $1m a day in taxpayer revenue? Let’s really put these people to work.
Sure, I love visiting my local park or perusing the public square, but you know where I really spend the majority of my time? At home. On my couch. Watching television. I’d toss in an extra $50 if the national guard would organize my refrigerator. I never can seem to keep track of all the produce in there and it inevitably goes bad. I’d get that $50 back just from the cost savings of not having to throw out old spinach every week.
How about car repair? My passenger side door has a small ding in it. Grab a hammer and pop that thing back out. I need to call my mother back. She’s in her late 70s and is clearly very lonely. Maybe someone from the national guard can stop by to check on her for me. Pop a finger under her nose just to be sure she’s still breathing. I make a mean spaghetti bolognese from a Stanley Tucci recipe. The guard should come over and have some. I always make too much, and then I forget the leftovers are in the fridge because … I can’t organize my fridge.
You might say that these are all things that someone else (me) should already be doing. Sure, I cannot deny that calling my mother is actually my responsibility, but is that so different from the guard entering a city to do what an already well-funded police department is actively engaged in every day? How is this different from firing most of the DC-based parks service members, then spending thousands of dollars to have someone else do it? And until my specific needs are met, how can we, as a nation, truly be free? Someone has to do the dirty work of calling my mother. I don’t see any volunteers lining up, and as a taxpayer, I’ve already invested in this service. The national guard has entered my home town of Los Angeles, Washington DC, and potentially others in the future, without anyone asking me (or really any other actual citizen of those places). If I’m going to be stuck with an unwanted houseguest who costs me seven figures every day of their visit, then I ask them to please do their fair share.
My mom would greatly appreciate it.
