In the past, I’ve always assumed that a phrase like “not my president” had to do with a hissy fit by some snowflake way out on the right or left wing of political bent. But this time the president has decided on its own that it is not my president. And that goes for more than half the population of the US, too.
First of all, in response to the tragedy in Utah, where Yet Another Killing happened a couple days ago, the orange baby declared that it “couldn’t care less” about anybody not in agreement with its own far right political bent. Every president before this one at least tried to unite the country, not divide it further.
Not only that, but there’s this new thing called the “National Design Studio.” I’m not linking to it; you can easily find it on your own. What it claims is that it’s intended to provide a more efficient interface to government programs. Programs the orange baby has often made much less efficient already by cutting staff and funding, and by sending in shock troops camouflaged as tech bros called “doge” to dismantle systems after they hijack all the data they can use for surveillance.
Taking the National Design Studio “website” (okay, it’s just a single page) as an example, here’s how it has already betrayed its stated goals:
• The page is very large (megabytes) even though it’s really just text. If you’re a rural citizen with a slow connection (the orange baby seems to be making sure that can’t change) it will take forever to load (or just won’t.) So much for those citizens being “designed for.”
• The page is not designed for accessibility by any group of disabled citizens. There are many different kinds of disabilities, and many ways to design websites and pages to accommodate them. This page includes none of those. So much for those citizens being ‘designed for.”
If you bother to read the text, it’s poorly written and full of typos. And it suggests that it — or this “design studio” whatever it really is — is doing something that’s never been done before: making government services available (more available, easier, or whatever). But people have been working on this for many years, and the orange baby’s junta has already dismantled some of those efforts. As Ethan Marcotte says:
…it is digital design intended for the privileged few, one that actively excludes people who don’t conform to a specific, discriminatory definition of “eligible.”
