America's two Washingtons -- ours and the one in D.C. -- are geographically about as far apart as any two U.S. points you want to name.
And most of us are just fine with that. Living under the open skies of this Washington lets many of us feel relatively free from whatever happens in the other Washington. Nothing but lying politicians, smarmy lobbyists and lazy bureaucrats back there anyway, right?
Sure -- to a point. But whether we realize it or not, the U.S. government pumps a lot of money into the Evergreen State -- roughly $27 billion last year. That represents nearly a third of our state budget. And it doesn't even count federal dollars for higher education, research institutions and nonprofits in our state.
Who do you think is in the middle of keeping our freeways, forests, bridges, schools, hospitals, airports, wildlife, rails, dams and waterways safe and maintained? Who bails out local farmers when crops fail or weather withers the harvest? Who makes sure hungry Yakima Valley kids have nutritious food waiting for them at school?
Well for years, it's been your old Uncle Sam. Lately, however, he's taking heavy fire from powerful billionaires and shady foreign interests who've reimagined him as a thieving villain. People like President Donald Trump and his unelected attack dog, Elon Musk, seem to think government isn't working for the people anymore -- it's working against them, they insist.
They're dead wrong, though. And now, with Trump, Musk and a rogues' gallery of wild-eyed appointees at the controls, this Washington is getting a live-action civics lesson as it finds out -- painfully -- just how much benefit we've been getting from that other Washington.
As extensive reporting by the YH-R's Jasper Kenzo Sundeen spelled out last week, our region is learning the hard way.
We're seeing firsthand the debunking of the stereotypical assumptions about federal workers being parasites who gorge themselves at the public trough and waste our taxes. In fact, we have front-row seats to watch as those old myths dissolve -- along with the jobs of hundreds of local people who've served us for years in ag science, forest management, park maintenance, veterans centers and other fields.
The faceless bureaucrats who've long been derided by know-it-all barflies and podcast hosts everywhere, are actually turning out to be our neighbors, our youth group leaders, our fellow service club members. They've been quietly doing their jobs for years, competently carrying out the thankless work of keeping our community functioning.
Are they perfect? Of course not. But they don't go home and eat children for supper, either.
Yet suddenly, they're being unceremoniously fired, kicked out of their workplaces as if they were communist sympathizers or Russian spies.
Now who'll be able to help your aging father straighten out his veterans benefits -- assuming he still has them at all? Who'll answer your questions at the IRS office when you find out you're getting audited? Where will state fire crews get the equipment and personnel they need when this summer's wildfire season hits? Who can you complain to when your credit card company inexplicably jacks your interest rate up to 43%?
Elon Musk? Jeff Bezos? Mark Zuckerberg? Maybe Joe Rogan?
Evidently, this is just the beginning. With little research and no explanation, Trump's team has set its sights on disabling nearly every level of the federal government, threatening the health, jobs and safety of Americans from Yakima to Yreka to Yakutat.
A Wednesday memo from Russell Vought, the new director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, and Charles Ezell, who is acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, made that unmistakably clear.
"The federal government is costly, inefficient and deeply in debt. At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public," the memo said. "Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hard-working American citizens."
In this Washington, that means money to pay for "unproductive and unnecessary" expenditures like wildland firefighters and programs that benefit "radical interest groups" like impoverished schoolchildren, the disabled and fixed-income seniors.
Luckily, all these sacrifices by the many will at least benefit the ultra-rich, who are in for a whopping $4.5 trillion tax cut under a bill that just cleared the House of Representatives and is now on its way to the Senate.
So yeah -- maybe when you see the flames climbing over the ridge across the road this August, send Musk a message on X or write an all-caps appeal to Zuckerberg on Facebook.
It doesn't look like we'll have many other resources by then.