They are the engine that keeps our government running: the hundreds of thousands of federal workers across the country — those who survived DOGE’s slash-and-burn rampage earlier in the year — who show up every day to do the jobs the rest of us are largely unaware of, but on whose efforts we depend to shore up this country’s economic and physical infrastructure . . . and who, in turn, depend upon those jobs to support themselves and their families.

And they are once again — in what has become a regular annual ritual — being held hostage to the passage of a federal budget for 2026 that will make just one man in the Oval Office happy. If Congress cannot pass that budget bill by midnight on September 30th, the U.S. government — with the exception of essential services — will shut down on October 1st, and perhaps as many as half of those workers (based on the numbers from Donald Trump’s first-term record) could be placed on involuntary unpaid leave for an indeterminate length of time.

Members of Congress, of course, will continue to receive their full salaries and perks, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

And while Congress argues and threatens and nitpicks, those hundreds of thousands of loyal government employees, while not in a literal prison, are in limbo, scrambling to figure out how they will pay the rent and put food on the table if the shutdown does become a reality.

They are the innocent hostages of their own government, imprisoned without bars by the avarice of the leaders for whom some (but certainly not all) of them voted.

If the words of French philosopher Joseph de Maistre are true — if indeed “Every country has the government it deserves” — we must at some time have done something really terrible to deserve what we are being dragged through now.

*. *. *

But in this, our own Time of Troubles, let us not forget the literal hostages in prisons and penal colonies throughout Russia, Belarus and elsewhere, praying for a breakthrough in the negotiations that will set them free at last.

Once again, here is the list of the ones I know of:

Immigrant Detainees in Russia:

Migrants from the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

Prisoners of War:

The 19,500 Kidnapped Ukrainian Children
The People of Ukraine
The Azov 12

Endangered Exiles:

Mikita Losik
Yulia Navalnaya
Countless Journalists and Other Dissidents

Political Prisoners:

In Azerbaijan:

The “Azerbaijan 7”:
— Farid Mehralizada
— Ulvi Hasanli
— Sevinj Abbasova (Vagifqiai)
— Mahammad Kekalov
— Hafiz Babali
— Nargiz Absalamova
— Elnara Gasimova

In Belarus:

Ales Bialiatski
Andrei Chapiuk
Marya Kalesnikava
Uladzimir Labkovich
Marfa Rabkova
Valiantsin Stafanovic
Yuras Zyankovich

In China:

Chenyue Mao (American)

In Russia:

David Barnes (American)
Gordon Black (American)
Antonina Favorskaya
Konstantin Gabov
Robert Gilman (American)
Stephen James Hubbard (American)
Sergey Karelin
Timur Kishukov
Vadim Kobzev
Darya Kozyreva
Artyom Kriger
Michael Travis Leake (American)
Aleksei Liptser
Grigory Melkonyants
Nika Novak
Nadezhda Rossinskaya (a.k.a. Nadin Geisler)
Sofiane Sehili (French)
Igor Sergunin
Dmitry Shatresov
Robert Shonov
Grigory Skvortsov
Eugene Spector (American)
Laurent Vinatier
Robert Romanov Woodland (American)

You are not forgotten.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
9/28/25