Art Lien, New York Times/”A Sketch Artist’s View of Trump’s Impeachment Trial”

Quiet quitting in Washington

Make America Greater? Can’t even.

Jeffrey Denny

“Quiet quitting” is the new hot fake workplace trend that’s disemboweling, eviscerating, and sending the internet to bed without supper.

According to Merriam-Webster, “quiet quitting” means:

1: Being a pathetic whiney loser clinging to a job for the money like barnacles on Johnny Depp;

2: Torturing HR, colleagues, and bosses you’re way smarter than;

3: Being the toast of Millennial trend journalists and social media influencers that coddle Millennials for likes to monetize; and/or,

4: Ignoring life lessons offered by college commencement speakers, such as don’t be a pathetic whiney loser.

But nobody — not even Reddit posters — is trending about how quiet quitting has infected Washington.

Here’s the problem: Our nation’s capital is not a failing startup cube farm. This is our seat of government. Where the president is king, rules the land, and makes the laws just by thinking about them. L’état, c’est moi, pardon my French.

Washington is also the backdrop of cable TV news. The place where lawmakers break the laws they make. The scene where the J6 rioter heroes made history with their legitimate public discourse demonstrating how they hate America, Blue Lives, hygiene and legitimate public discourse.

As Millennials take over Washington, as is their birthright, the threat of quiet quitting there threatens to make America — zut alors! — more like Socialist France, where you have the right to quietly quit with full pay and sit around all day in les cafés sipping vin rouge and puffing Gauloises avec les copains et copines. Pardon my French.

Quiet quitting has already infected Washington:

1. Joe Biden quietly quit progressives — most who are young, white, privileged, male-identifying, woke-performative and don’t vote — by offering merely half a loaf on student loan relief and climate change.
2. Progressive youth quietly quit voting when they don’t get what they want. When they finally adult at, say, 45, they’ll quietly quit being progressive and vote moderate (or worse!) because they’ll have kids and a mortgage and can’t afford to quietly quit at work.
3. The Republican Party quietly quit decency, democracy, patriotism, the Constitution, the rule of law and their souls for Trump and the hateful MAGAs he inspires, fools and rules. The GOP also quietly quit the family values nonsense they used to hammer Democrats over.
4. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis quietly quit whatever last shred of decency that his parents and Catholic faith may have taught him when he kidnapped tired, poor, huddled refugees yearning to breathe free and shipped them to the New England archipelago as a cynical political stunt to thrill despicable bigoted MAGA scum. Then he laughed along with them like Dr. Evil.
5. Republicans quietly quit sneering about Martha’s Vineyard and its hypocritical Obama limousine liberals when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts happily took in the DeSantis Refugees because liberals stupidly care about innocent victims of a cruel political prank.
6. Republicans on Martha’s Vineyard who voted Republican in 2020 — as 10–28% did — quietly quit letting their neighbors, merchants and restaurateurs know their politics so they can show their face in public.
7. The Statue of Liberty quietly quit being a beacon of hope and freedom. She looked at America’s rising tide of MAGA nativist and racist hate and said yeah no.
8. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin quietly quit the Democratic Party. But the party says, Brokeback Mountain style, “I wish I knew how to quit you.”
9. The Congressional Treason Caucus and 2022 GOP national, state and local candidates who still performatively believe and bleat the Trump Big Lie about the 2020 election steal have quietly quit the truth, integrity, and respect for themselves and by their friends, families and neighbors. Unless their people are also numbskulls.
10. Cynical Republican politicians who have a brain quietly quit expressing their intelligence because they need to appeal to ignorant MAGA knuckle-draggers. (We’re looking at you, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley.)
11. Millionaire “Christian” megachurch pastors who empower Trump and his bootlicking politicians quietly quit God, Jesus and the Bible they thump for Trump to fool their flocks for riches.
12. I’ve lived and worked in Washington for over 35 years, and love it here. But as Trump Republicans threaten to overtake Congress this fall, Trump himself may return to the White House in 2024, and the Supreme Court is already in Trump’s tiny hands, I’m ready to quiet quit the place. Je m’en fous. Pardon my French.

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.