Today's crisis—or, at least, the first crisis of this fine Thursday—is a spinoff of another crisis. The parent crisis for today's sub-crisis is the government shutdown, which Donald Trump, American president, once proudly took credit for. "I will shut down the government," he told Democratic leaders on live television. "I am proud to shut down the government. I will be the one to shut it down. I am not going to blame you for it. I will take the mantle of shutting it down." Then he shut down the government. Now, on the 34th day of this crisis, many government services are nearing the brink.

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Thanks to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, we are now intimately aware of a new crisis stemming from the existing crisis. Here's a statement, issued in conjunction with a couple of other aviation workers' unions, from the folks whose job it is to make sure your plane doesn't crash into another plane:

We have a growing concern for the safety and security of our members, our airlines, and the traveling public due to the government shutdown. This is already the longest government shutdown in the history of the United States and there is no end in sight. In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break. It is unprecedented.

Wow! That sounds pretty fucking bad indeed! 800,000 federal workers are set to miss out on a second paycheck tomorrow, including 50,000 aviation safety workers, and that includes many of the people who enable you to fly the friendly skies without falling out of them.

Due to the shutdown, air traffic controllers, transportation security officers, safety inspectors, air marshals, federal law enforcement officers, FBI agents, and many other critical workers have been working without pay for over a month. Staffing in our air traffic control facilities is already at a 30-year low and controllers are only able to maintain the system’s efficiency and capacity by working overtime, including 10-hour days and 6-day workweeks at many of our nation’s busiest facilities.

Personally, I would prefer that the people tasked with getting my plane to its destination safely were not running on fumes. Also, even if this is just a union highlighting the worst-case scenario to get its people paid, is that really out-of-order? The risks are growing, and people who work should get paid. Somehow, the FAA reports no increase in absenteeism among workers so far. How long will that last?

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Air-traffic controllers at Denver International Airport. John Moore Getty Images

It's a question worth asking, as it appears the stress the air-traffic controllers are under has another dimension:

Almost 20% of CPCs are eligible to retire today. There are no options to keep these professionals at work without a paycheck when they can no longer afford to support their families. When they elect to retire, the National Airspace System (NAS) will be crippled.

Because we aren't paying the people who make it safe to fly, and as a consequence, some can't pay their bills or support their families, some may just retire to get out of this bind. The median salary for an air traffic controller is over $124,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so it's not clear how widespread this kind of financial distress is. Maybe those near retirement age just don't see the point in working for months without getting paid. But if any highly trained worker, performing critical services in our society, is living paycheck to paycheck—or anywhere close to it—that is hardly an acceptable state of affairs. (The shutdown has once again illustrated just how many people are.) That's especially true if they're near retirement age. Regardless, losing a chunk of the workforce because of this self-imposed crisis would be a long-term problem. It takes years to adequately train a controller.

A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employee leaves the Barclays Center with bags of food as the Food Bank For NYC holds food distribution for federal workers impacted by the government shutdown. TIMOTHY A. CLARY Getty Images

Of course, this development only adds a life-and-death dimension to what was already a rapidly deteriorating situation at airports. TSA is now reporting that as much as 10 percent of staff are calling in sick, often because—now that they're not getting paid to do their jobs—they can't afford to make the trip into work. The agency reports wait times are still within the normal range, but how much longer will that last? Airports like the mega-hub in Atlanta are already telling passengers to arrive three hours early—presumably, even for a domestic flight. Oh, and some TSA workers are now getting their food from food banks.

Yes, this sub-crisis will only deteriorate as the parent crisis of the government shutdown persists. The Democratic-controlled House has voted 10 times to reopen the government based on the "clean" bill agreed to by all parties in December—before Trump saw Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter saying mean things about him on the television because he did not demand funding for his Big, Beautiful Middle Finger From White America Monument. In response, he threatened to shut down the government over it, then did. Now, his ally in the Republican Senate—Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—refuses to put the House bill up for a vote, knowing it could pass and Trump would have to veto it, thus illustrating he is the one keeping the government shutdown. Instead, McConnell reached a deal with Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to put two bills up for a vote Thursday, neither of which is likely to pass.

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McConnell walks through the Capitol on Tuesday. Win McNamee Getty Images

In a very real sense, though, the shutdown is not the parent crisis. The real parent is Donald Trump, American president. As we enjoy our new national model of governing from crisis to crisis, sometimes stacking them on top of each other, it's worth remembering that the president has rarely faced a crisis that was not of his own making. When Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, for once the president's self-sustaining la-la land was barreled into by a comet from stone-cold reality. He did not respond with flying colors. In fact, the colors were quite ugly indeed, and continue to drip from the palette to this day. Like when he reportedly floated declaring a national emergency to seize disaster relief funds earmarked for the island, all to show The Base he was going to really, truly Build the Wall. That is to say, he considered a nakedly authoritarian act in order to weasel his way out of the government shutdown he singlehandedly caused.

It's all a big incestuous family of crises, tangled and piled up, as the president continually hatches new scams to keep the old ones going. Each scam almost invariably leads to a crisis, because it was hatched in Trump's private world, where he can mold the contours of reality. He concocts some grand idea, then assigns his minions to dig up something to justify it. That worked in privately held business, when Trump had no voters or shareholders to be accountable to, at least until the company would go bankrupt. Governing a country is proving more complicated, as ideas with little basis in reality come crashing into the real world, breaking up in the atmosphere. What the statement from the air-traffic controllers suggests is that a Trump-branded crisis could soon spawn another one well beyond his control.