Choosing Our Government

Kevin Shockey, a name regular readers are vastly familiar with, made a comment on My special weekend post. Very appropriately, he quotes The Gettysburg Address concerning the position of government: “...of the people, by the people, for the people...”

Adlai Stevenson once stated “In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.” Like the penchant for tough love, this hurts. It hurts because it is true. It forces Us to acknowledge Our role, or lack of one, in the chaos we call “Our Government.”

We want a better government, but We refuse to see beyond party-based biffle and actually face facts.

We want a better government, but We lap up the sewage of scandal where there is none, and make soufflés of indifference and pity out of the criminal excreta that guts Our Future.

We want a better government, but We don’t bother to go to public hearings about any issue that interests Us because nothing interests Us... except Our wallets. Somehow the government in its hog-seeking-truffles frenzy is supposed to interpret Our indifference and shape up, or respond to Our greed and cater to it. You are asking people who barely have a mind to read Ours or to kowtow to primal impulses. There's a formula for success.

We want a better government, but We browbeat anybody with talent and brains away from government. It makes those of Us with pettiness as a guiding star feel superior to those who seek to make a difference. Alas, it seems very clear that a vast majority of Us are following the same star.

We want a better government, but We can’t decide if We want to keep the colonial hybrid, request what will be denied or espouse a now flat(ulent) ideal. We can’t make up Our minds, contributing to an even greater obstacle to somehow reading it.

We want “somebody else,” hell, anybody else, to solve Our “Problem.” Grow up. It IS Our Problem and We have to solve it Ourselves.

There is some consolation here, from Harry Truman: “Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.” Obviously, the inefficiency We labor with means We are as far away from a dictatorship as We can be. With a little more efficiency or a little less government (minimal government can create a citizen-based democracy; note The Jenius said can...) and We could be on the road to progress.

And as someone said before: If We choose. And We must choose.

The Jenius Has Spoken.