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12/20/2006 Archived Entry: "Scorn from the polity"

A THOUGHT APROPOS OF I DON'T KNOW WHAT. I haven't had a long conversation in months that hasn't soon gotten down to politics. And in all those conversations, not once has anyone ever expressed the slightest thought favorable to George W. Bush -- unless you can accept "Well, his wife loves him" as positive. The people I talk with are all against the war, against torture, against Bush's shoddy backhanded methods of gun control, against his entire baboonery.

Now the interesting thing is that this isn't just because they're my friends, so of course they're at least libertarian-leaning. The people I'm thinking of I met in a variety of ways, not one of them political. They're friends from animal rescue, mostly. But also people I've met through their businesses, or their friends. So quite a wide variety, and generally pretty active, engaged social types, who you'd think would tend to be fairly liberal. A couple of them even work for government.

And they all think the government, at the federal level anyway, is not only evil, but laughable. It's a very, very, very, very, very bad joke being played on them.

Even more interesting, while some of these people would claim things were better under Clinton, virtually all also realize that the differences were only of small degree and cosmetic. Not all of them agree with me down to the bones, but even the most traditionally conservative recognize that the drug war doesn't work and the even the most liberal recognize that government social programs are ludicrously broken. And therefore, anybody who's actually close to one of these governmental problems and can't fix it is a person who by definition lacks brains or credibility. And therefore, the whole institution of government is rotten -- and ludicrous.

I think when ordinary life gets like this is when tyrants most need to tremble. We may still be at the do-nothing stage. But nobody, except a few who rely on it, consider the federal government to be a credible intellectual or political force. It's just ... a force. And they want to stay out of the way of it.

The problem will come, of course, when we no longer have that choice. And that's exactly the moment our government is aiming to provoke -- though the "Deciders," lacking brains or credibility, seem to think they'll be immune from the fate of tyrants, this time.

Posted by Claire @ 01:21 PM CST
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