about the government
I was going to post something long-winded here about how the government really works versus how assorted varieties of irrational nutjobs see the government.
Then I decided to cut it down to a few sentences, because otherwise irrational nutjobs wouldn't read any of it.
As an actual employee of the government (in defense, no less) and not just a disgruntled bystander, I have this to say about our government's rules/regulations/policies in one neat little paragraph:
Our government exists primarily to provide the citizens of the U.S. with safety and security. Laws that people view as out-dated or overly cautious (laws related to drugs, stem cell research, sex and violence in the media, etc.) exist to prevent the government from contributing to the means for the lowest-common-denominators of our society to ruin life for the rest of us, because as 9/11 so graphically showed us, it only takes a few people to make life miserable for everybody. Furthermore, we continue to honor these laws because they represent a value system embraced by the majority of people in government service, which is where the real change is enacted. "The majority of people in government service" is not "The President," and "The President" is not single-handedly ruining our country; he is simply enabling what people lower than he is on the chain of command and out of the public eye have advised him to do. If you truly want to effect change in government, pissing and moaning about who we elected as President, random picketing and demonstrating, or generally sitting around the house being lazy is not the way to go about it. To cause systemic change effectively, you must work within the confines of the system, which means you must be employed by or significantly influencing the government in some fashion. There is no vast conspiracy against you, and there is no single silent invisible hand holding back "progress." There are simply a lot of well-meaning, good-hearted, decent government employees sworn (literally) to defend the Constitution of the United States and whose interpretation of this duty is necessarily colored by the many people that came before them in their position, and therefore more conservative and traditional than you may like. Go back to the first sentence of this paragraph and keep reading to understand why our government is so conservative and traditional. (You have permission to stop reading this paragraph repeatedly once you understand it.)
Even condensing that much, I still fear the subtlety is lost. (I fear that only slightly, because I know nobody cares in the first place.)
Then I decided to cut it down to a few sentences, because otherwise irrational nutjobs wouldn't read any of it.
As an actual employee of the government (in defense, no less) and not just a disgruntled bystander, I have this to say about our government's rules/regulations/policies in one neat little paragraph:
Our government exists primarily to provide the citizens of the U.S. with safety and security. Laws that people view as out-dated or overly cautious (laws related to drugs, stem cell research, sex and violence in the media, etc.) exist to prevent the government from contributing to the means for the lowest-common-denominators of our society to ruin life for the rest of us, because as 9/11 so graphically showed us, it only takes a few people to make life miserable for everybody. Furthermore, we continue to honor these laws because they represent a value system embraced by the majority of people in government service, which is where the real change is enacted. "The majority of people in government service" is not "The President," and "The President" is not single-handedly ruining our country; he is simply enabling what people lower than he is on the chain of command and out of the public eye have advised him to do. If you truly want to effect change in government, pissing and moaning about who we elected as President, random picketing and demonstrating, or generally sitting around the house being lazy is not the way to go about it. To cause systemic change effectively, you must work within the confines of the system, which means you must be employed by or significantly influencing the government in some fashion. There is no vast conspiracy against you, and there is no single silent invisible hand holding back "progress." There are simply a lot of well-meaning, good-hearted, decent government employees sworn (literally) to defend the Constitution of the United States and whose interpretation of this duty is necessarily colored by the many people that came before them in their position, and therefore more conservative and traditional than you may like. Go back to the first sentence of this paragraph and keep reading to understand why our government is so conservative and traditional. (You have permission to stop reading this paragraph repeatedly once you understand it.)
Even condensing that much, I still fear the subtlety is lost. (I fear that only slightly, because I know nobody cares in the first place.)