Tag: Washington

Government, Politics

Do They Even Listen?

Public service. Representatives of the people. Elected officials. Doing the work of the American People.

How many times have you heard these pithy phrases in the last ten years? Whatever the number is, it’s a lot. Our elected politicians LOVE to campaign and talk about being champions for the people, to represent the good folks who sent them to government to be your voice. To fight the good fight. Maybe it’s just me, and call me crazy, but I’m getting the feeling that they don’t really care what you think.

When you’re out and about talking to regular people, they have concerns. Mundane worries about things like the cost of living, health care costs, taxes, and paying for their kids education. If you’re one of those far right, ultra MAGA extremists, you might even be worried about the border invasion or foreign wars. None of these things seem to be anything local or federal government cares about. Don’t get me wrong, they pay lip service to them in campaign speeches and on X/twitter. But in terms of actual legislation or executive orders… crickets.

It feels like an episode of that TV show Pawn Stars. CITIZEN: “I’m really worried about the cost of groceries and the flood of migrants crossing the border”. POLITICIAN: “Best I can do is spend cargo planes of cash for improved Amtrak service. Oh, and we’ll throw in another ten billion for Ukraine”.

Is it that they honestly don’t understand what the citizens want, or do they know and don’t care? Don’t answer that, it was rhetorical.

I know I tend to be on the skeptical side, but I’m getting the feeling that my elected officials don’t really care what the people think. Perhaps the mechanisms of government are simply too complex for us regular people to grasp. Maybe we’re just petulant children who need to be quiet while the adults talk. It just seems that nobody cares what we, the people, want.

We need to keep an eye on Argentina and its new president, Javier Milei. He followed through with his campaign promise and cut the number of ministries in half on day one. He killed the Ministry of Culture, along with the ministries of Health, Labor, Social Development, and Education. Will he be able to wrest some sort of financial stability and improvement, or will he be swallowed by the government blob, unwilling to ceed power to this madman? It will be interesting to watch.

If we had an actual politician here willing to do the same, would it work? Could the right personality actually start cutting back on the deep state and make a difference? Or is the government enterprise simply too powerful?

Let’s look at our options:

  • Biden (Obama) – the meat puppet is a pudding brained Alzheimer’s patient. He’s no longer an effective tool of the Obama machine and irrelevant.
  • Newsom – He’s the very definition of the deep state.
  • Haley – The female Jeb Bush/McCain, eager to be the next deep state representative.
  • Christy – The buffet is calling.
  • Trump – He had all three branches of government and… the deep state steamrolled him. It would be different this time, how?
  • DeSantis – Has the right governing instincts and executive skills, but lacks the charisma to fire up the people. Has run a piss-poor campaign which doesn’t bode well.
  • Ramaswamy – The most interesting of the bunch. Has the charisma. Has the right ideas. He’s a contrarian. The establishment won’t let him anywhere near the nomination.

So basically… we’re screwed. Nothing will change. The deep state, the enterprise, has grown so large and powerful I don’t think it’s possible to change. It’s like a black hole, slowly sucking all light and energy from the room, growing bigger every day. Eventually, like a massive star that triggers runaway nuclear fusion, it will go supernova and collapse.

Hopefully, like the decline of stars and the Roman Empire, that collapse will take some time. Regardless of who captures the throne, it feels like the next four years is an inflection point for the American experiment.

Will the people continue to go along to get along… or will they begin to turn on their masters?

Lists

I Have Questions
  • It looks like vaccine acquired immunity is fading somewhat, combined with a Delta variant that the vaccine appears to be less effective against. Vaccinated folks can clearly get and transmit Delta. So what then is the point of a vaccine passport to participate in daily life if I can still infect others?
  • Either the intelligence services completely screwed up the analysis of Afghanistan and gave bad advice to the White House, or they gave correct advice and the administration ignored it. Which is it?
  • Since we know it’s not the president… who actually is crafting the White House’s agenda, messaging, and plans?
  • What exactly is this “over the horizon capability” word salad nonsense the president keeps bringing up? Have we invented some super secret new technology nobody knows about?
  • We’ve evacuated 83,000 people from Kabul. That’s like 2 or 3 interpreters for every single soldier ever stationed there. Was every single at risk person who ever helped the US, living in Kabul? What about the thousands upon thousands of folks who helped that are scattered throughout the rest of the country? How many of these people now get to settle in the US?
  • Why doesn’t the national news ever cover Antifa? It’s an actual terrorist group operating in multiple cities across the country, growing rapidly and spreading destruction and violence almost daily. Why the radio silence from the media?
  • I eat croutons like potato chips. What strange power do they have over me that I’m unable to contain myself?
  • Why are people incapable of swallowing more than one pill at a time, yet they happily swallow giant pieces of steak or sandwiches?
  • If continued masks and mask mandates are what’s needed to defeat the virus, why are we seeing a spike with the Delta variant? I thought the masks protected me from the virus? Why can’t someone show me a graph of any region in the country that implemented a mask mandate and had a corresponding drop in cases? That would be pretty compelling evidence wouldn’t it?
  • We’ve spent/allocated $4.6 Trillion on the Covid response. The US House just passed a $3.5 Trillion budget, plus another $1.5 Trillion on an “infrastructure” plan. We’re approaching $10 Trillion in spending in just the last year or so. We have to borrow all of that. Can we really continue printing money forever without consequence?
  • How come I can’t hit a golf ball? I’m good at every other sport I play. Why am I afflicted with this strange golf dyslexia?
  • Why will nobody in the military, CIA, DIA, or state department be held accountable for Afghanistan? How come nobody in Washington ever loses their job?
  • Why is the press, the last bastion of free speech, completely unconcerned with Twitter, Facebook, and Google’s massive censorship campaigns?
  • How is it that British and Australian actors can have perfect American accents, but American actors sound ridiculous when they try to mimic their accents?
  • How is it possible the Taliban maintains their verified account on Twitter, but the former president of the United States is too dangerous to be allowed to tweet?
  • Why has nobody told Uncle Joe that he’s the only person in the world that pronounces it “TaliYe-bon”?
  • Why isn’t our national press covering the authoritarian nightmare that’s happening with Australia’s covid lockdowns? Perhaps they wish we were doing the same here?
  • And finally, how is it possible Britney Spears has been deemed as not capable of making her own decisions and under conservatorship for 13 years, yet has managed to record and perform all that time? Does that not seem suspicious? #FreeBrittney!