Wednesday morning came as a great shock to many of my friends. Facebook became a virtual wailing wall for angst ridden liberals. Some said they spent the morning in tears, some in fear and anger, others ready to mount a revolution. One person, who teaches history at TCC across the bay even attempted to make a correlation with Kristallnacht, the night Nazis attacked Jews, destroying their homes, businesses, and houses of worship. This struck me as a serious case of, “Dude, you’re going there? Really?” I wonder, why all the drama, why so serious?
It’s a big country, do people really think it’s going to change that much?
Now eight years into his administration, Obama’s version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from W’s. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. The assassination of American citizens living abroad has somehow become acceptable, and the US is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America’s nuclear weapons.
This of course, is not Obama’s fault—there’s nothing an elected official can do about it. In the end, the faces change but the policies remain the same. Somehow we have elevated the importance of the American vote to grandiose proportions, that we can steer our own government by electing new officials. Michael Glennon in his book, “National Security and Double Government,” disagrees, and uses the term “double government: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.”
He writes, “a bifurcated system — a structure of double government — in which even the President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of US national security policy.” The result, he writes, is a system of dual institutions that have evolved “toward greater centralization, less accountability, and emergent autocracy.”
Hardly a conspiracy though, but instead a tricky problem of, “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.
Congress or even President can hardly make a dent in the monolith. Members of Congress the experts (usually), and must defer to folks that have “been within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.”
While we may want to believe, we are voting for change or hope, like Bill Murray suggested in Meat Balls, “It just doesn’t matter.” We want to believe the presidency is a top-down institution, “headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute.”
Policy emanates from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy.
Glennon has noted, “I think the American people are deluded…They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions…. The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people. And indifference to the threat that is emerging from these concealed institutions. That is where the energy for reform has to come from: the American people. Not from government.”
Interview notes from Jordan Michael Smith and The Christian Science Monitor.
If it can be believed, and it is true, the day after the election, a major polytechnic institute to the north of you with a national reputation whose president was lauded by Barack Obama, had grief counselors on campus to give grief counseling to anyone upset with Trump’s victory.
What kind of statement does that make about who we have become as a people?
Land of the brave?
Home of the free?
Or something now completely different, where people will be diagnosed as suffering from PTSD and be eligible for disability because they don’t like who won a presidential election.
Are you serious. Policy won’t change? How about now that a climate sceptic may be head of EPA; Dodd-Frank dismantled; Sarah Palin’s name being floated as Director of the Interior; and, of course, the naming of Supreme Court Justices and dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, to name just a few of the consequential changes in the offing due to the results of this election. I think you need to wake yourself up. I can’t imagine a parent today doesn’t care that their children are going to be paying the price for this election for years to come.
Note: We’ll see. Probably less hysteria, more reality (it still is Washington by the way). Really? Dodd-Frank? (see London, Wells-Fargo)…besides, isn’t a putrid 1.5% growth rate an issue if you have a family? Those of us that work, and have kids are always wide awake.
You poor snowflakes….and to think that he won’t even accept a paycheck for doing his job. Go buy a few safety pins, a few boxes of tissue and make an appointment to get on a few antidepressants. It is going to be a long eight years for you people to endure.
Wayne, regarding your response to Peg’s comment, the low growth rate is not a fair representation of the current economy; it is a reflection of corporate policies diverting profits to shareholder payback rather than re-investment in employee compensation and job growth. Icahn in the leadership team will continue this trend. If you have a family, the proposed leadership should not concern you for its Batman-movie-villains-like aspect, but for its unabashed agenda to divert wealth to the top one percent at any cost (to the economy, to the environment, to geopolitical stability). Be prepared for your children to pay a high price for the reckless policies that will soon be instituted. A Republican agenda should find support in a heartbeat, were it to serve business AND the citizens; it hasn’t for some time, except for occasional candidate, none advancing to the highest office. The proposed/speculative agenda should be one that sends chills down the spine of an educated electorate. “Educated” is the key qualifier, and this contextual definition does not subsume a check-mark for a college degree.
Why so serious? What me Worry? Seriously? The protests of the youth and the disenfranchised have been a long time coming. (Remember Occupy Everywhere?) This possibly is just the beginning for this administration. The representation of the juggernaut that is the Trump brand and now the Trump administration basically gives said bureaucracy Carte-Blanc to continue even more heinous and subversive actions. I tend to agree with the Christian Monitor here when it is mentions the actions of the Obama administration were not so far off as the Bush administration and the Clinton administration before it. I would tend to agree with that. But, Herr Donald is a different duck. His massive ego and general ignorance of history is disturbing and unnerving. His unwavering stance on fossilized fuel and lack of concern for global warming (I am so sorry…Climate Change-feel better now?) is intrinsically linked with the anger and outrage of today’s youth. They see their future rapidly eroding and getting pricier by the day. Should the apple cart be upset, let’s say a year or two into this presidency, who is to say another (dare I invoke Godwin’s law-ah what the heck, worst has been said) Reichstag fire/Nine Eleven event won’t occur to enable national martial law to be set. What? Here in the United States, you ask? The land of the free, home of the brave? Don’t delude yourself, keep your eye on your portfolio, your hands on your pockets and hold your children and grand-children ever closer. I have a feeling the ride is about to get very, very bumpy. But, hey, don’t mind me, I’m just the guy who cried out to anyone who would listen, going into Iraq (invading a sovereign nation in 2003 was a BIG mistake) But, those darn bureaucrats, once again, just would not listen. And I guess they are not listening still…What Me Worry?
As to the EPA, I originally was very much for the creation of that agency, which was happening at the time I was returning, poisoned by Agent Orange, from the environmental devastation of Viet Nam caused by U.S. government policy, the same U. S. government policy that has us causing God alone knows how much environmental devastation in the Middle East today, as well as Afghanistnam, through our bombing campaigns, to environmental devastation surrounding me where I lived when I left to go to Viet Nam in 1969.
Acid rain destroying mountain lakes so they would no longer support aquatic life, which means fish.
The Hudson River running white with paper mill waste.
Air so putrid it was hard to breathe.
Enough, said THE PEOPLE, including myself and the EPA was born in the wake of that elevated concern about environmental pollution, being established on December 2, 1970 to consolidate in one agency a variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities to ensure environmental protection.
ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION!
That is what MY GENERATION said, forty-six (46) years ago now.
NO MORE FREE RIDES FOR THE POLLUTERS!
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
Let the polluters go to hell!
In 1975, the EPA sent me to get a masters degree in environmental engineering, so that I would be equipped to work for a cleaner, healthier environment for the American people.
When I actually attempted to do that, however, as an associate public health engineer, I was rudely and easily swept aside by the polluters and environment despoilers, who can buy public officials for a dime a dozen, and so, get their way.
But enough about me; what about the EPA?
Can they get any worse under Donald Trump than they already are?
GOOGLE cuomo faults epa in hoosick falls pfoa fiasco, where “Cuomo” is Democrat New York State Governor Andy Cuomo, who was going to be Hillary Clinton’s attorney general, responsible for, among other things, enforcement of environmental regulations in the United States of America.
Read what he has to say about the miserable, failed condition of the EPA under Democrat Barack Obama, and then ask yourself, how could it get much worse under Trump than it already is under Obama?
In support of that statement, consider this about the failed EPA under Obama from the TALK RADIO 1300 article “Opinion: T-Spin: The feds screwed up Hoosick Falls” by Jim Franco, February 17, 2016, wherein this following was said about the Hoosick Falls PFOA fiasco up this way that Democrat Andy Cuomo was placing the blame for firmly on Barack Obama’s “look the other way” EPA:
My guess is that in about a decade, Hoosick Falls will be a ghost town.
Think about it.
If you are looking for a house, one of the first things you do is go online and find something that has the amenities you want and/or need and is within your price range.
After bookmarking the house(s), you Google the community where they are located.
When you Google Hoosick Falls, though, you don’t get “quiet village” or “bucolic countryside” or “just minutes from Vermont.”
Instead, you get things like “don’t drink the water,” and “high rates of cancer” and “public not informed.”
Google will show you both descriptions of the sleepy little town, but nobody’s first thought about Hoosick Falls is how nice it would be to live in a Norman Rockwell painting.
And Google lasts forever.
With nobody moving in, and more and more people moving out, it’s destined to be a ghost town like the mining villages in Colorado.
Honestly, who can blame a prospective homeowner?
I don’t think I am alone in thinking the government doesn’t do anything right.
It’s the government’s fault, after all, that Hoosick is in the jam it’s in.
Rare is there an evening newscast that doesn’t have a reporter standing in front of a camera telling us you will die if you drink Hoosick Falls water, and they invariably find someone to blame the water for that hangnail they got in 1985.
A Google search will find all those reports in seconds.
Banks stopped lending money to people who want to buy a house anywhere in Hoosick Falls.
Lawyers are circling like buzzards looking to sign people up in a class action lawsuit, and politicians, of course, are grandstanding and pointing fingers.
end quotes
That is what we have up this way, already, thanks to the EPA under Barack Obama, so how much worse is Trump going to make it?
Frankly, I would rather have no EPA than a worthless EPA.
As to a totally worthless EPA under Barack Obama that is already a polluter’s best friend, I point to the Troy Record article “Rensselaer County gets an F for air quality” published April 29, 2010 by Jessica M. Pasko, which informed us (and here, let me say that I am a grandfather who cares very much for the health and well-being of his grandchildren), as follows with respect to air quality up this way:
Rensselaer County ranks an F when it comes to ozone pollution, according to a national report card on state of air quality released Wednesday.
end quote
Wow, what third-world country do we live in up here?
Oh, right, the United States of America, silly me, I thought it was some environmental hell-hole like Mexico or China.
We up here where I am, including children, who the Democrats claim to care so much about, live inside a choking stinking dust cloud caused by fugitive emissions of sub-micron particles from unregulated hard-rock mining operations in the area that are needed to provide the raw materials for Democrat Andy Cuomo’s on-going building boom in New York state.
For there to be progress, somebody has to be hurt, and in this case, it is all of us who live in the third-world hellhole of Rensselaer County in the state of New York.
With respect to that cloud of sub-micron particles Barack Obama’s EPA has us living in, that Troy Record article informed us as follows:
In terms of short-term particle pollution, Albany County earned a grade of C, while Saratoga and Rensselaer counties received no grade in that category because of a likely lack of monitors for that type of pollution.
The state and the EPA decide where to place the monitors and the ALA report on data gathered from those.
end quotes
The political EPA is allowing that choking, stinking fugitive dust cloud to exist by making sure that there are no samplers in this area to measure those emissions, which are being linked to cases of silicosis up here, while the EPA turns its back and looks the other way.
Can Trump make it any worse?
Frankly, I don’t see how.
“It’s the government fault, after all, that Hoosick is in the jam it’s in.” That, my friend, are your words from your comments. I have to ask though, don’t you think that Saint-Gobain Plastics has to take some of the blame for the problem they may have caused in the first place? And I say “may” because every article I have read on this issue does not directly place blame at their door, but by implicit proximity to the problem of contaminates in the water, it can be none other. But, you think the government is to blame. As the kids are opt to do nowadays, I am shaking my head.
In one article I read, the EPA stepped up in 2003. That was thirteen years ago! Another article (dated Feb. 2016) read that Saint-Gobain Plastics was paying for and supplying clean drinking water and fixing plant upgrades for the Hoosick Falls area. And by the way, naming a town Hoosick Falls and then placing a plastics factory on the river (midstream-I might add) to me is just asking for trouble, or the title of a Monty Python skit, but I am just a cynic. But back to this government isn’t helping statement. Well, which should it be? Bigger, healthier, helping handout government or smaller, leaner, stay out of your bedrooms, physicians’ offices, and life, practically disappeared government. Because you can’t have it both ways.
You state that the EPA has been useless in regard to the help offered and this may be true. But according to several reports I have read, the EPA did a series of studies and the latest report states that Saint-Gobain is now a Super Fund site. So, according to our fair weather media, progress IS being made. Maybe (and this may be because you are closer and more knowledgeable of the situation than I) your statement is correct and the slow movement on the state’s part, the factory’s part and the EPA’s part has led to the destruction of this village. After all, thirteen years to fix a problem is a very long time. Again, I will shake my head.
Lastly, I am sorry. I am sorry for this town (quite lovely-upstate New York-lovely people) and its inhabitants. I am sorry for the mothers and fathers who have lost children. I am sorry for the children who have lost their mothers or fathers. And I am sorry for a populace who not only lives in fear of their land and the prospects of losing their life savings because of falling property values, but, I am truly sorry of the very fact no one protected them from the beginning. Obviously, the science was not complete enough to stop this factory from being built. But if it were, and the owners and shareholders knew, god help them. This country is still full of those fools and we are fools to allow them their destructive ways to continue in the name of profits and jobs. There MUST be a better way. A better way to ensure the health of our children and grandchildren. To ensure clean drinking water and fresh air to breath. After all, when that is gone…how many dollars do you think it will take to get it back? How many lives, once gone, can money buy back? Can Trump’s administration do worst? You bet it can. If he continues on the road in which all is seen as the bottom line in the black and people’s lives be damned. Now is a good time for all Americans to reassess our values. We need to take a deep breath, step back and ask ourselves, do we really all that is offered? Are material needs to amounts created really necessary? How long do we really have before the tipping point occurs? Everywhere, and to everyone? Do you love your grandchildren? Of course you do…now, what kind of world do we want to leave them in?
In his recent article, published in WaPo, Garrison Keillor, of Prairie Home Companion fame, talked about how we liberals (a/k/a “losers” as I am sure some of those who comment to this publication would describe us in such a boastful and disdainful tone that even The Orange One would tweet with gleeful approval that his minions have become so emboldened by his hateful rhetoric) can respond to Trump’s ascension in the following way: “[d]emocrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long , brisk walk and smell the roses.” That’s pretty much my plan. It’s time for the uneducated masses to reap what they have sown.
Note: In a press conference yesterday, President Obama basically summed up what we meant in this article, by stating that the US is not a speedboat, but more an ocean liner…bigger, slower and much harder to change course. There’s a lot of discontent out there, on both sides, but as Obama said, the job of the presidency, and reality has a way of asserting its will. Mr. Trump is in the process of finding that out now. Like they all do. Good luck deporting millions already working and living here, good luck repealing the Affordable Care Act (what are you going to do with the 15-20 million on it now?). For us, we still get to stay vegan.
Have you considered that it is your type that the masses are sick of, educated or not?
Chas Cornweller, you need to go back and re-read my post on the EPA a bit closer and with a touch more care.
First of all, the words “It’s the government fault, after all, that Hoosick is in the jam it’s in” are not my words, at all; to the contrary, they are the words of Jim Franco, a media correspondent up this way from the TALK RADIO 1300 article “Opinion: T-Spin: The feds screwed up Hoosick Falls” by Jim Franco, February 17, 2016.
And no, I did not state that the EPA has been useless in regard to the help offered.
Those quotes were attributed to Democrat NYS governor Andy Cuomo.
I was talking about the EPA being worthless in connection with the choking, stinking cloud of sub-micron fugitive dust we, including children, are forced to live in here where I am, because the EPA keeps particulate samplers away from the offending mines, out of political considerations.
As to Saint-Gobain now being a Super Fund site, the EPA has nothing to do with that; Andy Cuomo pulled that designation out of his hat or some other portion of his anatomy using the New York State Environmental Conservation Law as his basis of support, even though he didn’t follow the law.
As to the EPA, Chas Cornweller, and the Hoosick Falls groundwater contamination fiasco, which could not have happened without the collusion of corrupt government at the Rensselaer County Health Department and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation levels, I would like to refer you to these words from the official transcript of JUDITH ENCK, EPA REGIONAL ADMINISTRATOR, JANUARY 14, 2015, HOOSICK FALLS CENTRAL SCHOOL, HOOSICK FALLS, NEW YORK, where Ms. Enck informed us as follows:
I AM REGIONAL ADMINISTRATOR FOR REGION 2 AND AM RESPONSIBLE FOR NY, 8 INDIAN NATIONS IN NY, NJ, PUERTO RICO AND THE US VIRGIN ISLANDS.
end quotes
With respect to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, in that address, Ms. Enck stated further as follows:
WE WORK CLOSELY WITH NY DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION AND NY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH.
end quotes
With that said, Chas Cornweller, I will leave you to muse for the moment how the EPA did not know about this fiasco, given that Ms. Enck says they work closely with those two state agencies which exist to prevent exactly such fiascos as this from happening in the first place, supposedly.
Returning to Ms. Enck’s transcript, we have:
WE DON’T KNOW HOW LONG HOOSICK FALLS RESIDENTS HAVE BEEN DRINKING WATER WITH PFOA IN IT.
WE DON’T KNOW WHAT THE PFOA LEVELS WERE IN THE WATER PRIOR TO THE FIRST DRINKING WATER TESTING THAT WAS DONE IN HOOSICK FALLS FOR PFOA IN 2014.
end quotes
One can surmise, Chas Cornweller, why it is that the EPA did not know any of these things, and for the moment, I will let you ponder that question.
Getting back to Ms. Enck, we have this:
BUT BEFORE WE TAKE QUESTIONS, I WANT TO TALK TO YOU AS A RESIDENT OF RENSSELAER COUNTY AND AS A PARENT.
ABOUT SIX YEARS AGO I HAD THIS WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY TO WORK FOR THE EPA.
A FEDERAL AGENCY THAT I GREATLY RESPECT.
THAT IS JUST ABOUT THE ONLY REASON I WOULD HAVE MOVED AWAY FROM THE TOWN OF POESTENKILL (ABOUT 20 MILES FROM HERE) WHERE I LIVED ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN FOR 25 YEARS, WITH MY FAMILY.
WE STILL HAVE OUR HOME IN POESTENKILL, AND I RETURN HOME AS OFTEN AS I CAN.
WE RAISED OUR SON IN POESTENKILL AND HE ATTENDED THE AVERILL PARK SCHOOL SYSTEMS FROM KINDERGARDEN TO GRADUATION.
AS A MOTHER, I CAN BARELY IMAGINE HOW DIFFICULT THIS DRINKING WATER SITUATION HAS BEEN FOR ALL OF THE PARENTS IN THIS COMMUNITY.
YOU ARE ALL BUSY PEOPLE.
THE LAST THING YOU NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IS WHETHER OR NOT YOUR DRINKING WATER IN YOUR OWN KITCHEN IS SAFE.
I AM VERY VERY SORRY THAT YOU HAVE BEEN GOING THROUGH THIS.
I AM SORRY THAT WE DO NOT KNOW HOW LONG YOU HAVE BEEN DRINKING CONTAMINATED WATER.
end quotes
Very, very sorry, Chas Cornweller – does that make it more sincere than just “very sorry?”
Does “very, very sorry” give you a warm and squishy feeling inside that far surpasses the warm and squishy feeling you would get inside from just plain, “I’m sorry?”
The truth of the matter, Chas Cornweller, is that Ms. Enck, being a resident of Rensselaer County in New York state where this Hoosick Falls groundwater contamination occurred, has been aware since 1988 that neither the Rensselaer County Department of Health nor the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation were doing their jobs with respect to protection of groundwater and public health in Rensselaer County, and for political reasons related to the advancement of her own political career, she chose to keep her mouth shut, and to turn her own back on the problems caused by government corruption and gross negligence in this county and in this state.
And now, she is very, very sorry, and as a grandfather who does love his grandchildren, Chas Cornweller, I would say she has a lot to be sorry for.
In the opening piece to this thread, Wayne states that “Somehow we have elevated the importance of the American vote to grandiose proportions, that we can steer our own government by electing new officials.”
How true a statement that is on so many levels, and it makes one have to wonder how it is we have come to have such outlandish ideas about the role we play as citizens in the election of a U.S. president, or in the setting of policy in this country, for that matter.
We have as much control over the direction of government at the federal level in this nation today as a rodeo bullrider has control over the direction the bull he is trying to stay on is going in, which is to say, next to none.
According to my reading of what Virginian James Madison had to say to the People of the State of New York as Publius in FEDERALIST No. 45, entitled “The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered,” for the Independent Journal, we were supposed to have no role at all in the selection of a U.S. president.
In FEDERALIST No. 45, Jemmy, himself a future United States president, as well as being known as the “Father of the Constitution,” introduced the People of the State of New York to his specific subject matter in that essay or disquisition, as follows:
Several important considerations have been touched in the course of these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the State governments.
end quote
“Discountenance the supposition,” an archaic form today not likely to be encountered in TWEETS on TWITTER, is best translated into modern form as “discourage by evidence of disapproval an idea or theory that one believes is true even though one does not have proof that it is so.”
What Jemmy was saying back then to the People of the State of New York was that the operation of the federal government would not by degrees do what it is doing today more and more, which is to prove fatal to the State governments.
In FEDERALIST No. 45, this is what “Father of the Constitution” Jemmy Madison had to say about his vision of the relationship between the federal government and the separate states:
The State government will have the advantage of the Federal government, whether we compare them in respect to the immediate dependence of the one on the other; to the weight of personal influence which each side will possess; to the powers respectively vested in them; to the predilection and probable support of the people; to the disposition and faculty of resisting and frustrating the measures of each other.
The State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former.
Without the intervention of the State legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all.
They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will, perhaps, in most cases, of themselves determine it.
end quotes
Look at those last two sentences above here, people, for a bit of a reality check on the role the so-called founding fathers expected we, the people, to play in selecting an American president, which was essentially no role at all, to wit:
Without the intervention of the State legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all.
They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will, perhaps, in most cases, of themselves determine it.
end quotes
Jemmy then went on as follows with where he envisioned the political power to really lie, and it was not with us common folks, as I read it:
The Senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the State legislatures.
Even the House of Representatives, though drawn immediately from the people, will be chosen very much under the influence of that class of men, whose influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the State legislatures.
Thus, each of the principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious than too overbearing towards them.
end quote
Thus, each of the principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State governments!
That’s how Jemmy Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” saw our role in governmental affairs at the federal level back then, which essentially was a non-existent role.
So, how have we in our time, then, managed to have elevated the importance of the American vote to grandiose proportions to give us the pipedream that we can steer our own government by electing new officials?
A question for our times, indeed.
“I think the American people are deluded…”
“They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change.”
“The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people.”
How true those statements are, especially that last about “pervasive political ignorance.”
But why would that be?
Why is there now an “ultimate problem” in the United States of America that is caused by pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people?
Why does pervasive political ignorance exist in the United States of America, where “pervasive” is taken to mean “spreading widely throughout a group of people?”
Is it because we are lazy?
Is it because we are distracted?
Is it because we have been indoctrinated into believing that our role in the United States of America is as consumers, and that we are to leave the job of governing to others?
Or could it be that it is now just too confusing, and too overwhelming for people to even be able to begin to comprehend or understand what is going on around them, and to save themselves, people simply close their ears to what is going on and turn off, instead?
My experience has found that more and more, as time advances, more and more people fit that last – they are simply shutting down when it comes to politics.
They don’t want to know, and they don’t want to hear.
And they certainly do not want to challenge, and with good reason, especially up here in corrupt New York state where I am, because up here, the “government” strikes back and retaliates when some reformer happens to come along and actually succeeds in bringing a case before the courts in an attempt to change policy and then wins.
In that case, “winning” rapidly can become losing, as the “state” brings its full weight of retaliation to bear, which can be considerable, and on many fronts.
And that retaliation is done in as public a manner as possible to make an object lesson of the reformer in order to deter others from trying the same thing.
So when Michael Glennon in his book, “National Security and Double Government” tells us “the energy for reform has to come from the American people, not from government,” as someone who has been around that “reform” track a few times, myself, and who knows of government retaliation through first-hand experience, frankly, I am not seeing that reform happening any time soon.
Hopefully, a new day is coming, and I will end up being proven wrong in that regard, but in the meantime, I am not holding my breath.