I Suppose

'Anti administrative government' is the core message of Steve Bannon as he advises Trump on strategy. It is his belief that the Federal Government has become a huge collective of administrative detail with embedded expertise in the persons of career government employees. He believes these employees have taken the place of government and made it unrepresentative of ‘the people’.

Well, I can understand his point of view without agreeing with it; but I suppose it is important to ask how we got to this place in history if in fact we have arrived there at all.

Regard this factotum: the Affordable Care Act was created by the Congress in an environment of deep political division. Many elected officials did not want the legislation to go through, let alone become enacted. So ‘poison pills’ were written into the legislation to deliberately weaken the ACA. The hope of detractors was that the bill would not be enacted, and if it was, then it would surely fail of its own weight.

The critical key here is embedded poison pills to cause the ACA to fail.

It didn’t. In fact it was quite popular even in its flawed state. So the flaws were rhetorically magnified to make a case to replace the ACA or at least remove it entirely. Mark it down to a failed administrative attempt to govern the people. The truth is quite different, isn’t it?

I suppose we can review much of Washington DC with these administrative eyes and find all sorts of flaws. The question is how deliberate were these flaws?

I suppose the administrative machinery of federal education programs could be viewed as flawed, eh? You know the drill: load the existing administrative channels with tons of additional tasks and programs so nothing works efficiently anymore, then accuse the system of self managing the nation’s future!

What rot.

I suppose we are to believe this? Bannon is playing to a mixed crowd at best; at worst the audience sees right through him. And Trump as well.

Instead of inserting ones own ideology and bias into our governance system, why not seek intelligent inputs before making such decisions? Why not ask for advice and counsel from experts to determine what is workable and what is not. I suppose such ‘due diligence’ is the better method to pursue? But is it?

No; not at all. It appears that expertise is suspect these days in Washington.

I suppose someone wants there own ideas to prevail. Regardless of impact or projected results. Shouldn’t we be asking what their objectives are? Ours is still a democracy isn’t it where the consent of the governed is required before assuming what that consent is?

Or is the Alt-right and Bannonism/Trumpism a new form of government we the people had no voice in?

The Constitution remains the law of the land. It holds sway over Congress, the White House and the Courts. The Constitution rules, not man.

I suppose we can ignore this and let the children play their games until we see better what it is they are proposing. But I recall much damage from allowing children unfettered freedoms in this manner. I dread the cleanup required by us to restore normalcy once we see what they have done.

I suppose we could save ourselves a great deal of time, effort and money if we maintained a reasonable control and oversight so the extracurricular shenanigans don’t get carried away in the first place.

Do you suppose they don’t think we will notice?  Just what is it they suppose?

More and more I get the feeling the fox is in the hen house and we chickens are marked for extinction. How about you?

What do you suppose?

March 6, 2017