Days Ticking Away

The beat of the clock goes on. So do the days of the calendar. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Here’s a day, there’s a day; a week goes by; then another. And still another. Three weeks gone. Disruption everywhere. The shutdown of the federal government continues to amass cause, effect, result.

To think that this is only 25% of the government! Imagine it all gone? No government functions happening.

For some, this is a long-held dream. For others it is a nightmare. This is the ideology war many want to see play out. What they think will happen is only in their heads.

My point of view holds that government is needed. It is by, for and of the people, so we ought to know it, trust it, and rely on it. Not as a big daddy in the sky, but a helpful family member with whom we help as well. Together.

My view embraces a purposeful government functioning for the benefit of the people. Just because some get help that others do not, doesn’t mean the output of government actions are unequal or unfair. It is the whole of society we are governing and protecting. Whether a democracy or socialist or communist government, all attempt to serve the common good of the people.

Different modes of operation among those forms of government exist. Decision making is centralized in different manners. Democracies support transparency of the process; at least that is the design. More authoritarian forms of government preserve decision making to only a few people, and then much of their process is hidden from view. The objectives are thus clouded. Understanding the basis of those decisions and outcomes is left to analysis; and feeling the actual outcomes when they are noticed.

Not so in America. Our democracy is an open affair and we the people have input to the process, values and construction of the goals. Too few avail themselves of this role, but they do have it. Because of that we can form higher trust in our government – its people, processes and values. They represent the same among we the people. Or ought to.

The arguments encountered along the way create upsets. We are in the midst of one currently. The ‘shutdown’ is a twisted result of malfeasance. The malfeasance is shared by the president who created the false crises he claims to be managing, and his political party that does not have the courage to examine the potential for meaningful compromise that would settle the dispute in a timely manner.

In the meantime a whole nation suffers inconvenience. Some suffer much more. And the agents of government work unpaid or furloughed entirely, bearing a heavy burden of the ideological spat.

It’s a shame the perpetrators of this debacle do not suffer the pain and price of their own folly. Their embarrassment is ours. But our pain is not shared by them.

How can we redress this?

January 14, 2019