Shut It

Dear Madame:

Yes, it would be interesting to delve into the studies of whether kilt wearing by men leads to better fertility and better libido over their “constricted” brethren!

This week we all could have used one of those strawberry-lime ciders as we have been treated to the spectacle of the government partial shutdown.  The impact on individuals serviced by their government, and those dedicated servants employed by their government, has been significant, but others have detailed that.  I am concerned about something deeper.

Because it affects those who carry out the details of laws, it does two particularly insidious things.  One, it breeds contempt for the law by those tasked with executing the laws, and a person doesn’t have to get into poor countries’ politics to know the corrupting and enervating effect when the executors and referees don’t have respect for “the rules.”

Two, and perhaps more importantly, it breeds contempt for lawmakers.  You know, those people who don’t have the armed forces or the police to back them up, but only our people power behind them.  And by doing so, breeds contempt for government in general, which serves those plutocrats who want government to be so weak, ineffectual, and unfocused that it can never challenge their power.

Amidst this debilitation, those lawmakers have passed laws to retroactively pay people, and so not punish them for the lawmakers’ actions/inactions.  Perhaps there are enough who understand that it is a short step from government employees’ contempt to most of the populace’s contempt.  Because, in the naked analysis, lawmakers have only the people’s confidence and support to give them power.  Lawmakers don’t have the armed forces or the police (the executive and states/localities do), so their power comes only from our willingness to abide by what they say—and what the document that gives them enumerated powers says.

On a related subject, I have a professor colleague of mine who believes the very fact that the shutdown is partial gives a false impression to the American public of what its government does and does not do for them.  For example, even though, outside of Department of Defense military pay, there is no new money to pay anyone or anything, aside from those who were given different funding streams which carried over from last fiscal year or before, many government agencies and operations have been declared so continually essential that they are “excepted,” meaning that they continue to operate even when there’s no money (govt is essentially writing an IOU).  My colleague feels that this plays into the hands of those who want to show large portions of the government as “unnecessary,” by conflating and confusing the “urgent” with the important that may not be urgent. 

As anyone who strives for effectiveness can tell you, one can be efficient (or seem to be so) by addressing the urgent (which may NOT, however, be important) but will only be EFFECTIVE when focus is made on the important (which, because it often involves the longer view, may not be urgent).