I didn’t really listen to it, but I got the highlights.<\/p>\n
It all sounded very nice, but I honestly no longer have any confidence that our completely dysfunctional government has the ability to implement anything at all. There was a brief period last year when it seemed like the Democrats might have grown some balls, when they finally realized that people were angry and they had momentum. But as usual, they squandered it all with their usual spineless jackassery. The Republicans, on the other hand, were they to come to power are perfectly capable of passing most of their agenda — except their agenda is ruinous for the average American.<\/p>\n
So it seems we’ve gotten to the point where it’s impossible to expect improvement; the best we can hope for is that the Democrats retain power so things aren’t made worse.<\/p>\n
And that is really depressing.<\/p>\n
Someone said to me earlier that they agreed change needed to occur but that they didn’t think the government was the answer. Fine. Then what is? <\/p>\n
Businesses in the US behave as if their employees should grovel and simper that they’ve deigned to employ them at all, let alone grant them a reasonable salary, civilized working hours or any kind of benefits. Change will not come from there: they have no incentive. <\/p>\n
Individuals in the US have no power of negotiation; there are so many people equally qualified for jobs, not to mention the fact that their health care is probably tied to their job, that they cannot make any demands without risking personal disaster. Change will not come from there: they have no possibility of success. <\/p>\n
Labor unions, which wrought much change in the middle of the last century, have been gutted and their power is low. Change will not come from there: people have been on their own for so long they no longer imagine it could be different.<\/p>\n
So I can only assume that the people who think government isn’t the answer are operating on the underpants gnome theory of improvement. Step 1: Imagine a better situation. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Fixed!!<\/p>\n
This kind of pie in the sky crap has even less chance of working than trusting the government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I didn’t really listen to it, but I got the highlights. It all sounded very nice, but I honestly no longer have any confidence that our completely dysfunctional government has the ability to implement anything at all. There was a brief period last year when it seemed like the Democrats might have grown some balls, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":963,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}