Washington Dysfunction Has Deep Roots

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Across the board frustration at Washington, DC, will characterize this November’s elections.  The question on the minds of many is why, despite the promises to the contrary, nothing gets done and the situation gets worse and worse with every passing year.  To answer this question, one first needs to examine Washington culture in detail.  To begin, it is insular, frequently secretive, and suspicious of outsiders.  Capitol Hill dictates a more or less common mindset among everyone who lives here.  And, in all fairness, one really needs to get involved on the inside to totally understand its riddles.  I firmly believe that reform is possible, but, on the difficult matter of a solution, the analogy I always use is that of the Gordian Knot of Greek mythology.  This was an impossibly entwined knot that was eventually undone by a bold stroke of the sword, rather than through a probably hopeless desire to devote hour upon hour in the hopes of eventually untying it.    

Arguably, human beings require and demand their own space.  Off the top of my head, I can think of several conflicts between people (if not wars) which have had their genesis in simply not having enough room.  Washington, DC, is often perceived as a mini-New York City by outsiders, but it honestly is not.  For many years, this city was almost a backwoods outpost of sorts.  Most of the city proper and its businesses were concentrated in the immediate area around the Capitol.  The often gallant names of streets and avenues frequently contained, most amusingly, farmland. For example, Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet arrived in 1933 to find a sleepy little town.  It wasn’t really until the post-war boom that DC began to grow.  Even today, it doesn’t take much of an imagination to examine the city today and make that connection to the past.

Nothing makes humans more competitive and territorial than limited resources and not enough elbow room.  I’ve written before about the paradox of DC, and this is another corollary on that topic.  Namely, I’ve noted that people often come to the capital city to do great good, but then after taking jobs at non-profits, government agencies, or businesses, they begin to change.  Soon, self-preservation becomes more important.  They rarely join forces with similar organizations to increase their ability to affect change.  Instead, the tendency is, far too often, to crave being in charge of one’s own kingdom.  And when many jobs in DC are linear in nature, one is often forced into a specific track whereby every step up the ladder is specifically designed for one particular skill set.  This setup eventually produces navel-gazing and tunnel-vision.

Competing methodologies and strategies lead to stalemate.  It’s tough to reinvent the wheel when fifty people have a different way to go about it and no one wants to stand aside or compromise.  Criticize inefficient, sprawling, massive government if you want to, but you are really only focusing on the effects of the problem.  The cause is a combination of power, egocentricity, covetousness, and fear of the unknown.  And until we get rid of those burning desires, friends, we’ll have another Anti-Washington election ten years from now, and another ten years from that one.

DC needs to understand that reform doesn’t mean losing something that will never be recovered.  It also needs to recognize that working together isn’t untenable, but is, in fact, the way for government to work for the people, not for its paranoid leaders.  If it cannot, then we need to devise a system whereby people have the ability to spread out and assert their authority over their own particular manor or estate.  If this sounds like Feudalism, it’s because it is.  Either we work hand in hand with our brothers and sisters, or we should build our castle and moat on several acres of land and start accepting applications from highly specialized peasants.

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    • cabaretic on September 11, 2010 at 20:01
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  1. and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Elected officials understand that due to the advent of electronic voting, the game is now rigged: 51-49 in favor of whichever candidate desired.

    Looking at actual tallied results from the various battleground states from the 2004 presidential election (Table 1.1). By noting that Kerry never tallied greater than 51% of the vote, even in states where he should have easily carried 52%, such as Minnesota- 51.1% (53.5), Pennsyvania- 50.8% (54.1), and New Hampshire- 50.3% (54.0), one can infer that the 51-49 vote flip software has gone mainstream.

    This being the case, politicians have no fear from voters per se, but only that they following the agenda from their corporate masters. There is no incentive to doing the right thing for the good of the masses.

    My prediction for the upcoming election is whacky election results for a number of races. If you are favored and walk goosestep with the corporate agenda, you will win or retain your seat.  

  2. DC needs to understand that reform doesn’t mean losing something that will never be recovered.

    Do you mean the legacy government of elected politicians, the mythic separation of powers and SCOTUS?

    Do you mean the  non-elected elite that run the government departments and have a floating coterie of establishment figures ready to be appointed, depending on the regime? BTW, this branch of government holds captive the elected branch by virtue of amendment, laws and a monopoly on expertise. One of the reasons that politicians cannot compromise.

    Do you mean the non-elected profit oriented plutocracy that owns elected politicians who make laws to accommodate the highest bidders? The other reason that politicians cannot compromise.

    Do you mean the non-elected political  party operatives on each side that hate each other the same way that fighting dogs hate each other? Do you mean this self serving culture that must have divisiveness to survive?

    Do you mean this conflicted, chaotic type of government that has no name?

    Would you please write about  what exists and not what you think exists and not how you, in particular, think what is rational. It may work for you personally or you as a voter but there are 220 million other citizens that do not vote and these are the reasons;  not a longing for the past or for reform.

    There is no way to think our way out if everyone thinks in terms of their particular political solution to a basically spiritual problem. Does anything that you suggest eliminate cynicism? I do not think a cogent reasonable spatial-historical exposition on Washington will do that.

    Feudalism is only one word of many words that apply to this epoch.

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