Shutdown: The Audacity of Bureaucrats

 

By C. Edmund Wright

What the heck is on in the mind of someone who thinks the very oceans must be closed if they are not there to administer proper enjoyment of it? This week, it's a pertinent question.

Part of the answer is that many bureaucrats are people who, deep down inside, know they can't achieve anything and/or are afraid to try. This is why they become bureaucrats in the first place.  Why else would they agree to work in a cubicle each day, in a job with a very low ceiling, tasked with torturing the very businesses and taxpayers who support their pathetic vocation? Consider: bureaucrats -- and for this purpose I include the foot soldiers they dispatch to carry out their mischief -- are much like low level referees.  They are given authority over people who are actually more accomplished than they are in a certain endeavor simply because of that cubicle, a PC, and books of regulations -- or perhaps some absurd badge on a cheap blue shirt and a government-issued sedan or pickup truck. It's their equivalent of the striped shirt and whistle.

Yes, I know, if you have a bureaucratic mindset, or are related to someone who has, you are horrified that I am generalizing.

Yes, I am. But it's okay to generalize when one is upfront about it. Naturally I am not talking about every single bureaucrat, but I assert that it's true of the majority, and, moreover, definitely symptomatic of how all government bureaucracies as a whole impact the rest of us, even if some good angels are part of these cubicle folk.  Besides, after the past week of absurd closures and attempted closures as a result of the so-called shutdown, where many thousands of dutiful bureaucrats carried out what amount to near-criminal acts ordered by an obviously petulant and peeved administration, the mountain of evidence is in my favor.

Oh, I've heard the sentiment on radio, cable and message boards that most government employees are good people just doing their jobs, and yet, I must ask -- is this majority of good bureaucrats holed up somewhere with all of the hypothetical moderate Muslims?  Are they waiting to rapture themselves at some point in the future, validating these fanciful claims that they really are the majority?

Like the idea of a moderate Muslim majority, the notion of good bureaucrats is perhaps a fiction conjured up by well-meaning people who just can't deal with the reality that there are indeed groups of people who are maybe not so good, or who are forced by peer pressure or function to act badly or look the other way.  Bureaucracies, by their very structure and function, reward adherence to rule and obedience to authority. This naturally perverts the once pure public servant into a nefarious drone simply "carrying out orders" -- orders which all too often lead to someone else losing some liberty or property.

Is it possible that you can't remain a good person and become a thriving government drone? Ask Lois Lerner. She's been a very bad person while becoming a very prosperous tool of the monolith, now reportedly due a six figure pension in the wake of taking the Fifth Amendment.

To wit, to be a successful government bureaucrat this past week, you would have had to play your part in closing down parks, lakes, monuments and sporting events that are frankly none of your damned business. Whether your job was ordering Barry-Cades, procuring orange warning paint, police tape, or stapling notices to fences, trees and so on, you had to choose between being a good bureaucrat or a good citizen.  This is not an exaggeration. Never the twain shall meet -- at least, not this past week.

Seriously, I invite you to think about how sick one has to be to go along with this charade.  At a minimum, one would have to be a frightened puppy of a person to play along, fearing that outside of your beloved little taxpayer-provided cubicle, there is no future for you.  At worst, some were obviously taking pleasure in doing their part to maximize pain on other American citizens, some of whom stormed the beaches of Normandy and climbed the cliffs of Point du Hoc.

On a positive note, these turbo charged Barney Fifes are finding out that their Park Service badges and yellow tape garnered absolutely no respect.

Chances are, most government minions are somewhere in the middle -- just numbly going along with a mindset that actually accepts the fabrication that they are needed. Perhaps the sheer insanity of closing down venues that do not require government assistance never dawned on them. Seriously, do people really need government help in launching a boat, visiting an outdoor memorial, hiking a trail or looking into a canyon? The very idea is insulting to the point of being offensive.  And certainly Navy's football team, financed with privately derived revenue, is not helped by a butt-insky-Alinsky administration threatening to cost them a few million dollars by cancelling their game against Air Force.

Only a mind-numbed government robot would comply with orders spending more money in the name of saving money -- and doing so to close down private ventures. Closing down private ventures is what government does when it's not shutdown, too, of course.

And yet, all of these ridiculous actions were taken or attempted this past week.  And they were carried out by many tens of thousands of bureaucrats who would no doubt claim that they were just "doing (their) job."  Well, perhaps they were. Which begs a few questions like:  wouldn't the country be better off without your job in the first place? And what kind of a parasitic mindset does it take to perform your job? And are you proud of yourself?

Which begs a few more questions of us, like: how long will we stand for this? Will more Americans finally wake to the fact that our country is being stolen in broad daylight by a bureaucratic class we are paying to destroy us? Will we have the courage to address this with friends, neighbors and relatives who are part of this destructive army? Will the feckless Republican leadership recognize a winning issue when it stares them in the face?

In reality, it doesn't matter if the first few questions to the government hirelings are ever answered. But if we don't answer the last few correctly, the grandest of all larcenies will continue unabated.