The Morning File: These dark days of inept governance call for rebellion
Share with others:
Dissatisfaction with government seems at an all-time high. It used to come primarily from the tea-partiers blasting the national government, but now it's equal opportunity -- and at all levels.
If you're not mad at Port Authority cutbacks, you're upset with plans to slash education funding. If you're not blasting a lax attitude in Pennsylvania toward Marcellus Shale drilling, you're riled up about anti-union sentiments in other states.
If you're not screaming about the idiocy of the Obama administration jumping in on behalf of the Libyan rebels, you're blowing steam that the president took too long to do anything to back those same rebels.
Everywhere you turn, you see government ineptitude, or special-interest catering, or at best, misguided policies. Whatever happened to the days when government was an unquestioned force for good, taking care of those who honestly needed a helping hand while keeping its nose and tentacles away from people and issues that ought to be left alone? (Oh, wait, maybe that was never.)
What's clearly needed is an iconic figure we can all rally around, similar to Howard Beale from "Network" or Charlie Sheen in the midst of one of his somehow-entertaining, self-delusional rants. With a single compelling YouTube video, such a figure could lead us helpless citizens out of our desperate state. ("Desperate state" is meant in a general emotional sense there, not the sense that Pennsylvania is a desperate state -- though granted, it is.)
An impassioned speech to the masses might go something like this:
Rise up, my poor, wretched, unheard friends, and make your voices heard in every capital and every town council meeting. Let the people you elected know that you're sorry you elected them. Let them know that if you didn't bother to vote in the last election, while indulging in the joy of your apathy, you want a do-over.
Whether the targets be on the left or the right, or of some muddled ideology in which the only clear thing they believe in is themselves, vent forth your hate mail, your crank calls and your public jeers. And if none of those work, pretend to be someone you aren't, trick some official you despise into saying something potentially embarrassing, and then make sure the entire world knows it.
First Published April 4, 2011 12:00 am
