CunningLinguist

yesterday the boychick came home with an assignment that required him to discuss with his family reasons that people would be unhappy with the government.

after laughing hysterically on the couch for a couple of minutes, i tried honestly to have a discussion with him. actually i didn`t but vic vetoed my first title for his essay; Ignorance is Strength, War is Peace, Knowledge is Slavery, she also vetoed my second suggestion; Trust no one; but i decided i`d use that today.

i found it interesting that even at age 9, the boychick had learned how useful self censorship is already, i wish he could teach me. i tend to say what i think regardless of the consequences. it was also kind of sad that the first thing i told him after i`d finished laughing that was that governments couldn`t be trusted.

i`ve come to realise that no matter how noble the intentions, there are two inherent problems with governments; they are massive bureaucracies and to get into power in a `democratic` society requires compromise. i put democratic in quotes because there are no true democracies, as much as we`d like to believe it, the voice of the people means squat. to get elected requires lots of money and since campaign contributors are not giving money for altruistic reasons, they want to see a return on their investment. so at the end of the day our elected officials are not beholden to the voters, but to the campaign contributors. and the problem with bureaucracies is once they get entrenched they are almost impossible to implement change. on the surface it looks like things are being changed but on a day to day basis, it`s business as usual, because the people entrenched therein know governments and policies will change but their jobs are pretty much guaranteed.