I remember a time when I only thought about the President of the United States once every four years.
And even then, it wasn’t a subject that required a lot of thought.I always voted for the same party, because the parties weren’t really all that different andno matter who I voted for,I knew the country would keep chugging along, subject only to the drama of other people’s wars and thevicissitudesof the world economy, which we, as mere humans, can’t do anything about anyway.Not even the president.
I knew that I lived in one country, with one people, who all, no matter their subsets, thought of themselves as “Americans”. I knew that we basically agreed on what the big problems were, and that we were all working together to solve those problems.
And then, somehow, the presidency became part of the entertainment industry.
How many people said, “Oh, he’s not really like that. He’s just acting.”?
Maybe we should blame reality TV. That’s when we started to feel free to intrude on our neighbors’ lives and voice an opinion. I mean, it’s there on television for everyone to see. That means I can tell those people what I think about them, and once the internet came around, tell anybody who will listen.
A country is like a classroom. When everybody talks at the same time, nobody can be heard. That’s why there are rules. No cheating. No bullying. Everybody takes their turn.
But now it’s like a classroom without a teacher. Or worse, with a substitute teacher who’s just watching the clock and banking a check. Trump says he’s going to “tone down his rhetoric”, but that ship has sailed, and the lure of autocracy is too strong. P.T. Barnum is running the show now, while President Biden (and his family) clung for far too long to some sort of personal trauma drama that wasn’t going to do anybody any good.
We need to accept that none of our leaders are thinking about us or our country.
It didn’t matter before who was in office because the bureaucracy remained the same. The bureaucracy is what really runs our country.
There’s a reason why I spent several college classes and many, many hours studying organizational charts and reading about the American bureaucratic system. It was like looking at the insides of a human body. That’s the thing that runs the government. That’s what keeps it — and our country— alive.
But when you gut the bureaucracy, or poison the bureaucracy, or dumb down the bureaucracy to the level of a department store perfume counter, you’re taking the engine out of your car at the side of the road and somehow thinking you’re still going to reach your destination.
The bureaucracy is also a check on presidential power. What happens when there is no such check, when all the guardrails have been taken down?
I remember when political signs were just political signs, when I wasn’t afraid to stick a piece of cardboard on a coat hanger in my front lawn.
Now I never know when an impromptu parade of pick up trucks with “Trump 2024” flags and pictures of AK-47s glued to their sides will coming rolling at slow speed down my street, honking their horns.
I’m a single woman living alone. Who knows what they think about me. Who knows why they may try to target me. I’m not a trad wife. I don’t have kids — don’t I love America? Am I, god forbid, LGBTQA+? I saw a house last month flying a pride flag and I was jealous of their bravery.
I was also afraid for them.
There’s some kind of automotive shop on the other side of town that has a sign that reads “execute Biden” or something like that. There are so many insane messages plastered on the property that it’s difficult to read just one in passing, and there’s clearly no way I’m going to stop to take a picture.
When I go outside to work in my garden, I don’t play a podcast. I don’t listen to the news, or music, or an audiobook. I listen to birds singing, and to chickens clucking hysterically for one of the many reasons chickens cluck hysterically, and I hear the sound of hammers on a nearby roof.
For a moment, there is peace. I want my life back. I don’t want to think about the president, or what’s going to happen, or what a quagmire we’ve gotten ourselves into, of our own volition, by the way. We gave a demagogue an inch and he took several thousand miles, as demagogues will.
We thought, “No one will let that happen.” But that’s always how things happen, while you’re waiting for somebody else to do something about it.
It’s not normal to read and hear about the presidency of your country every five minutes. That’s a sign of chaos and decay. You don’t hear anything from your doctor when you’re well, you only hear from them when you’re dying.
Seeing as how my day job is in service to the federal beuraucracy, I really appreciate this post, Bev.
Calls to "drain the swamp" by replacing ranks of career civil servants with handfuls of political appointees lacking the requisite background and experience doesn't really serve the American people very well. Bureaucracy does, quite often, move slowly. But that's because "slow" is the speed of caution, which is important for the continuity of the critical tasks and services upon which our nation depends. As you correctly noted, the slow pace at which the government changes is actually a safeguard against the instability of political whiplash as administrations change every four years.
I'm with you...I'd really rather not have to think about such things every, single hour.
I still am stirring stuff up, politically. A recent non-political channel on YouTube felt that it was time to expose what covers for psycho politics when the Jesus freaks start rolling coal down your nice rural street should they get back into office, yeah politics and Jesus with another epistle of truth and justice for the citizenry aka Project 2025. AAhhhhhhhh! <start pulling hair out here>
City Nerd post here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmKtZ34IVYc&t=919s&pp=ygUJY2l0eSBuZXJk