My favorite flavor of concerned citizen is the government worker, often a retired one, who stands up at a public meeting and says we have to get government off our backs. Astonishing how many of these guys forget to offer up their pensions as a place to start.
A good number of these people – including retired policemen – were among the goons who attacked the U.S. Capital on Jan. 6, 2021, proving the old adage that there’s a fine like between cops and crooks, or sometimes none at all.
Alaska’s own governor, Mike Dunleavy, runs with this crowd. An undistinguished public school teacher who became an unremarkable superintendent, Dunleavy sits at the top of a state government that has functionally abandoned many of its obligations to the public, including education, while attempting to entangle our state in his extremist personal views on reproductive rights.
All the while Dunleavy rakes in a generous salary and a boffo retirement, both paid for by the rest of us Alaskans. Doing nothing, raking in two piles of cash and giving away just enough of the state’s treasury to get re-elected is good work if you can find it. Don’t forget to send out thank-you cards, Mike. You owe us.
I ran into another follower of this bizarre religion recently. This guy had the decency to not actually work for the government he would overthrow, but his message was the same: Government is the problem.
I’d like to get hold of the basketball coaches who taught these dolts high school history and throttle them because the lesson these guys weren’t taught is so simple it hardly needs teaching at all.
There are two man-made forces that control our lives in the United States of America in 2023: private wealth and government.
Since forever, including in many nations today, those two forces have been one and the same. Under that system, laws and regulations are made by the king, a rich guy who inherited, stole or extorted a giant pile of money. The king uses his money to buy just enough friends and an army to lord over everyone else by threat of violence.
Kings tell you much land you could own, whom you can marry and how much in taxes you are required to pay – to him. Your right to complain is neatly folded into the king’s right to cut off your head.
Now every so often in certain nations and at certain times in history, the king’s friends get sick of the king and rally together enough of the king’s other friends to separate the king from his right to tell everyone else what to do. All the kings estranged friends — maybe with some consideration from you and me — make the rules.
This is called government. It’s what we live under today in this country. Over the course of history, government is a rarity and it’s rarely perfect because the king’s friends aren’t too different from the king himself.
People in government tend to be just as power-hungry, oppressive, and self-serving as a king, but they’re generally less blood-thirsty. Under a system of government, we get to complain and keep our heads. We call this progress because it is.
Kings still abound. Russia has King Vladimir Putin. North Korea has King Kim Jong-un. China has King Xi Jinping. Saudi Arabia has King Salman and the Phillipines has King BongBong Marcos, for crying out loud. The list goes on.
Some of these monsters call themselves “presidents” as a form of camouflage, but who’s fooling who here? If you can make a person “disappear,” you’re a king.
Civilizations tend to continually fall back to kingdoms because it’s human nature to want to be king rather than “head of state.” Plus, many of the rest of us like to have just one person in charge. It would seem to make things simpler.
King George III said that George Washington’s decision to be president instead of king made him the greatest person in history. No one called Elvis Presley the President of Rock and Roll. Donald Trump, who crapped in a solid gold toilet, tried to make himself king of the United States and almost got away with it.
So you say that government is the problem in this country? Here’s an idea. Quit your bitching and run off to some country that has a king instead, because that’s the only other choice you have. Good luck.