Our Skewed View of Government
We've all been tricked into believing a lie
Years ago, I misinterpreted Plato’s (hogwash) allegory of the cave to be about propaganda and misinformation. I no longer care for its actual meaning about philosophers and reality, but I think it’s applicable to my view of the American government. Once you see the corruption behind the curtain, you can’t sit idly in the audience.
People in both major parties believe the government is a force for good.
Liberals see it as an engine for the redistribution of wealth, the protection of rights, and enforcing their own set of morals.
Conservative Americans have long since thrown out their pseudo-libertarian beliefs in pursuit of enforcing their own set of morals and “whatever woke people don’t like.”
Both sides view the government as a good thing. Something on their side, a representation of their views, and sometimes a hammer for which to beat their opponents. This is the skew, the wrong, which I am trying to correct.
The United States government doesn’t exist to protect our freedom. It doesn’t exist to protect the rights of the people. It doesn’t exist to keep its people alive and healthy.
The US government exists to preserve a perfect screenshot of a moment that has long since passed. The United States as a wealthy superpower, dominating the communists and building the world, and all the worst parts of that moment.
The whole thing is a pathetic charade.
I enjoy the works of Frank Herbert. I wrote an entire piece on his work and how it relates to AI like ChatGPT and Midjourney. While his works are complex, covering and critiquing a variety of topics, I thoroughly enjoy his commentary on government, as the books are so poignant today.
“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class — whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
78 senators and representatives have violated the STOCK Act, an act meant to combat insider trading among our elected representatives.
(If your thoughts immediately jump to the party composition, you’re part of the problem and missing the point.)
What’s the penalty for this law? A $200 fine that, according to some sources, congressional ethics committees waive, or the fine is not even paid.
What if you commit insider trading as a private person or firm? You’re facing a maximum of 20 years and a five million-dollar fine, or three times the profits you made or losses you avoided, and there’s no waiving or dodging that.
Social Iss-You-es
The government is not a vehicle for your morals. The two parties adoption of social issue platforms is a disaster for American politics.
With an economic or labor focus, there’s an incentive. Unemployment, GDP, and the stock market are all numbers that can improve. If more people are making money, tax revenue goes up.
With social issues, what number goes up? Happiness? Human rights? A poll number?
Who cares pleb? Your elected representative can’t buy a fourth mansion outside of their district with happiness and human rights.
If Congress fixes a social issue, you have to move on to the next one or invent another. It’s why the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was such a win for Democrats; it turned abortion rights into a more permanent voting issue. More so than when Roe was still in effect.
Your elected representatives have a vested interest in making sure social issues don’t get solved.
The longer an issue remains a problem, the longer the problem is useful as a campaign strategy.
How many presidential candidates have talked about free college and student loans?
Congress and the president will never solve student loan debt in any meaningful way. Doing so removes such a powerful and important campaign strategy.
When conservatives win on a social issue, they can move on. If LGBTQ+ rights go, then it's abortion, then birth control, then no-fault divorce, and so on and so forth until they’ve built their fantastical view of the past. They have an extensive list of social issues to "solve,” and they can always make up new ones.
Given the Keys to the Tax Code
The tax system, as it functions today, is not meant to redistribute wealth. It’s not meant to target Bezos or Musk. It’s meant to target and harass the average person.
The IRS is notorious for auditing low-income families and wage earners rather than millionaires and billionaires. Even after an $80 million bill to hire more agents and help with "enforcement,” the agency went after those who claimed the earned income tax credit, or EITC.
If you are self-employed, you have an even higher chance of getting a visit from the taxman.
Another well-known fact is that TurboTax and H&R Block are lobbying to stop the simplification of the tax code. Our lawmakers know it’s a complicated nightmare, but so long as the “campaign donations” from those companies keep coming, the tax code isn’t changing. It’ll just get worse.
Why should the IRS go after millionaires and billionaires? Those are the people making all those campaign contributions to our elected officials. If we actually taxed them, how would they be able to donate so much money to keeping our officials in office?
Remember the Policy They Have Written
There was an amendment to the COVID Relief Act which would’ve raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Here is how Democrat Kyrsten Sinema voted. With a dramatic thumbs down.
The RESTRICT Act, on its face, was an act to ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok. Beneath the surface, it was a new and updated Patriot Act. Any US law enforcement agency would have the ability to use the wording in the Act to criminalize the use of VPNs. All to ban the Chinese from collecting US citizens data.
Facebook and Zuckerberg collecting our data is fine, though.
A little while back, the debt ceiling became an issue again. An imaginary limit too big for most people to comprehend had to be increased, again, for fear of another government shutdown.
The American government refuses to spend its tax dollars in an intelligent manner.
I’m positive you, dear reader, could also come up with terrible laws that our national and state congresses have written.
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
Our government and its powers are not a public good. They are a necessary evil.
Our elected officials are not honorable public servants but corrupt liars and con artists holding on to power.
Hi, my name is Michael Vincent Hawthorne, sole writer for the Midnight Variety Hour. I know I may not change your mind but I hope I’m giving you something to mull over.