A space alien analyzing our present-day behavior in the United States might get the impression that elected office is where the citizens send the loud-mouthed loons, the most entertaining crackpots, the most narcissistic, and the best-connected superannuated citizens from among us. But viewed from the ground level, it often looks like we have a government run by elected officials meant to serve as our bosses, minders, and cradle-to-grave nannies.
So we select our bosses from among the rogues, the blowhards, and the senile in order to write rules for us that we find overwhelmingly too restrictive—at least when it comes to the public roads. They implement speed limits, say, or stop-and-go rules at intersections, and we try as hard as we can to flout those rules because we think they’re way too restrictive. Or maybe because they’re meant for all the incompetents we’re forced to share the road with—and we’re not incompetent ourselves. Each and every one of us is an above-average motor-vehicle operator—truth be told, we’re probably in the top ten percent!
The government is there to inflict rules on those other people out there, therefore, and only the meanest, most insane dotards can be entrusted with formulating those rules. And we then get upset when the rules aren’t enforced—on those other people.
The systemic insanity would seem the best available explanation for why we want speed limit signs on roads, and yet want to go faster than those limits routinely. We want stop signs for safety that we treat like yield signs. And we want a respectable constabulary that will inflict punishments on the other people who break the rules.
We love our freedom and democracy, but we’d also like just a bit more authoritarianism applied to those jerks out there—all too common these days—who really deserve to be taught a lesson. This is what a space alien naturalist might conclude in observing life in the United States in the search for intelligent life.
Is that the sort of people you’d really like to get to know openly? Or would you prefer to abduct them quietly one by one for secret, quiet probes in the privacy of your space vehicle without their consent? They just seem too unbalanced to approach openly as a group, to be honest. Better to probe them secretly and toss them back in among their fellows who will disregard their claims as more crackpot ravings the sort of which they’re already given to.
I was driving up north today and there was a jerk tailgating me as I was passing a semi. He blazed past me when I got in the right lane and I thought to myself, "man I would LOVE to see him get pulled over by a cop so I could point and laugh." No lie, not 5 minutes later I saw the police car lights. Yup it was the GMC Acadia tailgater! LOLOL. I read yesterday there is supposed to be some new federal rule that outlaws funny electronic highway signs. Well the AP was wrong, they are just strongly discouraged. I'm glad WI is ignoring. The one I saw today over and over again was "Drink and Drive? Meet the cops and you'll see new bars."
Follow-up on a conversation from a week or two ago, re Kurt's comments on TMD re China:
"I'm careful. I haven't written anything in here that isn't outflanked 1000x worse by lots of people on Weibo. There's lots of commentary taking direct shots at Him, that the surveillance state is constantly snuffing out, so much of it that the mild stuff I talk about is very, VERY small potatoes.
There's lots of policy papers being put out on an almost daily basis by top academics at the elite universities that directly rebuts stuff by He. It's written in policy-speak, no direct shots are ever taken at He, but plenty of influential people are writing stuff directly contradicting He statements on where the country is going to go. I'm guessing, but my guess is the top folks are terrified right now. Everyone knows He is going in the wrong direction.
I'm using He because that's the current "code". Lots of people talk about wishing He would just die."