"Why do you trust the government?" has become a predominant question from tea party land in the town hall shouting matches.
Pardon the soapbox, but, well, it's lying here, all dusty, the "Dove" on the side barely visible anymore.
It is, when you think about it, a truly galling question. Actually, I take that back–it's a stone cold ignorant question. Our founding documents were crafted to create "government of the people, by the people and for the people." If you can't trust government, that's because you–yes, you there with the Obama Hitler sign–have failed to understand and do your civic duty as part of government. The disconnect between people and government is our collective fault for not making our system of self-governance responsive and accountable to us citizens. The government is supposed to be "we the people," not what it has become: a bunch of distant quasi-celebrities who choose which of the issues of their corporate donors to support while we are left to our own moneyless forms of influence. It is an abstract idea that we are our own government, and therefore a fleeting presence in the minds of the most, er, quotidian among us, and that's a shame.
Too many people have bought the delusion that they have no responsibilities in a democracy except exercising their rights. They're exercising their rights to protest "the government," which is them. They are, we all are, the governed and the governing. We have lost the latter half of that equation, and we aren't likely to get it back soon, if ever. These folks should have thought about accountability long before the current misinformation campaign that has stirred them to action. And what gloriously misinformed action it is. Watch the wielder of the "U.S.S. Constitution" in action:
