What is most important when you work for the government? That the paperwork is in order. If it wasn’t documented it didn’t happen. Ever heard that one? I bet you have. How about this one? The paperwork becomes the history books. Now that’s an unnerving suggestion, depending on what that paperwork looks like. What(who) didn’t it include?
Whether it’s the chiefs of the fire department, the case workers at the welfare office, or the police in their cute little military fatigues, the paperwork must always be in order. The optics say one thing, but like fake bricks on a tall building, they don’t hold up well to a little kickback.
Oh, I forgot a couple of prominent agencies, the housing authority, every human resource department ever, ENRON, the German government between 1933-1945, and non-exhaustively the Israeli government since its founding.
Why is there political violence? Why are our institutions so broken? Can they be fixed?
There will be blood before there is peace. The rivers run red with it now and the smell of death fills the air. Soldiers self-emulate on our nation’s capital as our universities use precious class time to validate one another’s car-buying habits.
The loudest voices in the room are often the most violent at WORST and the least considerate at BEST. How many of our prophets who show in their examples to be kind and patient and to demand change through non-violence will continue to be systematically targeted, assassinated, and deposed to the extent by which the loud voices can carry on their work? Efficient as ever.
Those who wouldn’t are weeded out of government and further institutions of power while those who would take from the many who haven’t much to give, and concentrate power in the hands of the few. And the cycle continues. Same story. New faces.
We start as people who believe we are the prescription to the problem rather than the cogs of an unchanging system. The system only remains unchanged when cogs are not willing to recognize the direction of the wheel as it moves the cart off the cliff. We must speak up. We are on the cliff’s edge now.
Mercy on our days ahead.