Defending democracy, but still critical

I don't think there's anything wrong with democracy per se, but I do think that there are better and worse ways of implementing it, and these ways lead to more and less functional systems. It does seem that what we have increasingly today, is a less functional one.

We hurt and we criticize because we do indeed love our homeland, communities, and our people. We ask how can we have prevented this, and how can we do better. This is more patriotic than blindly following the mantras of an administration more concerned with covering its own ass full of screwed up priorities that are no where near hearts of its people. It's also more effective than just hanging flags and stickers up everywhere when times are dark.

Democracy, as Dubya so eloquently stated, is "hard work," and a more functional one requires that all facets of society participate in it with some real time and energy. It is the responsibility of our elected leaders to ensure that our citizens can continue to participate in it--our leaders should protect our interests, and they can't do that if we can't express our interests. If more than half of the population has determined that voting and participating in civic life are less important than keeping the roof over their head, feeding their families, and keeping their kids in school (or worse, voting for the next 'American Idol'), then our leaders have somehow gone astray.

There is a growing tendency towards privatization and individualization (yes, i think i made up that word) these days that I think is increasingly dangerous, but others would deem as progress. Government and lawmakers these days seem to have forgotten what their basic roles are in the first place, and have simply become conduits for industry. If our government, whose job it is to provide for public interests, continues to outsource their jobs to private companies, then they're pretty much telling us that they can't do their job. If our government continues to say, "Hey buddy, you keep your tax dollars, especially if you're already rich and powerful," then they're telling us to not trust them to make decisions that are in our interests--basically don't support them to do the job that we elected them to do after all. What we have now is a shell of a government, that is incredibly inefficient, and all the ill-respected and unqualified people that work there can do is defend their bureaucracy and worry about upholding the thinly veiled illusion of serving the public. A heck of a job, indeed. Essentially our leaders have just created a self-fulfilling prophecy of crappy government.

I'm not saying that what we need is "big government" to make things work, and really think that argument over "big" vs. "small" government is an irrelevant argument in the first place. Of course, what we need is an appropriately-sized government to do the job that we need it to do. Ironically, though not the first time under Republican leadership (the self-proclaimed Biggest Fans of Small Government), our government has become bigger than it's ever been with the Department of Homeland Security, an agency that has time and again been proven more adequate at restricting our civil rights than at securing our homeland.

The worst of our leaders distract us with bullshit ideologies about morality, while they justify their pursuit of the almighty dollar, such as with some ludicrous complex war that we can't get out of now. There's such an incredible mountain of lies to protect other lies, that our leaders have forgetten what they're lying about in the first place. They don't know how to tell you that they're spending so much time, energy, and our tax dollars for this war, that they've forgotten to fulfill the first duty of functional government (any government): i.e., protect the people. Clearly evident in what happened with post-Hurricane Katrina.

Ok, so back to, "where does that leave us?" I don't know, kids. I wish I did. Because if I did, I would be doing more than trying to get a decent job and spending my spare time patriotically bitching.