Government 101: "They" are screwing with us again

Don't Tread
On Me

I’ve always thought it slightly absurd to see this sign posted on a chain link fence: “Property of the United States Government / No Trespassing.” It prompts this response in me: well, that means it belongs to me, so how could I trespass?

Maybe it was the way I was taught civics in grade school or maybe it’s some sort of hyper-recessive gene, but I’ve always thought of “The Government” as me and the other citizens who have voting rights. It’s a democratic republic, right? We elect the people who govern. They work for us.

Once, when I was on the payroll of a county government, another employee and I were working together on a project. He was senior to me, though from a different department. In passing conversation he happened to make a disparaging remark about the way the county government did things.

I chuckled and said, “Wait a second. Don’t you realize that we’re part of the county government?”

He replied, indignantly, “No, I’m not. I just work here.”

I asked, “Then who’s doing the bad job?”

He sputtered a bit, trying to describe generalized wastefulness and neglect without implicating himself, but all he could finally say was, “Well, I’m not the government.”

But, in fact, he was. And, in fact, we all are.

But lots of folks don’t seem to see it that way. Many people, even members of the voting majority, tend to view “the government” as being an entity apart, often a dark, sinister agency bent on as much mischief as possible. What’s worse, government bureaus are staffed by a unique human species—bureaucrats—different from other human beings, stupid, cruel, rude and vengeful.

Not so. The government is composed of the people the majority of us elects and re-elects; if they do dumb stuff it’s because we let them. Moreover, research has shown that government agencies are staffed by standard-issue human beings—really the only kind available. Some are great, some lousy, most average, and all of them are hired and employed by the men and women we elect.

It was French diplomat Joseph de Maistre who said, “Every country has the government it deserves.” Certainly this is most true of a democratic republic such as our own.

To take liberties with Oliver Hazard Perry as warped by Pogo:

I have met the government, and they is us.