Rant: Trivial Pursuits

I once worked with a guy named Charlie who, before he would answer any technical or procedural question, would first ask "Do you care? I mean, do you really care what the answer is?" This habit of his was maddening, of course, but it was remarkable how often the answer was "No, not really, now that I think about it."

Charlie would never have made it as a politician, at least not nowadays. Read the newspapers or watch the Six O'Clock Follies on TV and ask Charlie's question about the recycled press releases from politicians, bureaucrats, and interest groups that are presented there as the "major issues" of the day.

Do you really care whether Republican fascist Jesse Helms blocks the appointment of Republican socialist William Weld to be embassador to the unbelievably corrupt Mexican government from the unbelievably corrupt Clinton administration? Do you really think anything Washington does to Mexico will have any effect on the availability of either drugs or cowboy boots in Huntsville, or even in Tijuana? Of course not.

Do you really care what Democratic fencepost Al Gore thinks of the so-called "tobacco settlement"? Do you really think that the Federal Government should be spending its time and your money combatting, for heaven's sake, teenage smoking? Or is it more likely that whatever the government does will simply increase the anti-establishment cachet of smoking and increase its attractiveness to rebellious teens, while middle-aged working-class smokers have to take an extra thirty bucks a month from their pinched paychecks to support their habit?

All the brouhaha about "campaign finance reform" -- polls consistently show that fewer than one American in thirty thinks this is an important issue, but of course all of Washington is eager to pass new regulations, because it would essentially allow the incumbent politicians to control their opponents' campaigns.

And how about foreign affairs? Our brave boys in uniform fighting for, er, whatever in -- Bosnia?? Does anybody care, really, what happens there? Or for that matter, in the other 99 countries where we currently have our military stationed -- a hundred countries, in all of which our presence is utterly irrelevant either to our "national interest" (whatever they say it is today) or to the actual future of that country. Defending freedom? We wouldn't dream of stopping China from taking over Hong Kong, for example, let alone Taiwan. Even if we tried, it would cost thousands of American jobs by cutting us off from a major world market. Not to mention the major world strategic reserves of Disney toy action figures.

What are we doing in all these places? Who knows? We've even got an FBI office in Moscow. Because Communists are easier to find there, maybe? Who cares?

The answer, of course, is that hardly anybody outside the Washington Beltway (and its colonies in the various State capitals) really cares any more. The turnout in the 1996 elections was a mere 49% -- the lowest since 1924 -- of registered voters, never mind including those eligible but unregistered.

Naturally, the talking heads and editorial-page pundits are all in a tizzy about this, whining condescendingly about "voter apathy" and "cynicism" because the citizenry isn't paying rapt attention to the debate over how some TV show should be rated for violence, or what new laws should be passed to prevent the latest headlined tragedy.

But the pundits should relax (if they can; it seems as though hysteria is somewhere in their job description) -- the American people are, by and large, simply being their usual sensible selves.

Remember, this is the polity that elected Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson based on campaign promises to keep the US out of war, and voted for Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton based on their promises to cut the government. (Franklin Roosevelt was a special case, of course. In 1932 he campaigned on cutting the government and in 1940 on keeping us out of war. Then in 1944 he campaigned on the premis that we were at war and shouldn't change leaders....) Apathetic cynicism is a perfectly reasonable attitude towards our government.

Consider, for a moment, that based on the trivial nonsense being touted as burning social questions, the whole Federal establishment is desperate for something putatively useful to do.

The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, seriously considered regulating lawnmower engines a couple of years ago, has had to abandon all normal scientific research standards and risk-evaluation procedures in order to dig up something to justify their latest silly air quality proposals, and is pushing the creaky "global warming" bandwagon long after every respectable scientist in the world has jumped off.

The Department of Education, not content with having doubled and tripled the number of non-teaching administrators and "specialists" taking budget space from the nation's classrooms, now is helping promote the idea of "teaching volunteers" -- who presumably will have to fill out the usual enormous volume of useless forms that the department wastes the professional teachers' time with.

The Department of State, finding itself in a world mostly at peace except for those places it can't do anything about, has taken a leaf from the EPA and is promoting its role in arranging international treaties to prevent (what else?) global warming.

The Congress, meanwhile, elected three years ago on a promise to (surprise, surprise) cut the government, was soon persuaded that the goodwill of the Washington media establishment was more important to the achievement of its principal goal -- reelection -- than the goodwill of its constituents out in "flyover country." As a result we're now treated to photo-ops of Newt Gingrich shaking hands with Bill Clinton, urging that the TV networks run still more anti-drug spots (making them still more attractive to anti-establishment teens), and bragging that government's annual growth rate has been slashed to a mere 5%, instead of the outrageous 6% proposed by the Democrats.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, valley-girl fascist Dianne Feinstein rescues the world's largest and most productive economy from the deadly menace of a million impoverished hard-working Mexicans by making all 200 million adult citizens carry a card with their fingerprint on it and by preventing anybody from getting a job without this card and approval from the Washington bureaucracy.

At the White House, cigar-smoking Rhodes-scholar dropout Bill Clinton is taking valuable time away from golfing and consulting with his defense attorneys in order to issue really, really sincere statements of concern about teenage smoking. Hillary is busy with wifely domestic chores, like telling the 200 million adult citizens (the ones carrying Dianne's card) how to keep their children from becoming dropouts and cigar smokers.

So even the rhetoric is absurd and laughable. When you add to this the clear evidence that whenever the government has tried to do anything substantial about some perceived "social problem," it has managed only to make the situation infinitely worse (though, not incidentally, in the process increasing its own size, power, and intrusiveness), and the additional observation that Americans have been voting consistently for less government for two generations while the Federal budget has increased in real terms from under $300 billion to more than $1.5 trillion -- given all of this, apathy and cynicism are a rational, sensible response.

Another rational, sensible response would of course be to find a political group genuinely committed to reducing the size, expense, and intrusiveness of government at all levels, and help it achieve those goals however you can. Hint [here it comes, Mother! I knew it!]: The phone number of the Libertarian Party in Washington is (800) 682-1776. Or if the mention of any political party makes you (understandably) slightly nauseous, the International Society for Individual Liberty is at (707) 746-8796.

Trivial Pursuits

Craig Goodrich Rant Magazine October 1997

Craig Goodrich
Rant Magazine
October 1997