Political Analysis From an Advertising Character
Here are some things that should be made explicit, even though none of it will come as a surprise to anyone, so here’s a current picture of Chris Bray in his uniform of the night:
In Arizona this morning, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors certified the results of the controversial and poorly managed November 8 election in that county. You can watch the whole meeting here, timestamped to the opening, if you have literally hours of your life that you want to dedicate to that task, but spoiler alert: They got yelled at for a few hours, and then they certified the election results. If you want to just use the video below, fast forward — the meeting starts around the 25:00 mark, after a long notice telling you that there’s going to be a meeting.
There are many striking things about this meeting, but here’s the feature that was most telling: The implicit premise of identity running through the meeting is that the county was under attack, and the county supervisors were locking arms with county election staff to fight off the attack. We — county staff and county supervisors — are fighting off the rubes and conspiracy theorists from the public.
The supposed premise of representative government is that the elected representatives are the public, the delegated voice of the people, and they stand watch over the boundaries and uses of power from a mediating position between the public and the administrative machinery of the state. The oversight of a county government by a county board of supervisors is supposed to be adversarial, to at least some degree, as the elected oversight body challenges and tests the premises of the professional bureaucracy.
There is now no way to exaggerate how completely that foundational premise has gone out the window — and yes, you can scroll back up to the picture I put at the top if you’ve forgotten what it was. Angelo Codevilla:
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
In most cases, the elected representatives of both parties have the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. The line between elected county supervisors and the career county bureaucrats is that there is no line between the elected supervisors and the career bureaucrats. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors saw themselves as defending the county government against the people, not speaking for the people in a contest with the county government. If you doubt that, scroll to the end portion of the meeting, with the board of supervisors ranting at the stupid liars from the public who dare to besmirch the integrity of our fine organization. I thought about pulling out specific pieces of video to give examples here, but it’s all too tedious and pathetic to bother. Here’s a little taste, if you feel the need for it:
To put all of that still more directly, we don’t have representative government. The foundational us and them — the people and their elected representatives against the apparatus of the administrative state and its power — has become an entirely different us and them. “Our elected representatives” aren’t.
But anyway.
Excellent point as always. There seems to be a (recent) refusal by a large portion of the population to accept that government (power over others) is inherently unjust and thus its existence must be constantly tempered and guarded with checks and balances. This belief is evident in the founding documents. The new mythos is that government (power over others) is benevolent and any rejection of it is evil—rather than natural and expected.
The strange thing is that in our core, we still feel the old mythos. Our films and novels follow the underdog against the powerful. And yet when we turn on the TV, the media is always on the side of the powerful, cheerleading the James-Bond villains and vilifying the underdogs willing to stand against the government.
How dare you question the captain and his crew! You don't get to be captain and crew of a spectacular ship like the Titanic by being incompetent. That's not how it works, silly. All of us have years of faithfull service aboard all kinds of ships, rafts, and floaty things along with 1000 years of cumulitive study of naval theory from high priced universities.
Don't worry, the crew checked below decks and everything is ok, probably. Sure there was a minor issue with that last ice berg we passed but it was definitely taken care of and will not be an issue moving forward. You shouldn't make a fuss about it anyway, as it might upset some other passengers and cause them to lose faith in the seaworthiness of this fine vessel, which could actually cause it to sink. We know what sinking looks like and we don't see any signs of sinking at all.
Look, the band is still playing and they would definitely stop if there was a major problem, right? They wouldn't just sit there and keep playing while the ship goes down, that would be crazy.
Anyway, even if something bad actually happens we have plenty of life boats to go around so stop with your conspiracy theories about icebergs and flooding compartments.