Report from Hell: Bureaucratic Intelligence; Conclusion
from TILT
Recap: Our storyteller has shared her four most crazymaking encounters (Reports from Hell) with bureaucracy in Parts 1 and 2 of this series. In Part 1 she shared how a summer job with the Federal government turned her into a thief, and how in order to survive a stint with the State government she became a liar. In Part 2 of this series, she wrote of the bureaucracies she has encountered later in life, how the Hysterical Commission turned her into a cheat, and how the Fire District has left her cynical.
This is the third and last installment in this series. Her takeaway. MoonLit has shared the backstory as context so that you may draw your own conclusions.
Conclusion: The Bureaucrazies
“I've been known to walk through the fires of hell over the principle of the thing,” I tell the assemblage around the table. We have gathered at the fire station to sign the employment contract with the offensive language mandated by State law.
Blank faces around the table greet my righteous ire about the principle of this thing. They maintain a polite silence, and blink. The point I'm trying to make about the slippery slope we're on—the one where government has the right to tell us where we can and cannot spend our money — whiffs. It doesn't so much as stir a breeze. I'm the only indignant one in the room, and that old familiar sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me that I have poured my ethical passion out like water on the sand, yet again.
I sigh and sign, feeling that flame of insufferable do-gooderism in me that has burned so hot and so bright for so long, flicker and die at last. It feels good. I hope it doesn't ever flare up and engulf me again. I'm old now, and exhausted.
I've fought my desperate battles against incredible odds and lost. Over and over again. What was that definition of insanity again? A brighter woman would have chosen her battles with greater care. A more sober woman would have found the serenity to accept the things she could not change.
The Religion of My Fathers:
Mythology states a venerated ideal. Like ritual, mythology seeks to manifest the sacred ideal in this, the profane world. It is always an imperfect transition. The real (profane) world never fails to compromise the mythological ideal.
America as the land of the free and the home of the brave is a myth. It is a myth I was raised on. It was a myth I loved and lived by. My parents adamantly believed in this myth, and raised me to adopt it as my own. It is the myth that assured me our country, and thus our democratic institutions, had the integrity to do the right thing. America was fair and ethical, the brightest light in a dark world.
But the attempted manifestation of the mythical ideal in this messy, real, chaotic world always falls short. There is a significant disconnect, for example, between the mythical Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses and the brutality of our militarized border today. We cling to the mythical ideal as the best expression of our nobler selves so our heads don't explode from the cognitive dissonance of the reality.
There are elements of civilization too big and too universal to be undertaken by individuals or private enterprises. Eternal, existential matters that concern every citizen: governance, education, national security, and health care, are a few for instances. Bureaucracies have grown up in and around these too-big elements of civilization, to administer such important and universal concerns. American mythology assures us that the bureaucracies exist and are managed to benefit all of us equally because of the democratic ideals and freedom America was founded on.
I watch the news and scratch my head. The disconnect between the nobility of the myth and the reality of the manifestation is glaring. How did it all get so screwed up? I share these thoughts with you here in case you bought into the myth so completely that it confuses reality for you too.
The reality is that democracy is messy. It is an ideological struggle between extremes which, when it is healthy and working, pulls those extremes to compromise somewhere in the middle. Nobody gets all they want all the time. When some get all they want and others get nothing they want it's autocracy.
American institutions seem to be working to undermine their reasons for existing.
Our government puts aside careful governance, ostensibly undertaken to protect the citizens and spend their tax money wisely, in favor of trying to legislate the morality of individual citizens.
The educational system works hard to make sure its students lack the ability to study and think critically despite the herculean efforts of teachers.
And the health care system is doggedly determined to see people denied health care.
It's no surprise to me that American bureaucracies at all levels are filled with thieves, liars, cheats and cynics. Perhaps they've worked where they do so long that they have become morally anesthetized. Long enough that the absurdities of their bureaucracies have started to make sense to them. The more nefarious among the bureaucrazies put energy into keeping us angry at each other because it liberates them and their bureaucracies from the critical gaze of their constituency. As long as we're arguing amongst ourselves, they're free to rob us blind without consequences.
Culture, and its cultural institutions, are reflections of its people. Our national institutions are mirrors in which we see our best and worst selves reflected.
Democracy is a blanket we all—in all of our spectacular, beautiful plurality—huddle under for safety and comfort. We are of different religions and races and orientations and genders and languages, but we are all Americans and that makes us family.
REGISTER, AND VOTE!:
The deadline to register to vote in the upcoming election is drawing near in most states. MoonLit is not trying to sway your vote. You should vote your own conscience and your own best interests. But by all means, register and VOTE! A healthy democracy requires the participation of its citizens.
If you have been registered to vote in the past, check with your county elections department to make sure you are still registered. Some counties have been purging their lists of voters.
MoonLit offers the third and last installment of our look at bureaucracies at this October full moon. These are the conclusions we have drawn from the four reports from hell previously offered, but you will most certainly have your own take on these events. The series asks us all not to lose our sense of humor as we navigate the minefield that American bureaucracies often represent. We would love to hear your thoughts on all of it as our country gears up for the upcoming exercise of American Civil Religion—an election.
It is the inalienable right—and responsibility—of all American citizens to vote. Democracy only works if we—each and every one of us—participate. The most basic and most important form democratic participation can take is voting. Get registered and exercise this right. Don’t let anyone convince you that your vote doesn’t matter, that it doesn’t count.
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Gratitude list:
Graphic design by AJ Brown | https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mral |
Photography by AJ Brown | https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mral |
Some images are through Creative Commons License and we would thank all of those creators if we could find their names.
To the Life in Pieces writing circle for reading an early draft of this.
Terryl is (grudgingly) grateful to the bureaucracies and bureaucrazies she has encountered for this series of essays. She would like to point out to the cosmos at large that after a lifetime of swimming upstream now she feels she is paid up, and state for the record that any bureaucracies trolling for a sucker to help out should kindly look elsewhere.
Terryl is grateful to her in-law David Dyck for the concluding line of this essay. She stole it from him at a wedding reception a couple of years ago.
Terryl and Al are both deeply thankful to the people who read our work. There would be little point in any of this without you You make it worth doing. We love hearing back from you, and are ever so grateful to you for sharing our efforts with your friends and family.