…for them:
While a near majority of private-sector employees see the economy as deteriorating, the opposite is true of public-sector employees. Forty-six percent of government workers think the economy is improving.
Meanwhile, the government continues to make war on the real economy, where actual wealth is produced.
The parasites are always optimistic about the continuing health of the host.
The number one rule of a good Parasite is never kill the host and I say that as a Parasite athough I try and be as Symbiotic as possible.
A divergence of perception is a bad sign. Maybe government has always been this way and to this extent. But one of the things that I think has made the US government of the past more or less responsive to the needs of its citizens is shared destiny. Whatever happens to its citizens invariably affected the politicians. If a sizable voting block can be created which is disengaged from the rest of society and its fate, then that’s going to be unhealthy for the US and its future. My view is that was already done with the retiree population and for a while a welfare population.
This one appears a bit worse to me because the group holds a considerable amount of power as well. Not only do we have the usual reality distortion that surrounds any leader, but now the bureaucracies appear themselves to have different perceptions than the rest of the population.
Nor is this disconnect historically unprecedented, Karl. I refer you to the disconnect between the Imperial machinery of the late Roman Empire and the citizens in general, particularly those of middling wealth, neither poor enough to be on the dole nor wealthy enough to escape onerous taxation and arbitrary interference from ignorant imperial functionaries.
People wonder why folks in the 400s would choose to bind themselves to local lords in the traditional lord/liege medieval arrangement. The answer is that, as you have sagely observed, in that case lord and liege very much shared their destiny, in a way it was impossible for British or German peasant to share the destiny of some gilded eunuch poobah in Constantinople. The fortunes of each were closely tied, and the exercise of power was closely tied to very practical ends.
Here today we have something that approaches the late rotten Empire in its rottenness, its disconnect from the reality of life for most people. Only in the councils of our modern imperial aristocracy, our Senators and tribunes and the academic sycophants who stroke them and are fed by them, is it the case that the single most urgent need of the Republic right now is to mess with the way we buy and sell health care, or how much CO2 we belch out.
That’s how it is with the aristoi. In 5th century Constantinople the big concerns at Court were the precise definition of Christian dogma and the purging of heretical thought. No one gave much thought to the obnoxious and dirty problem of the barbarians on the frontiers. After all, they could always be bought off…or so they thought.
IMO Obama would have been unthinkable without Bush.
A couple of weeks ago, Reason linked to this NYT piece from February 2008:
Heckuva job, George.
(In no way is the foregoing meant as a defense of Obama.)
Sadly, gs, you’re not wrong.
Carl,
I’m not much of a history buff, but your comparison with ancient Rome caused this random thought: weren’t the gladiatorial games introduced during that time as a way of keeping the citizenry (pre-)occupied and “happy?” Seems there are more than a few parallels to be drawn there, considering recent congressional forrays into “fixing” college sports, MLB and the NFL.
I’ll be the first to admit that I thoroughly enjoy the NFL season, but it truly amazes me how many of my fellow citizens are conversant on that topic and virtually clueless when it comes to the health-care and cap-and-trade debates.