Posted on 10/03/2017 12:19:12 PM PDT by Kaslin
Bureaucracies in governments function exactly as cancer does in humans - and with the same result.
This is absolutely right.
Ours has metastasized.
I think when you take the immoral effects of taking religion out of our politics you lose a moral compass.
I wish I had read this during my set-to with the VA. I discovered that there was, in fact, no way to deal with those people. Once the VA puts you on their enemies list, that’s it for you. There’s nowhere to turn.
This puts it in perspective. You either admit helplessness, or you act out your rage.
Interesting discussion about `Brazil’-type bureaucracy, but not at all sure what it has to do with mass murderer Stephen Paddock.
Was he battling with some agency? I thought the reason for his meltdown was that he had a gambling problem and was deeply in debt.
His father was on FBI Most Wanted. Screwed up kid and man.
But what does any of that have to do with Hannah Arendt and totalitarianism?
Great Post!
Very True!!
Designed to frustrate and not just government... anyone who has dealt with the cable company “customer service” knows he drill. On hold and then passed around and around and you have to recite your name, address, account#, “last four of social” at every stop. :(
I know it’s a leap, but the two stared out being mentioned together. This is proposing that a 60yo millionaire with planes and properties and cash to throw away at the casinos in cart-loads feels neutered by bureaucracy? uhmm... Maybe I’m just not wearing my empathy cap today. I can’t seem to get there.
Interesting article though, on the socio-philosphical level
So true. I went to get a license to drive taking with me: my non-expired license from another state, my birth certificate, my soc.sec. card as well as my original soc. sec. card in its original envelope, my barely expired passport. But this was not enough to validate me as a citizen because my original soc. sec. card and my birth certificate had my unmarried name, while my current license and soc. card had my married name. What was needed was my marriage certificate. Went back home and came back with that - nope, not good enough because it was laminated. At that point I broke down in tears I was SO frustrated. I was making a sort of scene so they waived me through to the next obstacle where I had to prove my address...and on it went until I just dumped a whole load of papers on their desk, old utility bills, royalty check stubs, etc. It was a traumatizing nightmare. So yeah, I really can see how this sort of thing can drive someone to things they would never ever normally do because it is all just stupid, meaningless harassment by little unimportant people that happen to have power over your life.
So true. And it's happening in the private sector as well. Companies barricade themselves with automated phone answering systems that make it impossible to talk to a real human being with the power to deal with problems. Frustrations are reaching the boiling point.
You could add an activist judiciary to Arendt’s warning about the bureaucracy. As the final arbiter of the law, it likewise has the power to rule people without leaving them a recourse. They rule, and then change just happens, whether voted upon and debated or not.
Sounds like a multi layered approach to the prelude of an Ayn Rand novel.
The ‘banality of evil’... I suspect she’s wrong on this... but that’s another thread.
My God, sorry for your experience. The DMV is one of the most unfriendly animals in government. Sympathy or empathy they have none. Soulless drones is my experience and some even outright nasty.
The point of the article is valid, but I’d be cautious about touting Arendt without qualifications: she was close to the Marxist Frankfurt School and she was one of the Vietcong’s key contacts with the U.S. antiwar movement.
Will have to read up on Hannah Arendt.
I have experienced that vividly, multiply, and repeatedly in the past two years - and I have found no place to have my grievances resolved.
It is indeed Tyranny by No One: the communist apparatchiks.
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