The Challenge of Responsibility

There was a time when holding public office was a great honor and responsibility -- but now it is just about staying in office for the rest of their lives -- usually doing nothing because the people's expectations are so low, they just don't want their elected representatives stealing TOO much, and if they can maintain those minimal expectations and allow the voters to get over every now and then, that will be enough to get them re-elected for the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile, life and everything else in the world changes at great speed now -- depending on where one is in the information chain -- because it is already happening somewhere in the world by the first adaptors, the first to accept new information -- rather than simply learn the old, repeat it and even defend the old, long past when everybody else has moved on. Those are the people charged with protecting the rear -- who will inevitably be convinced they are at the front, among the first to know what is going on. But assuredly, they are among the last.

It usually doesn't take much to keep them fighting even when there is no prize -- or it has long ago been snatched up by those who are pulling everybody else's strings -- usually with promises of the wonderful world that will come to be if they just do this one final "sacrifice" -- for the keiki, kapuna, ohana, party -- when obviously, the party has long ago been over that they have only now been invited to.

They just think "a mistake has been made" -- that their invitations were misplaced (as usual) and they are not seated at the head table at the banquet, next to "Jesus."

One wonders what keeps such people motivated to continue on in that manner -- feeling that their lives ought to be sacrificed for the Great Leader -- for which they always demand reparations and justice at the next negotiations for their just compensation, which they always feel, they have been cheated out of, and should be rewarded as the top 1 or 2%, they feel their blind loyalty and sacrifice have entitled and earned them.

That of course, are the familiar refrains of the contract union negotiations, at which their members ask resentfully, "Do you expect us to continue to work for free!?" -- as though their twice the median incomes were not enough for prostituting themselves so shamelessly and selling out themselves so cheaply and disgustingly.

As lady MacBeth would say, "Cannot all the water in the world, wash the blood from my hands?!"