What else would someone call a march organized by federal employees to celebrate federal employees? What will we do next week? “Rally To Raise Lawyers’ Self-Esteem?”A young bureaucrat named Steve Ressler recently had his feelings hurt after a Washington Post poll discovered that there are “widespread negative perceptions of federal workers.” This perturbed Ressler to the point that he felt the need to have his own “Government Doesn’t Suck” march. Truer than parody.
According to the Post, Ressler says “it’s time to turn the tables and remind the world that government employees just happen to be people – people that don’t suck” and that “government workers ‘are a lot of cool cats’ who work hard, listen to good music and watch [Jon] Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show,’ but that’s after they’ve spent a whole day keeping the country running.” (emphasis mine)
To Ressler, government employees are just a bunch of misunderstood, persecuted philanthropists who are the bees knees and the cat’s pajamas.
Ressler actually has the chutzpah to say that he and his cronies are “running the country.” Not running the government. "Running the country." Even most politicians throw a rhetorical bone about hard-working people keeping this country going. Ressler just happened to state the open secret that he and many others know: the U.S. is really run by an elite managerial class.
Ressler doesn’t even entertain the fantasy that there are more than two classes of Americans: the ruling class and the ruled class.
He and thousands like him are unelected, unaccountable; they live off the earnings of others and are appalled that they are not appreciated and loved by the serfs. It also tells us what he thinks of himself and what he thinks of the rest of us. The masses are to be seen and not heard (“How DARE you not have a positive opinion of me!) The ruling class is to be honored and adored. We are weak. They are strong. And there was much rejoicing.
Now with the midterm elections less than a week away, chances are good that Republicans are going to capture at least one house of Congress. This might make some pontificators on TV and radio salivate and celebrate, but the elections are mostly an afterthought and largely symbolic. We vote, but the interests of those in charge are the only ones that count.
Why?
Ressler is currently out of government and only because he voluntarily quit his job at the Department of Homeland Security in 2008 to work on his GovLoop website, a “Facebook for Feds,” and not because there was the slightest amount of downsizing. More importantly, this tells us something very informative about Washington’s bureaucracy.
Ressler, a techie in the DHS during a Republican administration, is organizing a march to defend government that is under a Democratic monopoly. Do elections matter? Hah.
Now, the real message of his little rally is that the American people need to stop entertaining such unapproved thoughts as that there might be too much government or that power tends to corrupt everyone who wields it, including the elite.
It’s going to remain this way until the American people decide that enough really is enough. Kicking out Democrats and replacing them with Republicans and vice-versa isn’t good enough. It will require what historian Paul Gottfried wrote in his essay, “Reconfiguring the Political Landscape”:
“The only way the managerial Deity will be deflated is by refashioning a new politics, one that pits the kind of constituency [Professor Christopher] Lasch describes against the current New Class and its allies. This new politics must call for a reorganization of government, one that will allow for the replacement of rule by public administrators and judges with something more closely resembling self-government. This can only happen if the locus of power is shifted toward governing units that have not already been co-opted from above.”
Years ago Ronald Reagan proclaimed that it was a time for choosing. 2010 is a time for choosing as well, but does anyone notice what we keep choosing to live with?
Postscript: You might also want to check out Ressler's ideas for 5 new TV shows based on government jobs including "House" with a "CDC twist," "The Auditor," and a "Real World" knock-off dubbed "The Politicals." Folks, you can't make this stuff up.
Carl Wicklander,
Regular Columnist, THL
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