In my lifetime, government which used to be considered public service, has gotten very bad. I am not just talking about the sort of viral incompetence that becomes the fodder for late night monologues. What I'm talking about is actually worse because it's not the product of incompetence but of intentional poorness, poorness designed to be poor. I have complained in the past about the design of subway cars. Once cars were designed with the comfort of passengers in mind. Newer cars are designed to be uncomfortable for all but the shortest rides to discourage anyone with no place in particular to go to who might need to ride a train simply as a means of temporary shelter from the elements. Subway service itself is a perfect example of the problem. Service is reduced while fares rise. Fewer employees means less maintenance, the rareness of which means that when it is done at all it is done at times of day and for longer periods that necessarily inconvenience the ridership. Public funding shrinks, fares rise, ridership falls. All of this in an age when public transportation should be encouraged.
For former subway riders, driving is not a panacea. Infrastructure is falling apart, roadways are clogged, and when the construction stops, I don't think I'm imagining that traffic control design is a lost art-- at newer interchanges, I've noticed traffic congests to accommodate poorly conceived traffic flows-- stoplights create bottlenecks in all directions. On freeways, when the smoke of perpetual construction clears, empty HOV lanes and EZPass* only lanes surely cause longer drive times for more drivers. which must have the opposite effect of what they were originally intended for (for all but the few who can and are willing to pay to travel them.)
Transportation is just an example that hits close to home, but it's not an anomaly. Our legislators seem to exist merely to greenlight aggressions and inequality and privatization of carceral institutions, and to obstruct forgiveness and assistance to all but the least deserving and in need of it. It's no mystery why. Ronald Reagan is why. Reagan was a gifted propagandist -- a spokesperson for particularly nefarious ideas. Among his greatest hits was an anomalous gratuitous quip at good government: "The most frightening words in the English language are 'We're the government and we're here to help.'"
Government has never been perfect, but it was once a profession that lived up to the phrase public service. There was once an infrastructure designed to assist those who needed it -- imperfectly and with prejudice no doubt-- but if a farmer were in need of assistance weathering catastrophe, there was an agency whose business was to help. Even Republicans understood that a government agency existed to house the expertise -- free of politics-- that good government required. The Supreme Court enshrined the trust that the political branches of government were bound to uphold in the professionals hired and appointed to run government's agencies in a 1984 case called Chevron vs Natural Resources Council that gave the latter authorization to determine that Chevron's smokestacks were a source of pollution that the agency could require Chevron to mitigate. After years and billions of dollars of dark money donations, the Trump Supreme Court is expected to overturn this bulwark against corporate and political intrusion in the affairs of government in a case to be decided this year.
This is not merely an idle complaint. I am not merely lamenting the sad state of public service. I am arguing that Ronald Reagan's clever yet bogus (wholly invented) dig was actually a terrorist bomb spelling the death of good government. It was a deadeye first and ultimately final volley in a short successful ideological war against government that delivered value to the masses-- government for the people in the original sense. (Not for the white people. Not for the male people. Not for the rich, the Christian the land and people-owning people. Government for all people.)
The result is that any innovation in government policy is now reflexively rejected unless it inflicts the requisite amount of misery-- misery to a degree that is unmissable by any run-of-the-mill bureaucrat or politician. The message of Republicans and (the "serious" Democrats who'd like you to know they are not happy unless they are reaching across the aisle to stroke the laps of their fellow Republicans) is not merely that government is bad, but that Americans are not entitled to good government. As a result, government is bad, and Americans (dutifully, like sedated sheep) expect it to be.
Screw that!
As an exercise, we need to force ourselves as a society to do at least a certain number of things a year that are not for profit, not to satisfy a donor, not to punish those too powerless to resist being punished, but merely for the public good. We can rechannel some of the billions spent to keep government bad into small programs that have the opposite effect. We need the exercise, because we have lost the art. We may need to start small, maybe one gratuitously good thing to get our feet wet. It could be for the good of a minority to ensure that it is not pandering. As an example, we could take a cue from Copenhagen and plant fruit trees in city parks— particularly in depressed urban areas— the fruit of which would be available to the public for free. Once we have demonstration that our intent to do good has succeeded we can branch out. I think the trajectory of doing things merely for the public good will be infectious. At the very least, it will be a change from the downward spiral we have become accustomed to since the days of Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher.
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*And don't get me started on EZPass which in my state started charging fees for non-use more than once depleting my account without my knowledge and causing me to incur fines outside my state ... EZPass my ass. Hard Pass is more like it.
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