By Paul Fisk
I believe that there are many people who take pride in their public service.
John F. Kennedy’s admonition to “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” was still fresh in our national consciousness when I chose a college major in political science and a field of graduate study in public administration. Public service was considered an honorable endeavor and hopes were high for a more just and equitable society.
After a 40-year career in which I’ve worked with innumerable dedicated professionals and in many different political, appointive and civil service roles, I still believe in those things. I’ve seen the seamier sides of politics, examples of inept governance, and reasons why “state worker” is a pejorative to some, but the positive aspects have outweighed the negative.
I trust I’m not alone in maintaining some pride in the profession. That has made it all the more disheartening to see how low we’ve sunk on a national level.
We now have a president whose only concept of public service is “What’s in it for me?” and a Republican Party convinced it must lie, cheat and steal to maintain minority rule. This is the result of decades of behind-the-scenes conservative strategizing to win control of state legislatures, gerrymander districts, suppress voting, promote racial animus, deny judicial appointments to Democratic presidents and gain ideological control of the federal judiciary in order to preserve power and enhance the wealth of the already obscenely wealthy. The U.S. Senate has ceased to function as a legislative body, only deigning to push through some questionably qualified ultraconservative judicial candidates, all at terrible cost to our democracy.
Our governments exist to perform critical functions that citizens or commercial organizations cannot perform by themselves. We rely on governments to defend us against outside aggression, ensure public safety, protect our air and water, ensure our food and medicines are safe, promote the general welfare, provide education for all and generally protect us from the inevitable excesses of unbridled greed. We expect these things to be done fairly, ethically and competently, particularly in emergencies.
Donald Trump brought to the presidency absolutely no understanding of, or belief in, the concept of public service. He appointed to top positions the unsuited, incompetent and conflicted. He then systematically weeded out those not personally loyal to him above all. Appointees were often openly opposed to the very purposes of the agencies they were to head, or they came from or lobbied for the very interests they were supposed to regulate.
Much of this was the result of the Reagan-era dogma that “government is the problem” (so there’s no point in trying to efficiently and effectively run organizations that should not exist in the first place). Corruption replaced competence as “leaders” with no sense of public ethics or service were allowed to run amok. Scientists and those committed to ensuring ethical conduct were cast aside and vilified. The Justice Department became the personal arm of Individual One to reward friends and persecute enemies, all under the guidance of his Consigliere General.
Then government failed us tragically by spreading fatal disinformation about the pandemic, largely ignoring the economic distress of millions and denying the existential climate threat facing us. Thousands died needlessly and millions face financial ruin, even homelessness, from the ignorance and arrogance of the administration.
Public servants and other citizens should understand and be incensed by this abdication of responsibility and rejection of our finest public traditions and better angels. Vote accordingly, to reverse these affronts to our democracy.
A couple end notes from Ken Kruly
Go to Investigative Post’s website for the latest post of “Money in Politics.” Just for this week we are focusing on voter turnout numbers rather than dollars. You can also click on our latest podcast about the topic of the week. You can reach the site here. https://www.investigativepost.org/
On Election night tune in to WBFO (88.7 FM) for election analysis. I’ll be joining News Director Dave Debo and Warren Galloway as we review the returns beginning at 9 p.m.
Politics and Other Stuff 
Lets take this one step at a time:
1) Contempt for liberal or progressive democrats. Perhaps you should think back to democratic Mayor of DC Marion Barry who smoked crack or the democratic mayors of Detroit that caused a 50+ year decline and a mass exodus of jobs and population or the Mayors of Kenosha, Portland and Seattle and Chicago and NYC and Baltimore and Ferguson. The democratic mayors that stood by and allowed rioting, looting, arson, vandalism, assaults, murders/executions, autonomous zones…and all of them refused to call in the national guard, prosecute criminals arrested, or accept help from the federal govt. To be a democrat means to support criminals, illegal immigrants and sedition.
2) Liberal contempt for america not just with riots but with fists in the air and kneeling and boycotting the national anthem and burning the flag at sporting and public events. Its why to be a democrat is to be anti-american while Trump supports Law and Order and Patriotism and our military and our police and our first responders etc.
3) Lets examine “Whats in it for me” because it is Nancy Pelosi that has been holding up the 2nd Covid19 stimulus package because she wants a bailout for states and pension funds. Democrats also manipulate states and immigration to create a permanent 1 party rule as can be seen in California, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts and Maryland to name a few. One party rule creates corruption of that cannot be corrected or exposed to the voters. Its democrats that traditionally have thrown out ballots, manufactured fake ballots, created false allegations of rape (Christine Blasey Ford at Kavanaugh hearings) or false allegations of Russia gate against Trump which were actually traced to the Clinton Campaign and the Obama Administration. Let us not forget that democrats have had control of the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court with majority vote which they used for judicial activism to rubber stamp despostic democratic laws and ruling.
4) Lets examine “Racial Animus” because no one uses race baiting more than the democratic party or did you forget that Joe Biden said that “you aint black if you dont vote democrat” or the constant race baiting of the Obama Administration which was supposed to usher in a post racial country but instead ushered in Colin Kapernick and Antifa and Black Lives Matters anarchy, chaos, sedition, violence, anti-americanism. Meanwhile Republicans appoint strict constitutionalists meaning they interpret the original test and intent of the law rather than use the democratic judicial activism to bend the interpretation of the law to conform to their liberal democratic narrative.
5) Lets examine “terrible cost to our democracy” because it is the democrats that want to stack the supreme court by adding seats and its the democrats that want to eliminate the electoral college which allows the states to elect the president and assuring the smallest least populated states still have a say in electing our president rather than by direct democracy which would elect the president by only the most populated handful of states. Id say democratic attempts to rig elections by throwing out ballots, providing ballots to pets and dead people and people who havent lived in the district for years and in some cases decades is a greater threat than anything the republicans are doing.
6) Lets examine ” inevitable excesses of unbridled greed” which is best defined by Hillary Clintons extortion and bribery hidden by her now defunct charity which consumed 95% of its donations as expenses, or Joe Biden whose extortion and business deals (Russia, Ukraine, China, etc) were cloaked through family members like his crack head pedophilic son Hunter Biden or Diane Feinstein and her secret trips to China for her insider business deals. Much of the democratic party is on the communist Chinese payroll which is why the democrats are completely silent of the theft of govt secrets, theft of corporate screts and the importation of drugs by Communist Chinese.
7) Lets examine “using the Judiciary to reward friends and persecute enemies” for which there are literally libraries of documented evidence of the Clinton and Obama Administrations firing anyone not loyal to the democratic party or unwilling to protect Clinton and Obama or punish their enemies.
8) Lets examine “the pandemic” because it doesnt matter whether it was a democratic administration or a republican administration, The same people would be in the same positions coming up with the dame action plans and recommendations. The same people would be in WHO. The same people with be in HHS. The same people would be in CDC. All of these agencies gave contradictory information and badly managed the pandemic. Trump is not to blame for the pandemic. China is to blame for the pandemic and it was the democrats that refused to take the pandemic serious, refused to stop flights from China that brought the pandemic, called cautious alerts coming from the CDC and White House racist and bigoted and prejudiced. All of which says that the democrats would have played identity politics with the pandemic and handled it worse than the republicans
9) Unlike Bush1, Bush 2, Clinton and Obama the Trump Administration has started no new wars and has been winding down the wars of previous administrations, bringing our troops home and pursuing peace deals.
10) Unlike Bush1, Bush2, Clinton and Obama Trump has been renegotiating trade deals to protect american workers but democrats dont care about american workers or middle class or middle america. The democrats think all those hard working blue collar middle class working families are deplorables. In reality, the democrats have a long tradition of being anti-male (feminists), anti-white (race baiters), anti-freedom of speech (political correctness), anti-freedom of assembly (cancel culture), anti-freedom of religion (anti-christian), anti-children (pro-abortion), anti-gun rights, anti-marriage and anti-family (feminists), etc.
11) The rabid radical nature of the democrats liberal and progressive left is dangerously close to the genocidal justifications for violence as those of the Bolsheviks, Communists and Maoists all of whom justified the harassments, ostracism, humiliation, violence, murder for the sake of their utopian idealism to create a more perfect society. The democrats today are just as ideologically willing to use violence to achieve their utopian goals as previous marxists and communists were in the 1910s-1950s. If you vote for democrats then your voting for the same radicalism that killed hundreds of millions of people.
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Paul, you expressed so well the concerns of a whole generation of folks – I’m part of that group – who felt public service was an honorable and much needed course to follow in life. Thanks for expressing this so well.
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