When The Smoke Clears, You're Usually Left with a Mirror

I am convinced that entropy is the most powerful force in the universe. Nothing works anymore. It’s like the system was designed by idiots, and then endlessly tweaked by even greater idiots to maximize the friction and waste within the system. Let me give you a few examples:

Our schools don’t teach anymore. At the K-12 level, the system amounts to warehousing kids and indoctrinating them. For the more affluent, the children that actually receive a decent primary education, they're promoted to universities where they are not taught how to think, but rather what to think. People with no fear of losing their cushy jobs staff the entire system; receive absolutely sterling health and retirement benefits, and have no accountability whatsoever for the end results. The system is obviously broken.

Our police don’t enforce the law anymore. They basically take reports, often over the phone, and file the paper away. They aren’t allowed to check to see if the person before them is in the country illegally. If they shoot a drug smuggler during the commission of a crime, they get put in jail and the drug runner wins the lottery in court. The border patrol isn’t allowed to exceed the speed limit when pursuing bad guys. The system is obviously broken.

Our courts don’t work anymore. They’ve become a means for imposing a hidden tax on everything and everybody for the benefit of lawyers. Justice has become so commoditized, no one cares about right and wrong anymore; most just want to find the cheapest way out of a system more rigged than a three-masted schooner under full sail. The Supreme Court has almost become a punch line and the confirmation process will likely keep jurists with any self-respect from seeking a seat there. There's more, but I don't have the time. The system is obviously broken.

Our political system doesn’t work anymore. 80% of the citizens in this country are in favor of English first, most are opposed to unfettered immigration, and the overwhelming majority are opposed to same-sex marriage. And while there may be wide disagreement with the prosecution of the war, most Americans are not in favor of a precipitous pullout from Iraq. Meanwhile, our borders are wide open, we’re under a continuing existential threat from Islamic Radicals, and the biggest concern of our elected officials have is whether some lawyers may have unfairly lost their cushy government jobs. Isn’t this an example of a system as dysfunctional as the Bundys? Only the Bundys aren’t real and these problems are! Our system is obviously broken.

The NAACP doesn’t represent black people anymore. Virtually every position they take is in opposition to the fundamental views of black people. The same can be said for the AARP. Hijacked by the left and carefully hidden behind a slick marketing campaign. But it’s not the fact that they’ve been hijacked that’s so troubling; it’s the fact that their members continue to blindly support them. What kind of idiot supports an organization that actively undermines them? That system is obviously broken.

The Republican Party hasn't been working to well these days, either. The party of small government has presided over the largest growth in government in the nation’s history. They’ve added prescription drug benefits for the AARP crowd, expanded the Department of Education with a No Child Left Behind program that hasn’t improved schools in any significant way while increasing spending threefold. The party of fiscal restraint has bloated the federal budget to beyond anything ever seen before in the history of civilization. The party of integrity has so soiled itself with scandals real and imagined that it stands impotent in the face of real criminals. (Think Sandy Berger, $90K Jefferson, ABSCAM Murtha) It's caused many to disown the party. In the end, they’ve sold us out in their pursuit of power and incumbency. Our own conservative system is broken.

Who caused much of this?

WE DID! When we stopped fighting for the quality of our children’s education and handed it over to the teachers unions, we did. When we accepted poor or non-existent law enforcement, or worse, allowed others to demonize those that put their lives on the line for political gain, we did. When we valued convenience over justice and settled with someone when we knew it was wrong, we did. When we voted to keep judges that don’t uphold justice, we did. When we (re)elected people that didn’t deserve our vote, we did. When we joined and supported special interest groups that said one thing and did another and turned a blind eye to it out of misguided loyalty, we did. When we became complacent and accepted the dismal state of the Republican Party and voted for the lesser of evils in election after election, we did. As the great philosopher Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

It’s not the evil Democrats; it’s our unwillingness to actively fight their agenda. It’s not the teacher’s unions, it’s our unwillingness to confront them and hold our ground. It's not the leftist universities; it's our donations to the Alumni Associations and the tuition checks we send with our children that fuels the system. It’s not the courts; it’s our willingness to forsake justice for the sake of convenience. It's not the politicians, it's our votes cast while holding our collective noses that props them up. Until we’re totally fed up with the status quo, things will not change. Entropy will continue to degrade the system until it finally prompts us to do something about it. Then we will have to muster the will to overcome inertia and reshape the system. Until we are ready to put our butts in first gear and bust a clutch, nothing will change. What idiot designed this system? The answer is as close as the nearest mirror.

Someone was onto something when they said; "it's not the size of the dog, it's the size of the fight in the dog."