How Many More Times?
Ever listen to the blues?
How about to early Led Zeppelin?
The world's greatest cover band (my deliberately provocative nickname for Page, Plant, JPJ and Bonzo's magnificent quartet) made its bones (and its first album) by embracing the most fundamental trope of blues music - and even wrote the song referenced by today's title) of blues music.
That is, women treat men terribly but men keep coming back.
All this bubbled up from the depths of my brain after reading a piece in National Review's weekly recap email:
The U.N. revealed that its probe into the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East confirmed that some of the agency’s staff likely participated in the October 7 massacre. It’s an important admission, though one for which the international bureaucrats deserve no credit. The U.N. was forced to look into the UNRWA’s Hamas ties only after Israel exposed the agency’s role. And the report, conducted by the U.N.’s internal audit office, comes with a few caveats. It investigated only 19 staffers whom Israel brought to its attention, finding that nine were likely or highly likely to have joined the attack. UNRWA said that it was not able to find corroborating evidence against the rest. Israel has identified at least 1,200 UNRWA employees with ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The U.N., though, said that it has closed the probe and plans to move on without further investigation. Even the generally obsequious press corps at Turtle Bay was shocked by the organization’s choice not to make public the report or details about the precise role of the nine staffers. This is a cover-up designed to give the Biden administration and Western governments permission to resume funding UNRWA. They should not just continue to freeze the funding, but burn down the agency.
Anyone willing to elevate intellect above blind tribal loyalty understands that the UN has become a place where the Jew haters of the world can get together, enjoy the fine dining, arts, and other culture of New York City (spending Other People's Money LINK) and dogpile on Israel. And, along the way, pat themselves on the back for being among the Best-and-Brightest who stand above the unwashed and ignorant masses that actually produce the wealth they leech off.
Unfortunately, the UN is not an aberration or skew data point when it comes to governance. The "we stand above the deplorables" mentality is endemic to all big governments, and we see ugly stories all the time.
Yet, as with news sources and the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, there never seem to be enough instances of ugly to deter people from a presumption that they should continue empowering and funding government.
Thus, I ask everyone whose vision of government rises above "a necessary evil that should be kept as small and limited as possible" and who reads the Constitution as an unfortunate impediment rather than a brilliant bundle of restrictions...
How many more times? How many more examples of government ugly do you need before you stop defaulting to the government as a solution to problems? How much more do you need to see before going libertarian?
From personal experience, not everybody who "goes to Washington" is corrupted by power. In my case, years ago, I was there as a science and technology analyst. My peers worked other parts of the Army budget. Some proved inept and couldn't even get a spreadsheet to balance. Others were infected with the God complex that comes with wielding "authority" over billions of portfolio dollars. Most of us, I believe, just wanted to do our time in Shawshank and get paroled back to the real world.
My observation is that those infected with the God complex find a way to stay there. And of course, with a permanent civilian bureaucracy, you can well imagine "the type" that rises to the top. The bureaucrats' Hippocratic Oath is "first, do nothing that will threaten the power we have over billions of dollars."
The UN is just like that - just like all US federal government departments. Concerned first with maintaining their authorities, and after that...well, what's the purpose of having that authority if you're not going to use it to advance an agenda? This is the problem with all permanent bureaucratic structures - they cease being about some mission or ideal and become hopelessly corrupted.
In our American government "system" - that's not supposed to happen. Because the senior leadership is supposed to be political appointees who change out with the administration. Barack Obama saw this as an impediment to the permanent changes he desired and converted many political appointments to Civil Service under EO 13714- thus protecting his ideologues from replacement when Trump assumed office.
It’s about the continuous power gained by keeping the mushrooms in the dark with an endless supply of bullshit to keep them satisfied. Satisfied because the mushrooms are too stupid to bother to educate themselves with the documents so easily accessed by anyone at any time.