Over Policitization and Over Celebration of Government Workers 👷

One of the problems with social media – and conventional media more generally – there is the belief that everybody should practice politics and governance should not be reserved to the experts. While in a democracy, citizen participation is an important of governing, citizens should be one input in many, and not every person should be practicing politics.

Moreover, government workers should not be held in such high esteem. It’s long been a plot by government agencies rather then pay employees fairly or increase employee safety at the work place, to instead celebrate the venerated employees. Why make a police officer’s or soldier job better, when you can offer them a parade with lots of flags? Speeches, ceremonies and flags are cheap.

The truth is most of the things government does isn’t particularly relevant to you. While it’s kind of important the traffic lights and potholes are repaired on the roads you drive, a lot of things that are reported in the news as controversies aren’t particularly important. Most news is more about self-aggrandizement of the government workers, rather legitimate public concerns in your own life. How important is the doings in Washington, if the lights come on when you turn them on in the morning?

People would be a lot better off if they didn’t let politics become so self-consuming in their life, if they stopped reading and studying the news so carefully. It’s good to have a passing knowledge of what is happening directly out of your line of sight, but so much of what is happening in this world is irrelevant crap to your own life, when you would better off at a focusing on domain-specific knowledge relevant to issues directly impacting you. As they say, there is only two forms of news that matter to most of us – traffic and weather. I mostly care about the later, as I ride my bike to work.