Blowing Up the Government

I was listening to Preet Barhara’s podcast the other day, and one of his conclusions was the dangerous nature of so many Americans wanting to “blow the system up” as their reason for voting for President Trump. Indeed, I consider myself one of the people who supports blowing up the system and I thought about voting for Trump, although ultimately ended up voting for Jill Stein in 2016 and Larry Sharpe in 2018.

As Preet Barhara notes, Donald Trump would be a dangerous demagogue if not for the fact that he is clumsy with his power, giving the other power brokers in Washington DC a lot of power to corral the bull in the China shop. Trump says outrageous things on Twitter, but the political institution mostly keep moving on the same direction as they always have. Government is big, slow and bureaucratic, which is both it’s greatest strength and weakness. Institutions and the people who make them up, can always play the waiting game, while politicians have to move fast to get anything done.

Why do so many of us want to blow up our government, voting for dangerous candidates? For one, the revolutionary, independent spirit is in our DNA. Americans have endowed rights in the constitution, one of them is to reject our leaders and institutions when we don’t like what they do. We believe in the absolute to right to criticize our leaders, we believe in the rights of private of citizens to own firearms and defend their homes. We believe government should largely remain out of our business and off our land, except when the most limited of regulation is necessary to protect the public good.

For too many of us, we think the government has gotten too bureucratic, too interested in protecting itself, long established institutions and corporation, and the powerful donors, rather then average people. While life is improving for most Americans, we feel like government still doesn’t care for us, that the interest of the government put ahead of individual. As Phil Ochs once sung, “Tell the Cops About Your Rights as They Drag You to the Ground” Elected officials who blow things up can be agents of change, at least they will break up the established order. We don’t want fascism or expansion of the government state into our lives, but we do want government to better address the big problems society faces and protect individuals from the excesses of large corporations and those who seek to play on unfair.