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Saturday, December 9, 2017

The Inmates are Running the Asylum


When America was being formed and the wise men of that time got together they designed a system of governance where the people appointed men (yeah only men) to get together to make and alter the rules of society and the common good. Part of the idea was that every (qualified) citizen would and should at one time or another do his civic duty and become one of those appointed representatives.

The process was one where each adult male of European descent would cast his one vote to decide which candidate or other would best represent their region of the Republic. After those early successful years everything went haywire. (Note: when one mis-handles a coil of baling wire it can energetically become an un-mitigatable tangle of surprising complexity. Mostly you just toss it out and go get another coil of haywire. Hence the name.)

In more recent decades, the elected representatives have become lifers in the comfort of their positions. Not only have they voted themselves great annual salaries, incredible fringe benefits and time off to ostensibly go home to their constituents and local office and continue the job for which they were appointed. Along the way they discovered that they knew what was coming in the way of regulations (or the removal thereof) and could profit from that knowledge. They developed the mindset they could write legislation which impacted the Everyman while exempting themselves and granting special privileges.

All of them are the equivalent of being the hired help of We The People except that they have taken over. The constituents used to tell their representative what they wanted them to do, what they wanted and needed, how to protect them from the reversal of fortunes in the weather, the economy, the relationship with neighbors and neighboring nations. Where that used to be the way, now the representatives tell the people what they are allowed to have. Representatives used to represent all of their constituents. Now they have developed the idea they at best represent only the citizens who voted FOR them. They have reached a place where non-citizens residents and voters who voted for another candidate do not matter and actually should be denied representation.

In light of the more recent shift in parliamentary procedure and Citizen United (a highly misleading nomenclature) they have come to represent only moneyed interests who pay them to vote for legislation as written by other paid interests. If those interests were promoting laws and permissions that benefitted human constituents, it would not be such a bad thing, but the moneyed interests are always buying permissions and prohibitions which benefit their business model and bottom-line.

With the reversal of employer-employee relationships, it is as though the Inmates Have Taken Over the Asylum. The totally delusional patients have assumed the roles of Institutional Director, Head Nurse, Strong-arm Orderlies, Groundskeepers, etc. while the former staff are kept locked up in the basement along with the weak and feeble-minded patients who did not have a place in the New Administration.

There are genuinely earnest inmates who believe the new Administration is legitimate and will say and do everything they are asked to do. There are many inmates who are too scared to resist. They kowtow to the Authority of a Nurse Ratched knowing she will prevail by hook and crook.


Somewhere along the line, a tipping point was reached in the administration of governance where the hired help (Representatives and Senators) took over and now run the operation as THEY see fit. In many cases they have created their personal fiefdoms and command the loyalties of a sufficient number of constituents to negate the influence of the majority. That majority must resist and fight back or allow the consolidation of power by the Inmates who took over.

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