Governance

Lots of details are involved in managing any organization. Whether it is a small business or giant corporation, details multiply with the expansion of staff, functions, products and services. Non profit organizations are just as complicated as for profit organizations.

Then we get to government. Even bigger. Scope and scale of services and functions are much larger still. Think of the military. Think of education standards and programs for an entire nation and take into account the rights of states in determining their own educational vision for their people. Then account for criminal justice, police powers, regional police powers, federal and state courts, and all the prisons, penal programs and human services involved. Health and human services for those of us not involved in the penal system. Policy generation and regulatory oversight for countless industries and services.

The previous paragraph deals with operations and some policy. But the machinery that makes all of that happen in the first place, and the policy stipulations and guidelines, all flow from the governance structure of our nation. Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of the federal government are far reaching. They are absorbed in details of ideology, morals, ethics and a host of other elements that are all difficult to manage. And to whose standard are these branches of government operating?

That’s another piece of the puzzle. Democracy or anarchy? Monarchy or tyranny? What form of government is in place in any specific nation? How did they arrive at this arrangement? What adjustments or variances are provided? Who decides? Citizens? Bureaucrats? Elected officials? Self-appointed officials?

We take much for granted in the United States. We assume we are a democracy. We are not a pure form of democracy, although we have much of the trimmings of it. We are a republic, too, so that modifies the democratic ideal. But we are also a changeable hodgepodge of conflicting authorities with complicated machinations to guide and decide policy along the way.

We are certainly not a democracy when corporations, giant ones, very rich ones, are counted as citizens and can use their wealth to influence operations of the governance structure. We are not a pure states rights government, either. So many manipulations of policy and structure have been allowed over the years that only sound bites remain of our professed ideology. The actual ideology is not whole.

Citizens need to be hard working if they are to govern by democratic ideals. Each of us must understand the issues of the day and guide our elected officials to correctly operate our nation as we wish it to function. In reality, however, too many citizens leave the details to others and thus cede their control. The result: massive erosion of democracy to something much less a model.

This is happening throughout the global community. Democracy is on the ebb. The opposite is on the rise. And nowhere is there an effective counter force. Think about that.

In an era of lowest common denominator thinking, poorly educated people amass power to thwart progressive thought. The latter is not ideology. It is commonsense management of complex governance constructs. Under this form of governance, we have no border policies in place to correct problems at their cause, just the human crush at the border. We have no way of fixing why unwanted births happen, just the policy and punishment to eliminate abortions. We have sound bites, not well thought out polices. We have a man with orange hair inciting a riot at our capitol building just because he did not like the results of an election. This is not governance. It is anarchy.

More of the same can be expected as long as we give weak support to what we think are democratic ideas.

January 11, 2023

 

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