1hundredsixty8

The year winds down. The political media titillates itself  in its observations of the futility of our Federal legistature,  as a murmuring crowd staring up at some poor soul on the roof of a  tall building not-so-secretly hopes he will jump.  At last, in a climatic act of media-fornication, we are witnessing the  transmogrification of governance into reality TV.

Perhaps a romatntic and convenient recollection, but I do think that, even among the venal and self-agrandizing motivations that attracted some to electoral office in the past, there was some minimum sense of the responsibility of holding the office- in keeping up appearances, so to speak. We did, in fitful actuality, accomplish much as a society, as a nation, as a polity. Now our Congress moves from episode to episode of petulant dysfunction as though following the plot line of a daytime soap opera. 

It may well be that the complexity of modern society has outstripped not only our political institutions, but the abilities of the human beings who populate them.  Are the intellectual demands of  managing a society of  310 million people in a world of 7 billion beyond the capabilities of the 535 we send to the banks of the Potomac to take care of our common business? Or, as I myself have been wont to say, in a democratic republic, the people usually get the kind of government they deserve? Maybe we are dispatching the wrong 535 to Washington.

I assume that I will have to watch the next episode to glean a hint.