Frank's Musings

Western Countries’ politics seems to have come to a critical turning point.   It is abandoning civil decorum and welcoming violence for the resolution of disagreements.  The most recent examples include the mutually threatening behavior of a union leader witness and a U.S. Senate committee member during a 11/14/2023 hearing.

In the meantime, the terrorism and military violence into which the Israel/Palestine dilemma has exploded in the area around Gaza has compounded the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.  Furthermore, antisemitic violence has increased throughout the liberal democratic West, and libertarian impatience with slow and deliberative institutional resolution of social problems has erupted in violent demonstrations by groups of disaffected democratic citizens.

But it is especially the recent displays of schoolyard bullying in the U.S. Congress that most illustrate a deterioration of comity in modern government affairs.  Besides the committee hearing exchange of challenges there was an alleged elbowing of one HR member by another that day and a build-up of abusive language between several Congressmen. These officials are representatives that the people sent to Washington to govern the country’s business, not to perform in a reality show.

The country’s economic success and the globalization of industry have led almost half of Americans to devalue the need for hard work—Let it be done by foreigners, overseas or immigrant. We’ve reached an apex in which entertainment has become the main desire of many of the people instead of a periodic form of rest and relaxation. And when those who actually get things done (including professional entertainers) aren’t sufficiently vigilant, they can lose control of the nation’s affairs to populist self-aggrandizers like Donald Trump.