How interesting. I saw this initially posted on The Weekly Standard, and since it is something I have long believed anyway, I clicked on it and listened. Presidents refuse to answer any questions but those that are scripted, and they only answer "softball" questions regardless. Do you know what is more interesting: when their cronies grovel at their feet and come to their desperate aid whenever their master comes under attack. What is more unnerving to me is when that person is none other than one of my own shipmates and a Naval Academy Grad. I will address this individual by name because he is a public servant in a politically appointed position.
Reuben Brigety is a government wonk in the State Department and was serving under Hillary Clinton when President Obama was, in Brigety's words, rudely and offensively interrupted during a press conference a couple of years ago. On Facebook, Brigety went on to ask where the respect for the office of President had gone. Interesting. I responded to his post because at that time we were "friends" on Facebook, but I realized that he could not engage me due to his position as a public servant. I stated to him that the President leaves reporters no choice when he only chooses to answer questions from predictable reporters, those whom the President can "trust" not to ask unscripted questions. To Brigety, I asked when the public can approach its President to ask him the difficult questions given the fact that the President limits his access to the public to these extremely short press conferences and even then to limit it to only his favorite reporters. To make matters worse, even those reporters can only ask approved questions; therefore, the entire process is a dog and pony show.
I do not know whether Brigety was simply trying to be loyal to his boss or if he truly feels like reporters should not be able to ask real questions to which the public, the President's constituents, want to know the answers. Since I am a curious individual, I took the liberty of looking up my acquaintance on Facebook in order to send him a message with the link to the subject story along with my question of whether or not his stance changed. He is a public servant after all and ought to answer questions when asked. To my chagrin, he had "unfriended" me, which I suppose is an honor in that he proved to me another belief I always held: All public servants are political tools, cogs in the government's machine. They have no interest in public welfare except in maintaining power for as long as it lasts.
Forget the fact that I'm no less critical of Obama than I was of Bush. When pressed with a stance counter to their own, Democrats reduce your opinion to be that of only ever to have been against them, and they give no credit to previous criticisms that you may have placed against Republicans previously in power. To this end, I maintain that regardless of your party status, if you maintain a role in government, you stand a good chance of being a disingenuous turd, incapable of maintaining integrity, seeking your own benefit, and being a self aggrandizing fool much like the sitting President, regardless of party.
During our country's foundation, we recognized that government was inherently bad, but necessary to protect Life, Liberty, and Property. Under this recognition, the framers drafted a Constitution to outline a limited government which in modern times has been stretched as far as it can go without being reigned in by any self interested parties possessing the necessary authority. Instead, they sit back and watch in selfish blindness thinking that no little step would seriously damage our framework, but in their ignorance, they forget that even a meter has one thousand millimeters. Given enough time, the most tiny iterative changes transform a mind and then a country. It's time to wakeup. It's time to rattle some cages.
No comments:
Post a Comment