It Can't be That Bad

People are good at outrage, gloom and doom.  They are particularly good at this with regard to their governments, and particularly in the USA.  It has been a pretty consistent result of polls over the past few years that Congress has an approval rating at or below 20%., Americans hate Congress.  They actually quite like Obama, so Republicans may wish to reconsider their position that the reason they aren't in power is that they weren't right wing enough.

It is trivially easy to see outrage in our media.  If you have facebook or e-mail someone will almost certainly be telling you about something awful this week.  Watch "news" and there will be a diatribe about the outrageous behavior of someone.  "If you aren't outraged you aren't paying attention" as the bumper sticker goes.

As far as I can tell the dominant view in the USA is that things are pretty bad and the government is worse.  However, I ask, "Is this correct?"

There was an election just our months ago in which about 60% of eligible voters voted.  The outcome of this election was essentially that the same government was re-elected.  The USA electorate re-elected a government that they consistently say they hate.  What's going on here?  I would guess that the usual answer would be that voters voted against the other guy while holding their noses about their guy.

Two years ago through much of the Arab world citizens rose up in mass protests against authoritarian regimes, mostly removed them, and are undergoing the rather painful process of inventing a new sort of government.  This is as far away from re-electing their government as it is possible to be.  why did they do this?  They did it because they found the conditions of their lives unacceptable, and the government that was in charge of this condition was unacceptable.  When enough people deemed the government unacceptable they mobilized, at great individual risk to themselves, to change the government.

Nothing remotely like the Arab Spring has happened in the USA for decades.  The closest things would be the protests against the Iraq War, the Tea Party demonstrations, and the Occupy Movement.  The first had no effect and was a minority position, the second got a significant group of people elected (who are now no more popular than the rest of Congress) and the third never really got far enough to decide what they were protesting about.  Of these three the Tea Party is the only one to have changed US government in any way

If Americans hate their Congress so much, why don't they change it? It wouldn't take anything remotely like the amount of risk or effort that went into the Arab Spring, it would simply require organizing alternative candidates for office and voting for them (you know, like the Tea Party, except with more people.)  The common assumption is that the general population (i.e. "not me") is too ignorant/duped/stupid to do anything about it.  This doesn't make sense since 80% are not adequately duped to stop them from disapproving of Congress.  Can it be that Americans are incapable of self-organization?  I don't think so.

I think the answer is apathy.  People just don't have the necessary motivation to take the steps required to change the government.  Why are Americans apathetic with regard to their government?  I submit that the reason is that things aren't actually that bad, and the US government is run well enough to essentially satisfy its citizens.  This is about as close to political heresy as you can come in the USA, that the government does a pretty decent job.

How can I say this?  Well, it is pretty easy to think of scenarios in which the US population would not be apathetic.  Try to institute a government only source of news and entertainment, and the government would be out on its ear.  Try to round up all the Chinese and put them in a concentration camp, and the same.  If the police started coming round and locking people up for being members of the wrong party there would be actual outrage.  These aren't pie-in-the-sky scenarios, these are things happening in the world right now, or have happened in the USA within the last  80 years.

If there are examples of people doing what is necessary to change governments, and it would be easier to do so in the USA, and there are scenarios in which we are sure that Americans would act because conditions would be acceptable, and none of these things are happening then what must be the answer?  Americans have apathy towards changing their government because the conditions aren't bad enough to motivate Americans to change things.    If things aren't bad enough to require a change, then they can't be that bad.  If things aren't that bad, then the people responsible for running things aren't doing that bad of a job.

I could list a whole bunch of things I dislike about the US government, and have.  It's really easy to see how things could be run better.  The difference between "could be better" and "unacceptable" is pretty large, and while they may not know it consciously, Americans put the government nearer "unacceptable" than "could be better" in what they say, but put it closer to "could be better" than "unacceptable" in their actions.

The rhetoric, outrage, horror, and hatred that Americans portray with regard to their government is so far out of line with their actual actions towards that government that I can only conclude that it's basically fake, insincere.