1. Let's take another look at the "duopoly" argument that some Progressives use as a reason they do not want to support either mainstream party, Democratic or Republican, or their candidates. Those Progressive make valid, scary, germane points in the age of @realDonaldTrump.
2. It is no secret that I, while I see value in this argument and in fact think Progressives have the best ideas for American government improvement, some of them woefully overdue, that I have ever seen, sadly still think they were used to divide liberals and elect Trump.
3. But there is much validity in what these Progressives say about the corruption of government as a whole. I say this from my own direct experience of workplace politics as a career civilian @DeptofDefense employee, in one of its agencies, from 1979 to 2012.
4. Even back then, and particularly late in my career working under the Clinton, Bush the Younger, and Obama administrations, I saw loyalism promoted rapidly, and whistleblowers punished even more rapidly. I saw reorganizations' destructive effect accelerate.
5. I saw rehabs add trendy flash but very little substance to our actual operational effectiveness. I saw & personally experienced growing dissatisfaction as efforts to maintain or increase our ability simply to work hard at our Mission seemed to get us punished, not promoted.
6. I received mandatory annual ethics training, as everyone else did, in ethics, and in dealing with Fraud, Waste, and Abuse. But that training seemed to me to focus unduly on "avoiding the appearance of impropriety." Over the years all these non-constructive changes ...
7. ... came to spell out to me that "avoid the appearance of impropriety" carried an unspoken second message: Don't make anything big and bad that you see visible enough to cause the higher-ups problems, or we will make you regret your candor professionally.
8. I myself was not pristine in my use of internal "intranet" media in socializing inappropriately with work friends, and so there were skeletons even in my own closet the Powers that Be could have used if I had strayed from their script to cause visible trouble for the powerful.
9. But as the powerful became more and more protected, and those not in upper management got fewer and fewer promotions, and Directors issued reminders that "the days of the career civil servant are drawing to a close" (except for management careers, of course), I woke up to it.
10. I began to see that there was a culture in Federal government that insulated those at the top. I began to suspect a second set of unspoken rules, a tacit network of conformism and loyalism, among those at the top, & that you didn't get up there if you weren't okay with that.
11. And I began to suspect this might work outside the walls of my own particular agency. Why else would the strange bedfellows of politics lead to such strange behaviors, both from the "good guys" and the "bad guys" du jour?
12. Never forget that every successful politician in our national government, & particularly the most visible ones elected to national Executive and Legislative office, benefit in their purses & portfolios from how government works, even (or perhaps especially) behind the scenes.
13. But when it happens that the corruption caused by this kind of culture of conformity & loyalism truly brings harm to the nation, or through deliberate inaction causes such harm to occur, what we call "the System" does bear direct blame for putting us in that dire situation.
14. And such suspicions on my part jump once again from dormancy into active thought when I ask myself the question, "Why hasn't anyone done more to stop the shocking harm @realDonaldTrump is inflicting on us?"
15. Some of the inexplicable inaction has been bipartisan. Admittedly & obviously, not nearly all of it has been - I call attention to the impeachment proceedings started by the House, and the acquittal predetermined with much bragging by the @SenateGOP in the other chamber.
16. But just about every citizen who intends to vote for the candidates of @TheDemocrats, to hand @realDonaldTrump and @SenateGOP a shameful electoral defeat this year, probably still has wondered at some point along the line why @TheDemocrats have done so little ...
17. ... as to leave the horrible problems of Trumpism and the Radical & Religious Right up to us to try, with fearful uncertainty, to fix at the ballot box.
Is some of the problem with our duopoly? Yes. International outrages don't happen because just one party is corrupt.
Is some of the problem with our duopoly? Yes. International outrages don't happen because just one party is corrupt.
18. A seminar on gerrymandering here in NW Georgia pointed out the fact that neither major party wants to do much to change district-redrawing methods, because the party in power, whichever one it is, benefits so much from it. Maybe that's what's kept Electoral College alive.
19. But thousands can die as an indirect result of an "upper management" culture so corrupt, regardless of party, that loyalism can lead office staffers to look a real, huge, looming, deadly problem in the face and tell the messenger, "Don't bother the Director with that."
20. And this is a HUGE part of why it's taking so long to fix other, more visible, seemingly more partisan problems such as GETTING @realDonaldTrump and @SenateGOP OUT OF OFFICE AND INTO PRISON CELLS WHERE THEY BELONG.
21. THIS is why, even after impeachment, even after thousands of unnecessary pandemic deaths, Senate and House and White House and Supreme Court and even international corruption-fighting organizations ... want us to fix this problem at the ballot box. And we're not sure we will.
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