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- Jul 19, 2012
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Watching the movie "Miracle on 42nd Street" I was struck by the climax scene in which the US Post Office was lauded as an institution that always gets it right. Since they delivered mail addressed to Santa Claus to the fellow on trial then that fellow must indeed be Santa, the judge concludes.
The men back then all wore hats and the women all wore gloves, but the trust they had for the government and its institutions was the most striking of the anachronisms on display in that movie.
From then to now it has been a steady course of degeneration, not only of the trust in government but of all sorts of institutions.
Neither the left nor the right trusts government these days. Some on the left think that the Pentagon shot a passenger jet down with a guided missile, executed the inside job known as 9-11, framed a football player for killing his wife, engineered the assassination of JFK, and on and on. Some on the right think that their tax monies are mostly wasted, that green projects are scams, that climate change is a scam. And some from both sides think that their democracy is manipulated by powerful interests.
Nevertheless, there is a marked asymmetry in reliance that the left and right have on government.
The men back then all wore hats and the women all wore gloves, but the trust they had for the government and its institutions was the most striking of the anachronisms on display in that movie.
From then to now it has been a steady course of degeneration, not only of the trust in government but of all sorts of institutions.
Neither the left nor the right trusts government these days. Some on the left think that the Pentagon shot a passenger jet down with a guided missile, executed the inside job known as 9-11, framed a football player for killing his wife, engineered the assassination of JFK, and on and on. Some on the right think that their tax monies are mostly wasted, that green projects are scams, that climate change is a scam. And some from both sides think that their democracy is manipulated by powerful interests.
Nevertheless, there is a marked asymmetry in reliance that the left and right have on government.