Why the U.S. Government is a Dumpster Fire

Uncle Sam is like a married man trying to maintain a demanding mistress.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. —H.L. Mencken

A good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. —H.L. Mencken

In Woody Allen’s 1989 film, Crimes and Misdemeanors, the tormented protagonist—a successful ophthalmologist named Judah Rosenthal—starts having trouble with his extremely demanding mistress. Dolores lives in Manhattan; Judah lives in an affluent Long Island suburb.

Judah is fond of his wife and children and his comfortable home. He wants to be a good guy, but he has yielded to the ancient temptation of having a girl on the side.

When his mistress starts making trouble for him—calling his house and threatening to tell his wife—he yields to yet another temptation—that is, to make her go away for eternity. Inspired by Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the film strikes me as one of the greatest in cinematic history. The scene in which we see the assassin’s POV, following the woman down a Manhattan sidewalk in the rain—with Schubert’s terrifying String Quartet No. 16 in G Major playing— is pure genius.

Judah reminds me of a lot of guys who go to Washington. They want to be good representatives of their voters, but the moment they set foot inside the Beltway, they are beset by swamp critters who remind them that Money Makes the World Go Round. In this way, the loyalty of the good-intentioned, proud new member of the U.S. government is divided. He still wants to do good for his voters, but he cannot resist the demands of the money guys who put him into office.

And so he becomes a basket case like Judah, and ultimately a swamp critter himself.