Fairies and Politicians

Look, I’m not ideological when it comes to the government. I’m not an idealist. I take it for what it is, on it’s own terms. I’m a realist. There’s a time to be imaginative, like when you’re making origami or talking about yourself on a first date. And there’s a time to be cold and rational, like when you’re making a budget or performing a maintenance check on a passenger jet. When you’re dealing with the government you need to be in the latter category. I’m sure the repairman working on the plane would love it if he could just forget about fixing the engine and rub some fairy dust on the wings. But the problem is that fairy dust isn’t quite real and so that strategy will end with 176 people incinerated in a fiery inferno. Similarly, I’d like it if the government was a kind and moral omnipotent organism that could cure the world of its ills and heal the malice in the heart of man. But it isn’t. It is force. It is control. It is blind and dumb and clumsy. It can take but it can not give. It can kill but it can not cure. I say this not because I believe it to be true, I say it because it is true. There are enough bodies in the ground to prove it.