I am not a constitutional or political scholar – nor do I play one on TV. I am, however, working my way through my fifth decade as a citizen in these United States. If I am completely honest, I don’t spend as much time as a properly informed and engaged citizen should, keeping up with local government. As areas become more and more industrialized in our country, media being one of the forefathers of such industrialization, it is tougher and tougher to 1) find outlets that report on local government and, 2) do it in a fair and equitable way. We went from Industrial Revolution to Information Age, and have recently crossed into the Kardashian Era.
It’s Difficult, Keeping Up
I grew up knowing less-than-zero about government and politics – all I knew, until about age 18, was that Columbus “discovered the New World,” had a meal with native people, Ronald Reagan was president, and the punk band DRI sang about Reaganomics. As my worldview expanded, so did my interests, and I became more interested in the whos and whys of our political system. The rise of the Internet, it seemed, gave me simple access to invaluable information as well as tools to direclty communicate with representatives and agencies tasked with delivering services to my community. It took me some time to realize that most of the tools that delivered content, and allowed me to contact my local government, also had views and objectives of their own. I can be a fast learner, but i’m not always a fast learner.
Eventually, when you really dig down deep into complex systems, things get overwhelming quickly. How is a story slanted? Is what was reported really what was said? Who should I believe? Who should I support? What is most important to me, and how does that balance with what is most impotant for society as a whole? Does it balance at all?
I still don’t have good answers for most of the questions posed above, and as I mentioned at the outset, I don’t stay as involved in politics as I likely should. But. I do know that more transparency in the how and why our government arrives at decisions directly leads to more understanding for the citizens of how these systems function. I believe that will lead to more direct engagement from all living within the system.
In my opinion, more engagement is always better — knowing full well that not all engagement will be positive.
History As A Guide
I don’t refer to “The Founders” very often, and it is unlikely that people who know me would call me a “Constitutionalist” but I do believe that many of the decisions made at the earliest stages of the country were made to allow citizens to understand the government, generally, and have the power to modify things, as necessary over time.
Madison said, “The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or revised before they are promulg[at]ed, or undergo such incessant changes, that no man who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.”
The founders knew that for our society to be successful, citizens would need to be informed AND engaged.
Where We Are Today
Most government websites are a reflection of the present state of our legal and political systems: convoluted, complicated, and nearly impossible to understand or figure out how to get to the information that you need. We’ve not only lost the ability to understand to-day, which means we cannot know what to-morrow will be, many of us don’t even fully understand yesterday.
From time-to-time, I’ve been known to discuss how other countries may have approached solutions to challenges that we presently face. A response that I’ve heard a number of times is, “We aren’t country X.” It is a fully valid, if a bit defensive, response. Of ocurse, we are not another country. Our population has different challenges, is larger or smaller, contains more diversity, and has a constitution that lays out what is, and is not, possible.
For those reasons, my reply is: I agree we are not those countries – we should be doing better than those countries. We have all of the resources and knowledge to build leading-edge tools and processes in the public sector that can, and should, be the envy of the world. But, that cannot happen in a vacuum. It will not happen in a bubble.
Where We Need To Be Tomorrow
The ability to actively listen, question properly, and engage our community resources were essential in building this country. They remain essential today. And, will still be essential tomorrow.
But, it is not an easy process. It is messy and difficult, and requires us to often put our egos aside and sometimes do what is not in our own, personal best interest.
I meet people in government service who do not accept this. However, I meet far more people in government positions who are eager to accept the present challenges. They strive, daily, to build programs and implement processes to connect with the citizens who want to connect with and help them. Our goal is to support those individuals and their teams, to the best of our ability, every day. We may not always be successful, but life isn’t about being successful all the time. The objective is to do the hard work today, so that things are a little bit easier and, hopefully, a little more successful tomorrow.
As always, if you have thoughts, ideas, would like to help, or just want to have a conversation, never hesitate to contact me.