Advocacy - a Pox on our Society

[dgs49]

While this posting touches on some sensitive issues, it is not intended to be about those issues, but rather about mindless advocacy.

The President's budget apparently advocated a slightly modified method of calculating future cost of living increases in Social Security. It was an extremely modest step toward fiscal responsibility in a program that will, with mathmatical certainty, bankrupt the U.S. within the livespans of many of today's young adults. He was excoriated by the AARP.

My own Senator Pat Toomey proposed a new law that would slightly expand the background checks on some gun sales. The NRA tore him a new asshole.

Our inept Federal Government allowed a miniscule "sequester" to take place a few months ago - a financial event the magnitude of which would have had no impact whatsoever on the operation of any profit-making enterprise, and an army of big government advocates (including the President) rushed to ensure that the most conspicuous service cuts imaginable were immediately implemented, to force Congress to restore this minimal reduction in funding.

Any time any program of government is threatened - no matter how duplicative, superfluous, or small, there is a small army of "advocates" who pump the press with sob stories about the unfortunates whose benefits will be cut, thus ruining their lives.

People who are willing to speak dispassionately and objectively about such events and initiatives are completely drowned out by the screaming of the Advocates, and the media let them get away with it.

It is an irritation.

[Grim Reaper]

My own Senator Pat Toomey proposed a new law that would slightly expand the background checks on some gun sales. The NRA tore him a new asshole.

Hmm.

There is no conflict in fly-over country about the proposition that guns shouldn't be in the hands of felons and crazies. But these two constituencies have a maddening habit of ignoring things like gun registration requirements, just as they ignore laws against...I don't know...KILLING PEOPLE.

While I haven't paid close attention to the details of the legislation under consideration now, I strongly suspect that it will burden a lot of people who would never in a million years murder anyone, and create a lot of cost and paperwork in the bargain, while doing nothing to make us any safer from known felons and crazies.

If this law were even arguably efficacious - likely to keep guns out of the hands of felons and crazies - it would sail through congress like true Mexican food through a Gringo's digestive system. The fact that it hasn't is sufficiently informative to make the case that it is nothing more than worthless political posturing.

Thank the Founders for a system that makes it difficult to pass a law.

It's fascinating watching you spin around on a topic when it suits your interests.