| OP here. I think about this every day. Ultimately, it comes down to how you construct the root origin of the problem facing government right now. For me personally (hence why this post is on Medium and not on a *.gov) is the lack of both faith and trust (two very different things) in public structures of all kinds, not just the federal government. We've lost that faith and trust for very good reasons, to be sure. We may forgive, but not forget those indiscretions to put it mildly, and they go back to the founding of the republic. The problem as I see it though is that faith and trust have fallen into such disrepair, it's become a self-replicating negative cycle. So few people believe govt can do anything well (in terms inclusive of ethics/effectiveness/efficiency) which leads to apathy, which leads to skilled people leaving govt or not joining, which leads to further degradation, which leads to a further undermining both in perception and in actual funding or authorities from Congress, and on and on it goes. That cycle is not just observed at the federal level of course. Even more pernicious to me is the apathy it creates at the state/city (or even community) level, even if one person or one small group's potential for positive impact is exceedingly more likely at the level! I certainly still have my ethical red lines, and I recite them to myself on a near daily basis so I don't normalize the "might" of the feds with "right". But I still see the one of the core origins that got us to this point being the cycle above, so trying to break the cycle is still my #1 priority for now. |