Government is Passive-Aggressive and Sadistic

I can’t write about my second civil service job for security reasons. I can, though, thank you for paying me for a few years.

What I can do is point to locked restrooms in Owego, New York, as a symbol of how the “deep state” of mind-numbingly stupid government operates.

If at any time taxpayers demand fiscal responsibility and leaner government, bureaucrats respond, at best, passively-aggressively, and, at worst, sadistically. Like, for instance, firing the employees who guard and clean our highway rest area bathrooms. And locking the doors to the toilets.

I used to visit my parents by either taking the slow boat route through Cortland, Ithaca, Spencer, Lockwood, and so on. Lots of speed traps. Lots of absent-minded professors driving Saabs and Volvos. Lots of hay wagons.

Or else I’d take I-81 to Binghamton, then I-17, or whatever it’s called now. That route was longer but faster. It also boasted the benefit of a rest stop near Owego, if I couldn’t hold it until Waverly and the parental toilet.

no trees

One trip, I was very unpleasantly surprised to find the facilities locked. There was a note on the door which said something equivalent to, “Due to taxpayers demanding fiscal restraint, we hereby ask taxpayers to show bodily restraint.”

This is how the bureaucracy, the civil service, government, politicians, and the not-so-deep state show us their displeasure.

When we demand better government, they close rest areas and lay off maintenance personnel. They stop filling potholes. They stop stocking our trout streams. They close call centers and fire low-level human beings at phone banks and put us on hold.

They make small, nasty, passive-aggressive or even sadistic taxpayer-facing cuts in ways that inconvenience and torment us. The IRS will surely put us on hold. We’ll get our Social Security or Medicare checks, but we’ll have to wait for them.

As Basil Fawlty would say, you’ll get your cold veal when he’s good and ready.

What you won’t get is a better hotel. Or better government.

And our government is Basil Fawlty writ large.